Mar. 19, 2009
Exploration to 1850 ~ AND ~ More Resources for States Studies
Posted in How we are using My Father's World Curriculum
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Exploration to 1850 by My Father's World (www.mfwbooks.com) is coming to a close for us. I really wanted to do updates this year as we went through the study, but if you follow my blog at all you know that hasn't happened. I tried to do the same for Rome to the Reformation, but didn't do a great job with it either. It seems that the amount of time I have available for computer usage is dwindling as my children get older. Two of them are using the computer for math this year, and the other child likes to do most of her summaries in PrintShop so between that and teaching, cooking, washing dishes, doing laundry, and just life in general I have hardly been able to check my e-mail (about once a week has become the norm). If you e-mail me and I don't respond I'm not ignoring you, I just probably haven't read it yet. We are enjoying learning about American history this year. After a couple of years of ancient history and the middle ages the kids are glad to get to learn about more recent history and the nation they live in. We are just wrapping up the War of 1812 so we are nearing the end. I think we have a few more weeks, then it will be time to dive into our state study. The kids are really excited about doing that too. Some of the highlights for us have been the read aloud books (that's always our favorite part). We've read Amos Fortune, Free Man, Mary Jones and Her Bible, William Carey (my personal favorite), Almost Home, and Madeleine Takes Command. They were all very good books. Currently we are reading Bound for Oregon, which we just began this week. Already we are having a difficult time not reading ahead. Some books that go well with this time period that we really enjoy are the Millie Keith books from the Life of Faith collection. The first few books in this series are about the family moving to the frontier and their adventures as they settle in to a new community (Here is a link to book 1 of the series Millie's Unsettled Season. We've also read some older books that we've really enjoyed such as : Justin Morgan Had a Horse by Marguerite Henry Benjamin Franklin, Young Printer by Augusta Stevenson Going to School in 1776 by John J. Loeper Molly Pitcher, Girl Patriot by Augusta Stevenson Daniel Boone by Shannon Garst Most of these I bought (along with many more) at a library sale for a quarter each! Can you believe the library would get rid of such great books? It seems that these days kids don't want to read these great adventure stories; they would rather read about wizards, vampires, and the like. They just don't know what they are missing by not reading these great stories from the past. States Studies As we are winding down this year we are learning about the states rather rapidly. In the beginning I was searching the internet for information because I couldn't find books at my local library. Then I found some great books on the states at another library. They are probably familiar to you already. They are published by Sleeping Bear Press, and if you search your library's catalog the best way to find them is to search by publisher because each book is written by a different author. We just finished reading the book for Louisiana called P is for Pelican. Here is a link: Here is a link to the series on Amazon: Sleeping Bear Books Alphabet Series  They have these books for sports, music, around the world alphabet, citizen's alphabet, our nations capital, and more. They also have a series of numbers books. One warning though...you will find evolutionary content in these books as they talk about caves, sand dunes, canyons, etc. that are located in the state. We just skim over that particular information, but the rest of the books provide some good details about the states. It's almost like a field trip in a book. Using these books has helped me greatly. I just read the books as the kids color their states page for their notebooks, and we all learn some interesting things during the process. Well, it is past my bed time by a few hours so I'll sign off for now. Blessings, Missy |
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