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With this new semester we are making some changes in the way we do history. If you’ve followed this blog you probably have read a few that involved our history co-op. Starting this January our co-op has changed and we’re doing more on our own which I’m actually really excited about.
Some of this came to being because we need to find a way to get our older children, my son included, through history before they’re officially done with high school. We love the Mystery of History curriculum but it’s not complete yet so I needed to figure out what we were going to do. One of my questions to Linda Hobar (author of the Mystery of History series) was if the future volumes were going to include American or not. It makes a lot of sense to me to stay on chronological and just do world and American together.
Linda’s response first to my thought on timeframe for the series was that yes, “My Volume IV is at least 3 years from being done!...I think a lot of MOH users will pause after Vol III and take 2 years to study some American history while I’m still writing Vol IV!”
I had asked about combining MOH III and All American to which her reply was, “Great question. I suspect that people will do both ways and each camp will be fine. Some will take my Vol. IV, and pause and fluff up with more American history AS they go along taking more than one year to complete Vol. IV. Others will pause after Vol. III completely, and study 1-2 years of American history. Then, take on my Vol. IV for the rest of the story (world wars to present), simply reviewing Am history that was already studied in depth.”
With that information and after a lot of thought and searching what we’ve decided is best for our family is to combine All American History and Mystery of History III since there is quite a bit of overlap. This shortens our overall length and still gets our high schoolers done in a timely fashion staying chronological. The current plan I put together takes us to January 2010. From that point I will need to find modern history for both world and American but I’m taking one step at a time. Someday with my younger children Mystery of History IV may fill that but there’s no hope of that being published in time for my oldest and in all likelihood my second oldest as well.
 With each Mystery of History lesson we’re doing notebook pages. The first ones we did I just took generic notebooking forms I had gotten that fit. (Love these notebook pages by the way, we use them all the time and they’re on sale right now, like $10 I think!) For instance on the War of the Roses I used one that had boxes on each side for the two original ruling families and then had the kids write on the center lines how the Tudor family came to be. To do this all I did is quickly scan the lesson about 5 minutes before we started to see what type of sheet would work well and printed them off. You could do the same thing with plain notebook paper and just draw the three columns. Notebook pages just make it a little more interesting.
When we use the All American history there are worksheets for each lesson that we will use. These are a more fill in the blank kind of thing so using the two curriculums and two methods for recall will give a good variety.
Of course we’ll still do some of the project and research type things once in a while. We’re planning on doing the YWAM biography on Columbus and a stopping a bit for some extra reading and studying in that area. Each child will also have at least one project for each month as well. The file I’ve noted below has a lot more of our “extra’s” I’m planning.
To stay on track we’ll still be doing a co-op of sorts but only once a month. Our plans are to do a meal together from whatever time period/country and then the kids each present something they’ve learned on the lessons from that month. We’ll probably do one planned craft, game or other activity as a group but that’s about it. It will be much less planning for the mom’s but still fun and educational for the kids.
If you’re interested, here is the integration of All American History and Mystery of History III along with some resources I’m adding.
Oh, and if anyone has suggestions for modern (WWII and beyond) comment away. About the only thing I’ve seen so far is the last volume of Story of the World and I’m just not real excited about that one. I’m sure over the next convention season I’ll be perusing what’s out there!
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