History Homeschooling Plans

Save time and energy, by teaching on a 4 year cyclic pattern for 5 reasons.

1. I’m a perfectionist. Knowing that we’re coming back to this subject later, frees me from the terrifying thought I’ll mess it all up forever, and allows me to actually move and do something.

2. With multiple kids, all doing multiple things, I can’t teach everything at once. Realistically, if kids are all doing different histories, we’re just going to end up doing bare minimum. If its cyclic, however, and we’re all doing “Medieval History” at once,  we can learn together, e.g. have a medieval feast and have the big kids plan it and research it, and the little kids pitch in and help make the sweets. Or the big kids could plan and do hands on projects that they teach the little kids from their time period (grinding wheat, map making, FLETCHING ARROWS, etc). And the big kids could solidify what they’ve learned by teaching it to the little ones.

3. As you could see with 2, there’s a lot of peer learning that will go on. Less work for me, Yayy!

4. We could do field trips and lengthy experiments/projects together, which would be justified in how much time they use up because its for everyone’s school.

5. This will happen anyway, even when it wasn’t planned. In my homeschool experience, us kids would go through crazes together, whether it was Scottish history, WWII, Viking Runes, Greek Mythology, Learning Gaelic (which alas, never went beyond agonizing over picking our new Gaelic names while sitting on rocks in the forest. As soon as we turned the page and started learning phrases to ask for the airport, it lost its mystique…)

I would like them to learn a lot hands on, doing fun things like making period correct (ish) clothing and cooking a period correct (ish) meal, and eating it in a sorta kinda period correct way. (Medieval Feast in which we arrange a high (card) table and have the low tables and kids can take turns being servants or Lords while we wear our medieval outfits and eat lots of meat and barley and honey etc. OR shove the couches around the dining room table, make some bed-sheet togas, and have a Roman feast OR get a whole pig and have a bragging contest to see who gets the champions portion which we try to sound like loud half-inebriated bragging celtic warriors....) 

Some of our planned hands-on activities....

  (Elementary 1^st-5^th grade, Middle School 5^th-8^th, High School 9^th-12^th)

HISTORY

	1 Readings: 1A PRIMARY, 1B Secondary	2 Stories: 2A ballads, sagas, myth 2B Novels & Movies set in	3. Hands on Learning,  Craftsmanship (e.g. forging brooches & fletching arrows) , Fieldtrips, Play, (e.g.  fighting with duct tape broad swords, cooking like them and eating a meal in costume...)
Year A Ancient History 10,000 BC--500 BC	Old  Testament, El Amarna Letters,	Gilgamesh, Atrahasis Epic, Sumerian Stuff, Prince of Egypt,	http://www.primitiveways.com/index.html
Year B Classical to Late Antiquity 500 BC—AD 500	Socrates/Plato/ Herodotus, Plutarch Maccabees & Gospels	Illiad, Odyssey Edda (13th cent) Ben Hur, The Eagle, The Passion,	Clay Lamps, Clay Pots
Year C Medieval History AD 500-1500		Arthurian Legend Beowulf, Anglo Saxon Poetry, Song of Roland, Ballad of the White Horse, Bekah's movies	Smith Fibula & Gauntlets, Se
Year D Modern History AD 1500-WWII

American History separately, 2 Part (Pilgrims-WWI) (1918-Present)

1. HISTORY
2. SCIENCE
3. MATH
4. GRAMMAR/ LITERATURE
5. SPELLING/ VOCABULARY
6. HEBREW, GREEK, LATIN

• MUSIC
• ART
• GEOGRAPHY, 
• SPANISH, KOREAN, 
• GOVERNMENT
• AMERICAN HISTORY
• ARCHERY
• BASIC ECONOMICS
• BASIC WOODWORKING & METALWORK
• BASIC COMPUTER PROGRAMMING
• BASIC SEWING

[Optionals: Pattern-drafting & Advanced Sewing, Advanced Art, Advanced Computer Programming, Fixing the Car, Basic Electronics, Analytical Mechanics etc etc]