It's Raining Books!

Teaching Tuesdays

Books, books, books! We take a literature approach to history, which means I scour half.com, paperbackswap.com, and amazon.com’s used books to find deals on all the books we’ll read during the school year. The ordering has been completed for fall 2012, and now it’s like Christmas almost every day when the mail comes with one book or another. Our mail lady just told me that I needed a bigger mailbox.

For us, the literature approach is the best way my kids learn. At the end of last school year, I asked them to write at least 3 sentences on over 30 topics from our study of American History. It was eye-opening that the events and people that they read historical fiction or biographies on were the easiest for them to recall. When my 8 YO daughter got to Danielle Boone, she wrote four complete paragraphs. She loved that book and couldn’t narrow down what she wanted to say. To me, she gained much more from a good book than a simple paragraph in a text about him.

Of course, the downside to a literature approach is that you can’t possibly read a good book about everything – there just isn’t time! That’s why this year, we’re going to use Mystery of History as our spine and then supplement with literature. I'm also excited about some of the quizzes and activities that will be able to help us review the information.

I’m already flipping through the pages of our new books, eagerly anticipating the adventures that they hold. I’ll post on here our family favorites.

To the other home school moms out there: What does school planning look like at your house?