History

History

For us, a secular perspective is a requirement, but that doesn't mean that we don't study a variety of belief systems, or that I will ignore a curriculum that includes great ideas even if it is not completely secular.  We choose resources that attempt to provide a worldview with a variety of perspectives.  Some do this better than others, and it is a monumental task!  By using a variety of resources in our history studies, we are able to create a more inclusive and dynamic curriculum.  It took my several years to realize that I didn't have to choose a history curriculum each year and finish it.  There are so many great resources, I was overwhelmed and worried that we would miss something great.  Suddenly, I realized we could use them all and just put them in chronological order. Voila! So was born my massive spreadsheet of patched together history curricula.

Our primary history curriculum is Curiosity Chronicles.  The kids like that it is an audiobook (structured as a conversation between characters) and I like that it is essentially no prep for me.  The instructor's guide comes with a variety of additional book suggestions and activities (the Minecraft challenge is often popular) that we can choose to do if one strikes our fancy, but the basics are covered with questions about each chapter and a corresponding map.

We were scheduled to start Curiosity Chronicles Medieval at the start of the 2020-21 schoolyear - it pretty much starts off with a plague, and that didn't seem like great timing for my young kids.  Instead, we spent a year studying American History with Blossom and Root's River of Voices, which is named for its mission to learn from a variety of perspectives (and it is reviewed for accuracy and appropriateness by those people!)  It is literature based and organized into multiple levels, so it is simple to use it for more than one grade at a time.  As we have transitioned to my massive "chronological history curricula spreadsheet that I must never lose," my youngest will complete this curriculum where it falls within the Curiosity Chronicles framework.

Occasionally, we incorporate some chapters from History Quest.  The History Hop sections are written as time travel experiences describing what it would have been like to experience specific historical events or to meet significant historical figures.  We don't use the full curriculum, rather, we use these sections as a read-aloud experience if the topic is of high interest.

I discovered Lands of our Ancestors when searching for an alternative to the white-washed version of southern California history, which tends to romanticize the Mission Era.  My children were not overly receptive to the style of the writing, but a tribally endorsed resource is essential in understanding the nuances of history.

In order to incorporate state history into our studies, I checked out Around California with Children's Books: A History of the Golden State.  This is an example of a non-secular curriculum that I consider valuable in our secular homeschool.  This resource is full of nature journaling, literature ideas, recipes, and field-trip suggestions.  When combined with other resources, it is a fun option.