Curriculum Reviews - History and Science

For the past two days, I have shared our curriculum choices for Language Arts and Math.  Today, I'd like to share our History and Science picks.  {This post will be the last of the curriculum reviews I will share for now. I do hope these handful of posts have been helpful to you.  When we have finished planning next year's curriculum, I hope to post about these choices as well.}

Our history and science are less text book and more of an interest led with living books style.  That being said, we do have a direction to our studies with a format and progression.  After all, some concepts need to be mentioned in order to be found interesting.  This is where a good spine book is helpful.

What a spine book offers:

• a type of frame work
• a progression through information
• topics of interest (or not)
• a place to start

History ~
We study history chronologically on a four year cycle.  Story of the World is our spine book.  In the past we have used other very good books {some possibly even better than SOTW}, but none reached the modern time periods and we were left 'hanging' sorta speak.  We wanted one book, or series, to carry us through the entire four years.  Story of the World does this for us.  It also has just bite size chapters with just enough information to determine if the children are interested in further study or not.  Sometimes, we take weeks on one chapter, adding numerous books, activities, and field trips.  Other times, we simply read, narrate, and map the information from SOTW.  {A side note: We have skipped a few of the chapters in this series.  For these particular chapters, we did not agree with the premise or how something/someone was presented.}

Science ~
Science is taught in a similar format to an extent.  Ideally, we cover all areas of science in a four year rotation.  I emphasize 'ideally,' because it doesn't always happen that way, and quite frankly for the first six grades, if a child is interested in something, we try to explore and experiment until the heart is content, whether or not it "counts" as school.  The curriculum we like the best for introducing science concepts and forming a progression to our studies is God's Design for Science, by Richard Lawrence and Debbie Lawrence.  Once our children reach seventh grade, we use Apologia text books for science. 


A special note concerning science in our homeschool: Our children do attend a science co-op one afternoon a week.  One year this served as their only structured science lessons.  The rest of their science was completed on an interest led basis.  Another year, the science co-op served as only an 'extra' exposure to science {like a science club}.