(picture found at www.biblepicturegallery.com)On page 280 of Home Education, Miss Mason said, "The fatal mistake is in the notion that he must learn 'outlines,' or a baby edition of the whole history of England, or of Rome, just as he must cover the geography of all the world. Let him, on the contrary, linger pleasantly over the history of a single man, a short period, until he thinks the thoughts of that man, is at home in the ways of that period."
Can i just admit now that I messed this up? You see we did a mini walk through all of history book for term one this year. I didn't want to dive into An Island Story this year because my son is not showing signs of retaining a majority of things I read to him, even with narration. The only telling once and then asking for a narration works and yet my son will still only tell me one or two words and say that's all he remembers me saying.
So the 7th begins term two of year one for us and I thought I had it all figured out meaning where in history we would focus. I really liked the idea of reading Our Young Folk's Josephus but I found errors in his writing with the very first chapter*.
I did spend most of winter break tinkering with various history lesson plans. I think I came up with a course of action at least for us and that is all I can do. I also want to keep in mind Miss Mason's advice to spend even the whole year with one person from history's timeline. After all, we have a good eight years to stroll through history, we don't have to learn it all in one year.**
*The first chapter says Nahor died and Haran lived but that's not right. See Genesis 11:26-32 .... Haran died not Nahor and Sarah is not Haran's daughter...she does happen to be Abraham's half sister see Genesis 20:12 - Abraham is speaking to the king at gerar
**For us, we will have the first eight years because starting with freshman year of high-school we want to have more of a history subject course resembling that which is recommended by colleges that a student should have taken. And I am totally going to push attending a college in our state where just working 15 hours a week one's tuition is paid for....no student loans is definately a good thing. Sallie Mae will not be renting a room at my son and his future wife's residence.
Can i just admit now that I messed this up? You see we did a mini walk through all of history book for term one this year. I didn't want to dive into An Island Story this year because my son is not showing signs of retaining a majority of things I read to him, even with narration. The only telling once and then asking for a narration works and yet my son will still only tell me one or two words and say that's all he remembers me saying.
So the 7th begins term two of year one for us and I thought I had it all figured out meaning where in history we would focus. I really liked the idea of reading Our Young Folk's Josephus but I found errors in his writing with the very first chapter*.
I did spend most of winter break tinkering with various history lesson plans. I think I came up with a course of action at least for us and that is all I can do. I also want to keep in mind Miss Mason's advice to spend even the whole year with one person from history's timeline. After all, we have a good eight years to stroll through history, we don't have to learn it all in one year.**
*The first chapter says Nahor died and Haran lived but that's not right. See Genesis 11:26-32 .... Haran died not Nahor and Sarah is not Haran's daughter...she does happen to be Abraham's half sister see Genesis 20:12 - Abraham is speaking to the king at gerar
**For us, we will have the first eight years because starting with freshman year of high-school we want to have more of a history subject course resembling that which is recommended by colleges that a student should have taken. And I am totally going to push attending a college in our state where just working 15 hours a week one's tuition is paid for....no student loans is definately a good thing. Sallie Mae will not be renting a room at my son and his future wife's residence.
5 comments:
I tried commenting on your homeschool blogger blog but it would not let me...Your prayer was very touching and brought tears to my eyes. I just wanted you to know that since you e-mailed me awhile back you have been constantly in my prayers and in my thoughts. I say that with all sincerity...(((hugs)))
Wow! I love that quote. I have been feeling the need to "rush" through history so I can "cover it all"... with a 7 year old! My daughter loves reading about people and LOVES history. I need to slow down and just let us enjoy it. Thanks for this post and for submitting it to the CM Carnival!
We do use timelines for N.'s history study, as that is how he best visualizes it. However, we do not worry a lot about memorizing certain dates, but rather we try to get an overview of the sequence of important events. And we delve into the lives of interesting people, and we read fiction about the time periods we are looking into, to get some kind of feel for the way life was lived at different times.
This is a long way of saying I think you are doing the right thing for you and your son in changing your focus a little bit. Especially because he is a small child yet, and can best understand things on a more individual and imaginational basis.
Good luck with it!
Thanks for the reminder.
That always works best...a study of one man for a period of time. That worked well for us when we were studying Marco Polo. You start to feel that you really know the person.
Oooh...I love that quote! (The first one.) That is how I try to teach history. I do have a text we read to sort of hold the pieces together. We read, stop at a time period, pick an event or person, study that in depth and then read her history book to fill in the pieces until we get to the next thing we want to focus on.
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