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Sunday, May 22, 2016

Our 2015-2016 Homeschool Year Part 3

Our 2015-2016 homeschool year is now officially complete!

What a blessed, busy, and productive school year we have had!

Having quite successfully completed our 5th year of homeschooling, I thought it would be neat to do a series of posts looking back at our homeschool year one subject at a time.

Check out the previous posts in this series:

Part 1 - Spelling
Part 2 - English

Today's post is Part 3, and we are looking back at what we did in:

History

Big Brother is a true history buff! Of all the things he learns in our homeschool, history is usually his favorite to talk about.

This year we used ABeka's Our American Heritage as our main curriculum. It was interesting to go through the history of America by learning about the lives of famous from various time periods.



In addition to his textbook reading, quizzes/tests, and map study; Big Brother also completed an American history notebook this year which included a simple timeline and a brief report about each person he studied. I am very proud of the work he put into this project!





We found a fun website called The Inspired Instructor where there are lots of games that are specifically designed to be used along with ABeka 3rd Grade history. Big Brother has enjoyed playing these games for review on several occasions.

Since we live in Kentucky, learning about Daniel Boone this year was especially interesting. Back in December we were able to take a field trip to visit Cumberland Gap National Park where Boone and the brave pioneers with him blazed a trail through the mountains into Kentucky in the late 1700's. This trip was one of the highlights of Big Brother's school year! Check out my blog post about it here!

To supplement what we were studying in history this year, I also allowed Big Brother to watch several shows, documentaries, movies, and video clips including:

Liberty's Kids
Drive Thru History - American History
Inspiring Animated Heroes DVDs
Schoolhouse Rock history videos on YouTube (The Shot Heard 'Round the World, No More King, Fireworks, Elbow Room, The Preamble)
America: The Birth of Freedom
Beyond the Mask

We also discovered The Imagination Station book series this year. If you have ever listened to the Adventures in Odyssey radio show, then the characters in these books will be familiar. The books feature stories from various times and places in history, and Big Brother has absolutely devoured them!

Another American history resource we LOVE is a set of History Devotions by Richard "Little Bear" Wheeler on CD. This set originally belonged to my brother who loved it very much when he was Big Brother's age, and it has now been passed on to us. Little Bear is a very talented storyteller, and he has a wonderful way of not only bringing history to life but also showing how God's hand can be seen working through people and events in history.

I hope you are enjoying this series of posts, and that you will continue to join me as we take a look back at our homeschool year!

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