Fifth Grade History

My college degree is in International Relations, focusing on the European Union and my graduate is in Education, specifically Middle and High School History. So, to say that I have been waiting for this day is a serious understatement. I have notebook upon notebook of history info and worksheets that have just been sitting around waiting for someone to get old enough to use them. Poor Harry, though...I did try to use a few of my resources way back when he was in first grade. Ah, the plight of the first child. But I digress.

Right now my plan is for Harry to read SOTW 1 with Annika and Sam. That will start off his week and give him an idea of what he's studying. Then he'll go over to the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia and outline from that. Initially I'll be doing a lot of that for/with him since it's a brand new skill. (I expect tears and am getting a large bag of m&ms just in case.) One of the things I brought with me from teaching is a book of reproducible map worksheets, so he'll do the worksheet pertaining to the week. If there isn't one he'll just follow along with everyone else. Because his brother and sister are also doing SOTW, we'll do a project together and he'll do anything else that I find interesting for him. Oh, yeah, I plan to have Harry use the review cards that come in the Activity Book for his timeline. If they will fit I want him to just glue it into the appropriate time period.

One thing I haven't scheduled is his reading. I'm using the Classical House of Learning Literature's Logic stage Ancients, so he'll read what's scheduled through that. I will also check out a bunch of other books from the time period for him to peruse at his leisure. I'm sure at some point he'll pick one or two of them up and educate himself.

But overall it seems like quite a bit of work for my ten-and-a-half-year-old to complete each week and I'm looking forward to helping him through it.

If you have a great desire to see how I've planned it all out, go here. Please remember that there might be mistakes in it and that it's really for me to know what's going on. Harry won't ever see it and if things aren't going well, assignments can be shifted and projects skipped. I'm hoping that won't happen, but I'm also pretty realistic. I have four kids, three of whom I'm teaching this year, so I'm just hoping for the best.