Homeschool History

We have been TruthQuest History users for a very long time. We still will be, but to help us keep moving, we are adding The Mystery of History, so I can better keep track of what they are grasping.

With TruthQuest, my kiddos tend to want to go deeper in everything and we are taking a lot of time to cover anything. This is both good and bad.

Good:

• They love learning
• They love history
• They are learning deeper than I ever expected them to go in history

Bad:

• Well, we aren’t moving forward and my younger kiddos are losing interest…
• I can hear the clock ticking on how far we will be able to get through, since we are digging so deep.
• It is causing stress.

Remember this post, where I mentioned homeschool stress=a need for change?

So, here is how we will be changing…

We are going to start with The Mystery of History 1 as a family and read, complete timelines, and have youngers color pages etc as we move through at a more rapid pace. The older children will keep moving with us as we move ahead of where they are with TruthQuest History.

My olders will be continuing to do their TruthQuest History studies, but it will be during their extra time or homework time. We LOVE TruthQuest and after talking with Linda Hobar and attending her sessions at the OCHEC convention in Tulsa, my husband and I believe that the addition of The Mystery of History will relieve a lot of stress. The Mystery of History has a schedule that will help me stay on track. It doesn’t have a lot of extra reading (my olders love that about TruthQuest, which is a bit of our problem or a lot), so we can keep moving to keep the attention of our younger children better.

The TruthQuest History Beginnings guide is geared to older children… Middle to Highschool. Though you can pare it down to younger, that is where I got lost… trying to keep all our children in it and make sure each had grade level work. It would take us hours a day with all our side shows answering questions and such for our younger crowd.

We could have moved the little to the American History guides that are geared to their ages, but well, you also have to ease the stress on mom’s brain to try and keep everything straight. We also want to teach a little more chronologically.

By combining The Mystery of History and TruthQuest History, we are using material geared towards the different ages with out hurting my brain. Both of these programs are superior… just really written to different levels of students.

I will pull out some things from our TruthQuest History guides as we work through The Mystery of History… we are mainly combining two programs, and using the schedule from one to keep us on track!!

Since I know I may not be able to read aloud each lesson, I have purchased the audio CD for The Mystery of History. With a baby/toddler in the home, I just don’t have the time I did… yes, we have had babies and toddlers around a lot, but I only had two children doing school at that time. Now I have six and the baby/toddler in the home and well… I need more structure in a few areas . This mom is not such a super mom like so many think.

By using two of the BEST history programs in the homeschool curriculum market and combining them, I have peace with how we will proceed. As the dynamics of your family change, have you had to make adjustments in your curriculum?

Having had a sneak peak at the products in The Build Your Bundle Sale next week, I can tell you that there will be some history curriculum goodies I will be grabbing to compliment our history studies. Bright Ideas Press also has some curriculum in the sale!!