Valorie Delp’s recent article about Bookadventure.org spurred one more post about aligning curriculum. In addition to aligning hobbies, scouts, or art to your curriculum, you can and should align one curriculum subject to another.
If you are familiar with unit studies, you know that this is a subject or project based approach to homeschooling. Language arts, science, history, and sometimes math lessons are centered around one subject like butterflies, for instance. Aligning subjects is a close departure from this concept.
This approach to homeschooling, is also reminiscent of the classical style of homeschooling. A classical homeschooler would most certainly study history in the order that it happened. They would learn about science and study literature in that same order. I think this is what attracted me to the homeschool academy that my children attend.
My children go to a homeschool school (on Mondays) where history is aligned with the the arts. Likewise, I like to align other subjects as well. Each week I look at what they learned in class and pull science subjects from the history based lessons. This way they are learning science chronologically along with their history. In addition, I choose literature and historical fiction books that are period appropriate. So far this year, since they are studying the 20th century, they have read books about the Titanic, The Industrial Revolution, and the Great Depression. This further emphasizes what they are learning in class and keeps them deeply immersed in the subject matter.
If you would like to align your child’s curriculum, you should start by choosing a good history book. I recommend the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia. This book covers everything from pre-history through modern history (it is a secular book). Discoveries are also listed as they happened. A good book to accompany it is The Kingfisher Science Encyclopedia. Then you need to align reading material with the subjects and time periods that you are studying.
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