Curriculum/Timeline

One of the challenges {and advantages} to homeschooling is picking curriculum for my kids.

There are a variety of programs using a variety of methods to choose from in each curriculum area.  When families find something that works for them they become quite passionate about their curriculum choices.

 But what works for one family might not work for another family and what works for one child might not work for another child.

It can become a game of hit and miss while searching for curriculum. Thankfully I haven't had too many misses with curriculum.

The one area where I have struggled to find the right match is for history.  For the last four years we used a curriculum the covered history, science, and geography.  It was a good curriculum but very time consuming in prep time for me as well as the large blocks of school time needed for doing activities which wasn't feasible for our family with Morgan's gymnastics schedule.

This fall I ordered separate science and history curriculums.  We immediately fell in love with the science curriculum. The kids have been soaking it up.

The history curriculum that I started using was not a good match for my kids.  So over Christmas break I started looking for a new curriculum.  In the new semester we started using the Mystery of History series.  My kids { and I} are loving it.  It allows me to do the reading portion of the lesson with both kids and then give activities based on their ages.

One piece of the curriculum is creating a timeline.  The book suggested something portable but since I don't have very much storage space I didn't want to create one more thing that needed to be stored.

Instead, I decided to use a large open wall in our school room.  I used some painter's tape and made three rows as a start to the timeline.  I just eyeballed so they are not very straight.

As we work through our lessons the kids add people 

and notes about specific events to our timeline.

I like that it is large, removable {if needed}, and is visible for reference as we do our lessons.

In case someone asks, our curriculum choices:

Language Arts - Learning Language Arts Through Literature

Handwriting - Italic Handwriting

Math - Making Math Meaningful {Landon}

Teaching Textbooks {Morgan}

Science - Apologia

History- Mystery of History