Issac's 6th grade American History

Issac has really become interested in history in the last year and so I decided to try and make that more of a focus this year. I had heard about Guest Hollow from another mom and thought I'd check it out. Issac was really interested in the American History, so that was what I focused on finding.  Since we studied a little bit of American History last year I decided to go with the American History Year 2 that is a free option. I knew going into this program that links could not work and I'd need to request lots of books from the library, but I thought it was worth a shot! :)

One thing I decided to do was use file folders for each week. I printed out the lesson plan for the week and then anything else I needed to print I could have ready in the folder. The first few weeks are focused on the Civil War and suggest you either use Time Travelers: The Civil War by Home School in the Woods. We had been blessed with receiving this item free for reviewing it earlier this year. It was also recommended to use History Pockets-The Civil War. The author recommends one or the other, both are typically too many activities. I know that some of the activities in the Time Travelers unit were hard for my son, so I purchased the history pockets to supplement. I just picked a few things from both to use during those first few weeks. I'm noticed that as much as I'm wanting to do more hand-on activities Issac is just happy to have me read to him. He'd be happy to just sit and listen to me read everything in the history lesson and him not do any activities. That wasn't my plan at all, but some days that's what we do. I was hoping that I could get him more engaged in his learning with some fun activities.

While I was filing my papers in the folders I was also searching and requesting library books and marking which ones were available locally. I would say 90% of the books were easily available to us via library lending.  As I received the books from the library I'd use a little post it note and mark which week they were to be used. I then purchased a plastic tub that could hold a few weeks of all my books. I put my file folder with schedule and printed items in there, the books for the week and any additional books that might be used for multiple weeks. This way everything I need for history is in that box. I also decided a few weeks in that the book that is read for several weeks would become our reading book and we'd work on comprehension. We are about to finish Farmer Boy and we used the vocabulary and comprehension questions from homeschool share.  Our next book will be Sounder and we are using vocabulary and comprehension questions from Glencoe.

I've made a few little tweaks which is basically picking and choosing which items we are going to do. I also find that I still sometimes print more than we do, but I like having it already printed and ready to go. It helps Issac stay on test for me to not have to stop and print. We are provided with lots of different activities and even when the links don't work I can usually search and find what I need. They have lots of different free and paid options for multiple subjects. I'm thankful that I looked into Guest Hollow because they really have tons of great options.