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Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Homeschooling Blog - Exploring the Exploration Period

As I ease back into my normal homeschooling routine, we've been reading aloud quite a bit. We're covering the exploration period in history so our subjects covered this week include Christopher Columbus, Magellan, and Vespucci. Today, in addition to our read aloud, I had each of the children pick a book from our book basket that was related to the subjects for this week. They had 30 minutes to read either one or several of the books in the basket.

I actually liked the way this worked because it gave the children an opportunity to dig for information themselves. They weren't forced to read any one book all the way through during this half hour. This way, if the book was not very interesting, they could move on to another book without feeling tied to one particular one. My second grader, finding Christopher Columbus' work ethic quite enthralling, gasped in disbelief when he read that Columbus wanted to work since he was a boy. I'm certain that his interest is because his mommy always emphasizes if a man doesn't work, he doesn't eat. I was just happy that he connected with the book and he actually wanted to finish it!

I love to see them enthused about what we're learning and I've found that the more I allow them to investigate on their own, the better they learn. Friday, it's more from our history book basket and some nice geography study where we'll study Spain during the exploration period. I think we'll even include a Spanish dish as a part of our lesson.

Books in our book basket today:



                                  

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