Take a Look Tuesday Back to School Blog Hop with the Homeschool Review Crew

I think the greatest lesson I have learned as a homeschooling mama is to be flexible.  Being flexible isn't easy for me.  I don't like change.  I like having my road maps (i.e. lessons plans laid out for me) but I learned to love the detours.

Having a "game plan" or a "road map" at the beginning of the year, meant that I knew where I wanted to go even if we didn't finish in June.  We always schooled year around with doing more "hands on" and "fun" schooling during the summer so I gave up early on trying to squeeze 36 weeks or 1100 hours of education between September and June.

In today's Take a Look Tuesday post which is part of the Back to School  5 Days of Homeschool Encouragement Blog Hop hosted by the Homeschool Review Crew I am going to share my general road map for studying American History for the 2018-2019 school year for Supergirl.

If you're you're hopping over form another Crew member blog, let me briefly share that Supergirl is developmentally delayed, medically fragile and is asynchronous with her skills.  Socially and emotionally she functions around 4-6.  Her reading skills seem to be solidly 1st grade and but her math skills range from Kindergarten to 2nd or even 3rd grade!  She able to comprehend history and science at a 4th to 6th grade level when I read it aloud to her.  This makes  planning very difficult and often time consuming!

We'll be using TruthQuest History: American History For Young Students I (Exploration to 1800) as our road map.  This is intended for grades 1-5.

We did actually start this awhile ago with learning about Christopher Columbus.  We set it aside for a variety of reasons but we'll start back up with finishing our study of Christopher Columbus.

I have no idea how long this journey will last.  We'll take it as fast or as slow as she wants depending on her interest level and the goals we set for developing her reading and writing skills.

I'm almost afraid of touching on Leif Erickson and the Vikings discovery of America because we could end up setting aside American History and studying Vikings in-depth.  That is the beauty of homeschooling! And if we do take a detour I know that we'll eventually find our way back to the main road map.

I'll be adding in lots of hands-on opportunities with project packs and lapbooks from Home School in the Woods.  Don't tell her but I have a whole lapbook for her about Benjamin Franklin!  And we'll be making a little booklet about Christopher Columbus!  We have several of the Time Travelers such as New World Explorers,   Colonial Life, and American Revolution.

Home School in the Woods also has my favorite timeline figures so of course we'll be keeping a timeline and doing some map work too.

Ms. Miller gives lots of book suggestions for each topic in American History for Young Explorers. We may not read the exact books that she suggests  but if there is a YWAM Publishing Heroes of History book available for suggested person, we will be using as many YWAM books as we can. 

Some of the book suggestions are the same books as used in Sonlight American History which I used with the other girls so I have those.  I'm looking foward to re-reading books like A Lion to Guard Us and Pocahontas both by Clyde Robert Bulla.

Of course we'll be doing other subjects besides history but history is the easiest one for me to have a general road map and take lots of detours.

Do you need to have everything planned out in advance? Do you prefer to have a rough idea? Are you someone who is able to just wing it?

Here are just a few of the Homeschool Review Crew Members who are participating in this week's 5 Days of Back to School  Blog Hop:


Lisa @ Farm Fresh Adventures
Lori @ At Home: where life happens
Margaret @ Creative Madness Mama
Marla @ Jump Into Genius
Meredith @ Powerline Productions: Being World Changers/Raising World Changers
Michele @ Family, Faith and Fridays
Missica @ Through The Open Window
Monique @ Mountain of Grace Homeschooling