Although I consider myself an eclectic homeschooler, I have serious Charlotte Mason leanings toward using real books. I feel like it seriously limits the scope of understanding to limit the learning to just one resource, such as one textbook. As my children have gotten older and we have depended more and more on textbooks, I like to add in videos, books, labs, and projects from other resources. This well-rounded approach is what drew me to Guest Hollow’s geography curriculum.
Guest Hollow offers their World Geography & Cultures curriculum as a digital purchase. Yes, there is an online textbook included with the purchase, however there is also a book list with “buffet” of books listed to choose from. In planning for this year, I decided to limit my number of book purchases due to budget and bookshelf space limitations. I narrowed the selection down to a few books that will be used throughout the year. I searched our three nearby libraries for the other books that are only used for a few weeks at a time. Limiting our book selections by what was available for free also helped me to scale down the vast selection of resources to use with the curriculum. In the end, I feel like it is now more manageable, less overwhelming with options, and much more realistic for us as an eighth grade curriculum.
Here are the five books that I purchased, used of course:
Once I knew which books I was purchasing and planning to borrow, I then went through the student workbook pages and tried to only print the ones that related to the online textbook and our reading selections.
Although I bound the printed lesson plans, I think we will hole-punch and put the student pages into a binder instead of coil-binding. Binders give us the flexibility to add in pages of reports, photos of projects, etc. For example, for the books that I am borrowing from the library for audio books or read aloud, I will print paper dolls for her to color while we listen/I read such as these from education.com or these from intheplayroom.co.uk. While this may seem like busy-work to some, I have found that coloring and cutting paper dolls helps to keep my middle school girl’s eyes and hands busy and this helps her concentrate on listening.
The lesson plans can be accessed online or downloaded. I printed the unedited lesson plans, but then copied and pasted the weekly plans into Google Sheets, including all of the hyperlinks. This allows me to edit the weekly plan, such as assigning certain workbook pages on certain days, removing books from the reading plan that I will not be purchasing/borrowing, and adding in holidays or field trips as needed. I used as new sheet for each week, as shown below.
Since we use Google Classroom, I can link the Google Sheet for that week to her daily assignments. This is the easiest was that I have found to help her be more independent in her work. She simply logs onto her Chromebook and pulls up her Google Classroom calendar each day. The assignments for that day are shown, and include any links to online resources, websites, or videos that she needs to complete the lesson that day.
In my planner, since I personally like things on paper, I wrote down the items/books needed for the next week on a Post-it for the first 6 weeks of the school year. Even though I left space on the planner pages that I created for “Items needed for next week”, I am using Post-its for now so I can move them around. As you can see in the photo, the Post-it pulled up some of the original paper that it was attached to when I moved it to this correct week. Ooops.
(In case you are curious, the planner pages that I created are here in my TPT store.)
Right now, I am planning on our Geography lessons and our Earth Science lessons happening back-to-back in the block right after lunch, but before I have to go pick up her older sister from classes at the community college. The art and music lessons that go with geography and cultures on Easy Peasy’s website are only one day per week. I plan on adding these in at the end of her geography lessons to help transition to her Earth Science lessons, also on Easy Peasy.
The basic daily plan is start with a few videos, then books and activities together, followed by her independent online textbook reading and completing assigned maps and workbook pages. Once she gets a feel for the curriculum, I will let her do things in whichever order works for her. I am planning to do an update post once we are a few weeks into our school year to update how the plan is working out and changes that we made (because there are always changes).
North Star Homeschool Resources 