Decisions....Decisions

This year we used My Father's World Adventures in My Father's World for school. It is a quick overview of American History specifically geared for the younger ones. I love the way MFW is laid out and she tells you exactly what to say and do each day and there are a lot of hands on fun activites - which the boys need right now at their ages!!! I also love their philosophy and the way they have set up their curriculum in the 5 year cycle of history but.....I am a curriculum junkie and love to try new things and I get excited about lots of stuff that is available and it is sooooo hard for me to make decisions!!! We didnt finish the whole curriculum this year because of my work and because they went more into state studies and the boys really want to learn more about the wars and such so we will spend this summer reading books that we have about the people and places of american history - they like that and it will work for the summer to keep us doing something!


I am very anxious to start studying History from creation on and so I have been looking at a couple of different things for next year to get us started on the cycle(which to my understanding means that we will do history from creation to modern thru a couple of times over the yearas and they will learn more and more each cycle). I always go to MFW first because I love it and I had decided on Creation to the Greeks even though it is geared towards older kids - I can easily dumb it down and leave stuff out. I looked at Mystery of History as well and those were the two I was struggling to decide between. I was able to get my hands on both of the Teacher's books for these curriculums and read thru them and loved them both but decided on MFW because I really liked the idea of all the bible history that it goes thru! So - i jumped the gun and decided we would get started now - why not??? We lasted a week - there is way too much Bible(i know I probably shouldn't be saying that since I do want them and myself to learn history from a biblical view) but it was too slow and we were talking about things we have focused on alot in Bible so I was back to square one and stumped......

Then....the Winter Promise catalog came in the mail!! Have you guys ever seen WP?? It is incredible!! We did Animals and their Worlds the first year we homeschooled and I loved it but was totally overwhelmed by the TM - they have it laid out good but it was too many choices for a first year homeschooler who couldn't discern what to do and what not to do so we canned it after a couple months - I will be doing it again though sometime along the way!! I started looking into their program called Hideaways in History. I was up all night looking it over and looking at all the books online and I love it!!! It is totally geared towards Boys and just looks like such a fun way to learn about bits and pieces of History without overwhelming them just yet!! So I decided that they are still young and there is no reason we can't have more fun along the way and that we are soooo gonna use this next year!!! They will build forts, castles, battling arenas and such with cardboard boxes(which I have already started collecting)!! I can't wait to start school next year and knowing me - if i get all the books at convention - I just might start it this summer!!!