AboutJennie O'Bryan Expertise I am able to answer a wide range of questions regarding curriculum, educational styles, publicly funded homeschool resources centers, some general questions regarding policy and legality issues, unskooling and freeskool models, and more.
Experience I am an instructor with years of experience teaching in a variety of non-traditional settings (i.e. homeschool or unschool groups, community college programs for the under 18 crowd, libraries, museums, etc). I write curriculum for a variety of subjects, I recently ended employment with a children's museum as an education and curriculum director so that I could start a freeskool for kids ages 5-12. I also have two children (7 and 14) and have participated in a wide range of homeschool/unskool models as a parent.
Education/Credentials High School, Some college, and a general thirst for knowledge and personal enrichment.
My friend has recently decided to homeschool her daughter.
She has decided to let me and my mother help her to teach some of the courses because my mother is very experienced with English and Writing and I'm a big history buff.
I have been charged with teaching her history, as you may have guessed.
I don't know if you have any specific tips or advice for teaching history itself, but any advice would be helpful.
Thanks!
Answer Hi-
It would be helpful to know the student's age, but I'll just offer some advice/info for a wide variety.
First.... In terms of prepared homeschool curriculum, I'm impressed with Oak Meadow. I haven't seen much of the high school history offerings, but my daughter used the Civics course in middle school and it was pretty good. The elementary curriculum is also really neat although you cannot order the history/social studies segment separately. Look for this on craiglist and Ebay to save yourself some money.
One of my favorite ways to approach social studies is through thematic curriculum. The first thing that I would do is to sit down with the student and brainstorm different areas of interest. Start by just chatting about interests and hobbies and see where that leads you. If she's an elementary student into American Girl dolls...you've got the Overland Trail, Colonial Times, Civil War...tons to choose from. But all types of interests can lead to a social studies theme. If you google "homeschool themes" you'll probably find all sorts of ideas that can be tailored specifically to history. Perhaps you could do this before meeting with her and use it to get things rolling. One idea would be to incorporate Language Arts and get your mother to work together with you. Again, Oak Meadow has pretty good Language Arts curriculum as well.
If you decide to use a theme, all you'll really need is the internet. Personally, I'm a wanna-be Luddite and eschew as much technology as I can--but really, the internet is a homeschooler's best friend. If you don't have a top-notch library nearby (we don't in a community of under 1000) it's really the only way to find/create curriculum without spending a fortune. You'll probably have to tailor many lesson plans and ideas as much of what is available online is geared toward the 25+ student classroom but it's usually not difficult at all.
I'd also suggest a few books:
The Teenage Liberation Handbook by Grace Llewellyn
Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto
Real Lives also by Grace Llewellyn (I think)
Overall, I'd suggest a theme inspired and selected by the student.
Hope this helps--please feel free to write back with more specific questions (after you select a theme, I may have some more info for you) if you'd like.
