Geography for Next Fall

I have recently purchased the Instructor's Guide (IG) for Sonlight's Level C - World History Part 2.

We have previously done Story of the World Volume 1.  When we started in on Volume 2 we hit a brick wall.  Neither Otto nor I wanted to continue.  I did much research and interviewed many folks and decided I would give Sonlight a try.  I have only ordered the Instructor's Guide and a few books that are either spines (needed nearly every week of the year) or that are not found in my library system.

I have learned that some of the books chosen for Sonlight are presented in a way that I am not comfortable presenting to my children. We are believers and followers of Jesus but sometimes other denominations have a slightly different world view than what we hold.   Sometimes, even if the world view is the same the material is worded in a way that we find to be irritable, less humble and sometimes outright offensive or harsh.    One of the Geography books offered in our Core C (2nd half of World History) has been reported to be this way. Instead of trying to use it I am planning on substituting some other books along the way.

Here are my plans:

1) Whenever the book is mentioned in the schedule I will substitute some other source for us to learn from.  In the IG it mentions page numbers but also the country or topic. For example: "Israel", "Judaism", "Islam", "Saudi Arabia", etc.   OR I might just take one of my books (listed below) and work through it in order ignoring the IG's list of places and religions.

2) For each new place we visit I want to "stamp" a pretend passport.  I think this might be a relatively simple way to keep track of what we have studied without adding in any extensive notebooking or lapbooking activity.   

Now in my quest to NO LONGER RE-INVENT THE WHEEL I asked around and found these websites to be helpful in information and in templates!   I have already printed out much of what we will need.  I now need to contact paper the cover and fill out the personal vital info on the inside.  :)  

Here are the links I found:

Mrs. Nelson's Class

and

Satori Smiles

3) I now need to look through my IG and find a small picture or *stamp* for each place we will be visiting. This will take some time but since we will not start this curriculum until after Fall harvest I have time right now in my favor.

4)  Right now the outside resources that I have are:

Children from Australia to Zimbabwe

Children Just Like Me

Galloping the Globe

and the Internet.

I am also planning on looking at these as well:

Children Just Like Me: Celebrations!

A Life Like Mine

I am so excited to start this curriculum.  The above is just part of it.  The main part of the curriculum walks through history with notes and with exciting read-a-loud books.  It should be a fun semester with very little work, other than reading aloud, to do on my end of things.  YAY! If you want to see the books on our book list click here.