When we get into high school we often get into the idea of putting credits into a box, or compartmentalizing everything. We have a textbook for math, a textbook for science, a textbook for English ….. you get the picture. But there is a great benefit to teaching living subjects, rather than just working your way through (sometimes) dry textbooks. One of the ways to continue keeping subject alive is to combine credits. And, one of the best examples of doing this is combining homeschool classes such as literature and history.
Combining classes can be very easy!
A lot of literature was written in time periods, meaning the literature contains the feel for the history of that particular era. I often encourage families to study their American Literature at the same time that they teach American History so that the literature and the history make sense together. Doing it this way tends to make all of those historical people real.
I recently heard someone say that their daughter is working on threads – meaning throughout her high school years she is going to spend time reading historical pieces, some literature pieces, and some actual history texts . Then, once she finishes with all that material during the course of her four high school years, she will have ‘earned’ several different history and literature credits. What this means for mom is that she will have to keep track of the work done. Remember, the definition of a credit is roughly 135 hours of bona fide instruction in a focused course of study.
And, you don’t necessarily have to build that course yourself. There are several curriculums that are written with that end in mind. Some combine just history and literature, others add a Bible credit as well. Here are a just a few that you can check out:
- Notgrass
- The Omnibus curriculum by Veritas Press
- My Father’s World
- Sonlight Core
If you are building these credits on your own, you will also want to include some field trips, and perhaps a project or two; maybe even participate in some contests or competitions. Make it fun and come up with creative ways for your student to show what they have learned!
~to your success
Joanne
Image courtesy of Supertrooper at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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