Politics and Homeschool

Our kids have been very interested in the political events of late. I bet yours are, too. We spend so much time talking about the debates and issues in the mornings, in the car, before bed, that I decided to switch gears in our school curriculum for the next few weeks.

Normally we use the Build Your Library curriculum as our core and supplement science with group classes. Build Your Library (BYL) is a literature-based, history rich curriculum which uses Story of the World as its spine and much historical fiction for the literature. It’s Charlotte Mason inspired, so mostly learning through experience. I add in map work and documentaries to make it work for our kids. But as our interest is moving towards American politics, I am planning to skip most of our BYL work except the Story of the World readings and our timeline, to make room for a cool Presidential Elections Unit Study I found on Oklahoma Homeschool.

The first week of the study has the kids do research on voting rights around the world on the CIA website. It’s a really cool idea but there was no direction to the research. When my kids are given an assignment like that they mostly just look at me and say, “What am I supposed to be doing?” So, I made them this CIA Voting Rights Factbook Scavenger Hunt to get them going. They loved it so much that I’d like to share it with you. Feel free to download it, and even share the link to this page. Let me know if your kids use it and what you think. I’m planning on making more of these scavenger hunts, so look for more later.

CIA Voting Rights Factsheet Scavenger Hunt

Nazca Lines

We’re using Story of the World for our family history lessons. Story of the World is a chronological history text, beginning with the Fertile Crescent. The girls enjoy using the Story of the World text, the activity book coloring pages, and then YouTube videos of documentaries and stories as supplementation. Obviously, the girls enjoyed the ancient Greeks, and reading the myths and stories of the gods. What I didn’t expect was how enthralled they’d be with the chapter on the Nazca Lines in Peru. I guess I didn’t expect it because I didn’t even know they existed.

This is my top favorite thing about homeschooling. As we go through these quality textbooks I am exposed to all sorts of information that I never knew before. And if it was something I knew about, I have a great excuse to learn even more about it for the sake of educating my girls. It’s a win/win.