Читать книгу Homeschooling For Dummies - Jennifer Kaufeld - Страница 87

Every first- and second-grade social studies book that I know begins with “Our Community Helpers.” If your child schools at home, however, she probably knows the mailman on a first-name basis. Nobody needs to tell her the friendly school bus driver comes through her neighborhood — she sees the bus go by her house each day while she munches her Marshmallow Wheetos.

If you want to cover community helpers in the first and second grade, be my guest. It certainly won’t hurt your children, although they may be bored out of their minds. You could spend the time talking about your town or city, state, and region of the country instead. Take the children to look at the nearest river. If they’ve never seen a river up close before, you’re sure to get a wow reaction when they see how big it is. And a good river view gives them a basis for understanding those squiggly lines on the globe.

Social studies generally begin with the local and move out; so you start with the interesting facts about your hometown and then, as your students progress, teach about your state, your country, your world. When you throw the history aspect of social studies into the mix, you also move through time, teaching from now to the past or from the past forward. But don’t worry — you have 12 or so years to cover all this stuff, and several publishers create curriculum to make the task easier.

I happened to have a second-grade social studies book on the shelf when my children were 5 and 6, so I opened it and we covered the entire book as a read-aloud in about six days. That way, I felt emotionally secure in the knowledge that I covered the material, yet the children didn’t look at me with that glassy-eyed when-is-lunch stare because I attempted to stretch the book far beyond its rational limits.

Early elementary homeschoolers often take advantage of community field trips to avoid the community helper text and still introduce their children to the world. Most local homeschool support groups schedule trips such as this every year for the younger elementary students. Either join an organized field trip through a support group or organize your own. Consider asking another family or two to join you on your expedition. It adds to the fun and maximizes the company official’s time.

If you decide to do your own field trip, call the establishment well ahead of time to find out the organization’s rules for field trips. Some of these options are extremely popular, and you may find yourself in for a several week wait. Identify yourself as a homeschooler, and if you’re available at virtually any time, be sure to tell the company official so. They appreciate it when you bend your schedule to fit theirs — especially when you visit a building whose main occupation is something other than providing field trips to students! With that in mind, you may want to

 Drop by the main post office. If you send packages and letters even on a semi-regular basis, you can probably explain what happens inside a post office from your own experience. But some branches offer tours. Call your local post office for details.

 Pick apples or pumpkins. If you happen to live within driving distance of an apple orchard or pumpkin patch, these businesses usually welcome small batches of homeschoolers, especially when compared to the huge busloads they usually receive. Although such a field trip also counts as science — because the fruit grows — the facility often includes some information about what happens to the fruit after picking. This gives your child a frame of reference for that apple cider he sees on the store shelves.

 Visit a local bakery. Small bakeries often give tours — as well as fresh, yummy samples.

 Visit the fire station. Firefighters are used to giving tours to groups of small children, and they stress safety at the same time that they show the kids around their huge fire trucks.

Older elementary students need basic information about maps, continents, rivers, hemispheres, peoples, and latitudes. An easy way to incorporate everything at one time is to pick a spot on the map and study that spot. After you settle on a country, find out everything you can about it.

 Determine the country’s longitude and latitude.

 Find out about its people. Who are they? What do they do for a living?

 List or describe the country’s major produce or production — from corn to cars, almost every country produces something.

 Name and give examples of the language or languages spoken by the population.

 Name its nearest oceans and outstanding topography (mountains, valleys, and such).

 Locate its continent.

This, in essence, is social studies — learning about the world and its people. A nice portfolio or report on each country tracks your progress and proves to anyone who may be interested that you are actually covering social studies in a logical manner.

Several publishers produce social study guides, both in unit-study form (which is basically what is outlined in the preceding section) and in grade-level-textbook form, should you decide to use them. For more information on unit studies, see Chapter 15.

Instead of social studies, I teach biography, history, and culture from various time periods. I also cover geography as a separate class. More of a classical education approach (see Chapter 11 for more about classical education), it starts with history and brings it to life. Then I answer any miscellaneous social studies questions that arise along the way.