Pearson Education has long been a publisher of school books for public, private and home schools. You have probably heard of them or one of the names they publish through: Sing, Spell, Read & Write, MCP Math, Plaid Phonics, and Scott Foresman among others. They have a new, helpful website for homeschool families – newbies, veterans and everyone in between. They also have available bundles just for homeschool families of some of their curricula – math, reading, and social studies, to name a few.
Our family received myWorld Social Studies for Grade 4. The topic of this year-long curriculum is Regions of Our Country. I thought this would go perfectly with our current studies of American History. I am doing the history with all of my children, so have been using myWorld with all of “regular learners” – grades 5, 3, 2 & K.
The student text is bright and colorful (and consumable). There are maps to label, questions with short answers to fill in as well as the text for covering the information. Each chapter starts with a story. The story is told with a video on the DVD as well. The video tells the same story as in the text with little differences. My children never commented on the “repeat” (I read it first, then played the video); enough was said differently that it isn’t too repetitive.
There are 9 chapters broken down into lessons. Most chapters have 4 lessons though some have 5 and others 3. The beginning of the book has a section giving an overview of reading skills that reviewed and practiced throughout the lessons (cause & effect, sequence, drawing conclusions and many others). There is also an overview of maps and globes.
The chapters covered in myWorld Social Studies for Grade 4 are:
- Geography of the United States
- Americans and Their History
- Government in the United States
- The Nation’s Economy
- Regions: The Northeast
- Regions: The Southeast
- Regions: The Midwest
- Regions: The Southwest
- Regions: The West
This is a full course covering many important points of our history, government and geography. The activities and writings help the students to really think on and apply what they are reading and learning. We have really enjoyed working through the lessons and plan to continue adding this into our study of American History (and geography).
You may be wondering just how our Charlotte Mason-leaning family can use such a very text-bookish curricula. The activities and writings do a lot to have my children getting their hands on the learning. In the first chapter, the “Big Question” (also referred to as myStory Spark) is “How does geography affect the way we live?” Each child came up with different answers and wrote a bit in their notebooks. The activity that they worked on together (the activities seem to all be geared for small groups in a classroom) was creating a menu using natural resources/crops from one of the regions of the country. You know this went over well here, where we love to taste as we learn. I could not use this as is, but to add to our studies, provide some deep thinking questions and writing topics, this works great! (It always seems so hard to come up with that sort of thing on my own).
The Teacher Resource Library is full of printables to go along with each chapter. We are not quiz
and test takers, but if your family is, having those ready to print off is a great time saver. As each child is narrating either orally or written, those questions can help direct our conversations. The vocabulary words make great copywork for my six year old. Some things are geared to the classroom teacher and others are easily usable in the homeschool.
The bundle includes a student worktext, myStory Video DVD, and Teacher Resource Library DVD. The bundle sells for $69.99.
