I’m not much of a history buff myself so I wasn’t really looking forward to teaching it to my kids and to be honest I didn’t think about starting it now in elementary grades. But Austin is showing interest in history so I knew I needed to get a jump on teaching it, then entered reading history from BookShark, which is our curriculum choice for this year.
Reading History – Learning about the World
*This post may contain affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information. This is a sponsored post, we received Reading with History 1 from BookShark to use throughout the year.*
I’m seeing that reading history doesn’t have to be boring but is actually quite interesting. We’re all learning history together.
As I have shared before, BookShark is a literature-based curriculum, the box that arrived at our door was filled to the top with great books, and most of them were for this course. The picture above is most of them, I did forget to add in the timeline book (though it is a workbook, not a read-aloud book), see the picture below. Here we are going to be mapping out the timeline as we go along.
Literature Based History Curriculum
We are only a month into our school year, but we’re really love reading with history. In fact, we got our books in July, and being a book-loving family I put the majority of the books on the bookshelves in our main living space. Austin (8yr) has not been able to keep her hands off the books we got.
Some of the BookShark Book List includes:
As we have been reading together Austin’s been interrupted, “I already read it, isn’t it cool?” mainly saying it to her younger siblings, but occasionally to me as well.
This history curriculum is going to help us to explore the story of the world from early civilizations through the fall of Rome, and to learn how people lived in ancient Egypt, Greece, Europe, Africa, India & China.
Because it is literature-based there are some great read-aloud books included in this curriculum including Charlotte’s Web, which we are really enjoying. We have been enjoying reading it each morning as a fun slow way to start our school mornings.
Reading/Spelling with History
BookShark Reading with History 1 isn’t just about history but about the reading as well. Included are Level 1 readers but use the quick reading assessment to make sure that is where your children are in reading. I love listening to my kids reading the Dr. Seuss books together.
We are also doing some spelling work, thank you I Can Read It… a set of books with reading lists, and simple stories to go along with each week’s reading list. The reading books have their stories are broken down into lessons too so you always know which stories are going with the lesson you are working on.
I don’t have to worry about finding stories to use the words they are learning which saves this busy homeschool Momma a lot of time.
Reading with History, just like other choices comes with the Instructor’s Guide with includes a 36-Week, 4-Day schedule with lesson plans, teaching tips, and more.
This year reading history books are NOT boring.
You can check out my Instagram feed to see more in-depth views of the BookShark curriculum in our home. I am sharing pictures and stories each week as a peek into secular homeschooling.
Recommended Products for Reading History
Homeschool Curriculum on Amazon – What Can You Find