Yeah, I’m going down the rabbit trail of USBORNE books myself & using a lot of their books for our school time learning. My 8 yr old does so much more learning & it comes alive for him this way. We especially love all of the lift the flap books. In fact, right now, we are doing more book learning (especially during the holiday seasons) than “curriculum learning” & we are loving it.
Love this video!!! We have almost all these books as well and use them all the time in our homeschool classroom as well!! I feel like the Time Traveler is one of those hidden gems, love that one. See Inside the Body in one of my middle daughter's favorites, she loves everything human body. Thank you so much for sharing all these great books!!!
I know that feeling! I've been turning down Usborne book parties left and right lately... but I definitely do get to the point when my shopping list is so large, I just have to go for it :) (as you can see from all the Usborne books I have) LOL
We love Usborne books and have used many including some of the ones you mentioned. Sometimes there can be a lot of info to absorb especially if the subject matter is new. How do you use these books in your home? Do you talk about the main features or do you read cover to cover? I love these books but I am interested how other homeschoolers present them to their children/students.
When it comes to the history, science, and geography encyclopedias, I generally use a 2 page spread as a starting off point or I use it as the main information. For example, in doing history we read 2-4 page pages most days, but we supplement with The Story of the World Audio to build the connections and create a story in my children's mind (we listen when we are in the car and I just try to stay approximate time period). And, we also read a lot of literature, and often historical fiction or biographies, set in the time period we are studying. These things work together to help my kids build the connections. The other Usborne mentioned are either stories (so the literature that goes along with it) or just some supplemental books that I have around that we will either go through in our morning basket as the topic comes up, or I just put it out for my kids to browse through as they wish. Thank you for your question.
These are great! Thank you for sharing your life with us. I was wondering, do you use these as additional items or do you use some of them as your main texts? If you do, are you using any type of assessments to gauge the learning. I live in PA and I always need some type of assessments in my portfolio at the end of the school year. Any ideas you have would be helpful. The Lord bless you.
I would say, for the most part, we use these in addition to other things. For example, the Encyclopedia of World History and the Time Traveler, we are reading as a part of our Sonlight schedule. So this is the "main" textbook for our history, but we do read alouds and my children are reading literature books at their levels that often correspond with the history that we are learning. That being said, I do not really "evaluate" them other than we talk about what we are reading (what we are learning in history, what is happening in our read aloud to Dad in the evening, I ask them to tell me or read to me their readers). The greek mythology book, stories from China, etc would be more of a read aloud that we do in our morning basket time. Geography Encyclopedia is just a resource that my kids flip through... I don't use it formally. For Science, the Usborne Living World Encyclopedia, what I do is I read a 2 page spread, then my kids have one of those pages with a blank space on the top and line on the bottom. They are required to pick a section that they liked on the pages and draw a picture and write 2-3 sentences about what they learned (copywork or in their own words). Usborne Science Encyclopedia, we read 2-4 pages a day, and about every 2-3 months, my kids will pick an animal or topic to write a "research paper" on. My kids do a lot more "paper work" when it comes to math and language arts. We have more work sheet with those. But Science, Geography, and History, we are much more literature and discussion-based. Hope that helps!
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. We are actually using Sonlight F Science. I only have a couple Usborne books and they actually came with that science course too. Blessings.
We LOVE the literature based approach to learning! We are working through Sonlight B/C HBL and about to start Bookshark D/E core soon. Other great literature based Sciences are Noeo and, my new favorite, Guest Hollow! Thanks for watching the video and chatting with me ❤️
Yes I’m thinking of doing the Sonlight history d/e in the fall. Thanks for the other curriculum ideas too! We’ve enjoyed BJU also for history in elementary. Let us know your thoughts on the d/e material in the future.
Fantastic review! I am going to go ahead and grab Illustrated Stories from China to supplement Sonlight Core F since I'm going to be stretching that Core out over more than 36 weeks. A couple of questions: Do you understand the difference between DK and Usborne? Also, the paperback versions of the Encyclopedias seem to be half the price. Any advantage to purchasing the hardback?
I don’t know what the exact difference between DK and Usborne other than just different but similar companies printing educational resources for kids. I’m so interested in hearing about your plan for stretching core F over 36 months. What else are you doing? Or are you just taking history/geography easy (which would be 100% fine, just curious). The difference between paperback and hardback is probably only be durability? I think I got the hardbacks because I can see is having these books in our library and using them quite a bit until the end of our homeschooling years.
@@CalmintheChaosHomeschool makes sense! I’ll do a bit more research. As for Core F, Not stretching it quiet that far. More like 12-18 months but we will also homeschool year round to give a better perspective. I’m actually working 2 curriculums at once Core F and MFW ECC for the relevant countries. They are both pretty much a geography, missionary focused curriculum. But there seems to be something unique about this core that they’re unlikely to come across again. They’ve been exposed to world and US History and will go through it again in high school so I don’t mind spending so much time with these countries. I still have to supplement though. For instance, Hong Kong and Taiwan must be discussed. Also, I found a great book called the 3D Gospel that I’m reading through to help facilitate a discussion with my girls about the guilt and shame culture common with many of the Eastern Hemisphere countries we will study. Also I’m going to make a intro to world religions unit study to go through as a prelude to Core F. They should have this intro from a Christian mama’s perspective. I know there is a lot of oppression/poverty with many of these countries but we lived in Uganda for a year so they know that there is more to many of these countries than that. Speaking of Africa, we will be spending much more time there than what’s allotted in the curriculum. The East African revival was a very important time period. Ethiopia has had a thriving church since the beginning. In general it’s difficult to avoid the Eurocentricity found with most history curricula we have access to and still keep Jesus at the center but supplementing helps. I’m also adding own voices literature to this Core. The first up is Bronze & Sunflower by Cao Wenxuan which is a translated work. After wrapping up Core F we will finish off ECC for 7th grade focusing on NA, SA and Europe to slide us into world history. I do want to spend more time with Canada including geography. We’re missing this perspective down here in the south!
Lol. I turned more than 36 week to 36 months! 😂 But I honestly don’t think that would be crazy, as, as you said, there are so many ways to supplement. It sounds like we have very similar priorities as far as trying to give our children as full of a view of the world as possible. Totally agree with adding in more about Taiwan, as that’s a special country to is (as it sounds like Ethiopia is special country for you). I agree that Euro-Centricity can be a bit of a challenge, but then it’s hard to teach what you don’t know either. I have to admit I know almost nothing about African history and I am just learning so much in general homeschooling my kids. Thanks for sharing what you are doing!
@@CalmintheChaosHomeschool I will for sure watch. Only one other time have a come across a homeschool mama so like minded. You have a wealth of information and insight. Can’t wait to learn more from you.
Oh my!!! Of course not! 😂 I didn’t even know that people from China thought Taiwan was a part of China until I was 19 and living in Canada… I mean, I knew that they “wanted” Taiwan, but I had no idea that that’s what they were taught in schools (that Taiwan is just a province).
