Public Domain Curriculum- English (Alpha Edition)

We are happy to present the alpha edition of the English component, handily hosted at Google Docs!

Do let us know how you found it and any alterations you made, because we're curious!



Series Introduction
Physical Education component
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-By a Lady

Introducing the *Public Domain Curriculum*

How do low-income families make homeschooling work? Can they? Is homeschooling only possible or acceptable for comfortably middle-class, two-parent families? Should poor families have no choice but to rely on public education, no matter the quality and the needs of their individual child?

The bloggers at Investigate The Landscape believe that education — a solid, quality education that enables people to learn to think for themselves — should be available to everyone, no matter who they are. That "no matter who" includes people of all different ages, locations, socio-economic classes, and life paths.


The Public Domain Curriculum

• English starts with learning to recognize and write the letters of the alphabet and ends with reading at a college level and writing a research paper.

• Math starts with learning to recognize the numbers 1-5 and writing those numbers with tally marks and ends with algebra and geometry.

• The content subjects will focus on providing the information that students need to understand and enjoy books and their world, and to participate as a valuable member in their society. This may be somewhat US-centric, but as we've said, this is a curriculum without copyright so you are free to tweak however you like.

Racism In Old Books and Why So Much Fiction?

"Aren’t old books racist?", some people will ask, personally offended that anyone is still reading these books instead of boycotting them. Some of the authors of these books were provincial and elitist, but we consider it even more provincial and elitist to entirely boycott several centuries worth of literature from multiple countries for any reason. 

This author hopes that parents will teach their children that racism is ONE of MANY human rights violations and that ALL human rights violations are wrong, including those present in our modern literature.

Racism is disgusting. This author does not condone and encourage it. This author also believes that the disempowered moms who will be most attracted to this free curriculum are not required to shoulder all the burdens of all disempowered groups throughout all of time and throughout all of the world. These moms have enough on their plates just meeting the basic needs of their families, and not everyone is called to be a boycotting activist for every cause at every stage of their life.

A literature-heavy curriculum results in students with different sets of skills than those that were explicitly taught with more non-fiction, but I’m not so sure that the skills gained from reading lots of fiction are inferior for ALL students in ALL parts of the USA and in ALL parts the world. Reading fiction gives insight into other people, and it is other people we have to deal with (or avoid) all our life long. For more on the benefits of fiction, see The School of Life's youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RCFLobfqcw

What about the textbooks that are used? The dated content in most public domain textbooks is a paltry percentage of the whole. The minutiae that never needed to be taught in the first place often represent most of the dated content in textbooks. The most obvious dated material can be easily explained by mom, and the less important and questionable details can often just be skipped. Severely dated material will seldom be scheduled without adequate explanations and support.

I hope my attempt here inspires others with their own unique life experiences to adapt this curriculum to suit their own needs, giving the world multiple options to choose from in educating with only free materials.

Entire Curriculum (Rough Draft)

By subject:

English (Alpha edition)
Physical Education (Alpha edition)

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- By a Lady

July 2013- Deep Winter

(First published at Sandbox to Socrates http://sandboxtosocrates.wordpress.com)

A very short post for this month. We had no nature study tours scheduled and the weather was, shall we say, uninspiring!

I'm continuing to find it interesting the way she is drawing the pictures from something other than her own view. This pic certainly shows that the important part of her experience was being with Charlotte (another member of our homeschool group) while she took the photo of the nest, rather than the nest itself. I'm ok with that, since I wasn't sure she believed me that an eagle nest was worth a look anyway. Perhaps to her it looked like a messy pile of sticks compared to the compact mud nests of the swallows above our front door.

Previous post in the series
Next post in the series
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Rose-Marie was one of those enthusiastic planners who began researching when she was pregnant with her first. She wanted to homeschool because it sounded like an affordable adventure, then she met her kids personally...

Her young daughter has Echolalia and some processing issues so isn't speaking fluently yet; but she is making good progress as they work and play in Central Victoria, Australia.

Indigenous Australians in Cinema 1936-2014 - Reflections

As part of my son's crusade to "subject" me to a course of study on Indigenous Australians in cinema, we've begun by watching the 'First Australians' series.

It has taken us a while to get through it for a number of reasons, not least my dear son's penchant for suggesting we watch an episode just as I was about to head off to bed causing me to nod off part way through!

This is a brilliant series, it shows Australia's treatment of the first people to inhabit this continent throughout history - both good and bad.

I believe that no Australian child should be able to complete their schooling career without having seen it.

Over decades, governments and media outlets have encouraged the wider community to write off Indigenous people as "no hopers". However as 'First Australians' shows, there are countless Indigenous people throughout our history who have fought through the mire of European domination to fight hard for their people and we should look to those leaders as Australian heroes.

That Australian children have learned for decades about Simpson and his Donkey but not about Pemulwuy or Jandamarra is a travesty, although it does seem to be changing - in part due to this series.

I've found it really upsetting, physically upsetting to know that this treatment had been inflicted on anyone - let alone the first people of the country of my birth. It's a shaming experience, however I've been buoyed by the stories of Pateygarang & Lieutenant William Dawes and of the Wurundjeri people & Reverend John Green which show that not all inter-cultural relationships were negative.

'First Australians' has left me with a fuller understanding of both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' history and the depth of their culture. I now have a far better idea what their culture and land means to them - take Koiki Mabo for instance. He was dying, cancer riddled his body but he still would not give up the fight for recognition of his traditional law, culture and land but the cultures and lands of Indigenous peoples throughout Australia.

I am very grateful the series was made and look forward to part two of this study - the films.

Series introduction

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Rhonda lives in Central Victoria, Australia, generally minding her business and leading a quiet, peaceful life- unless her children have shown up to harass her.

'Story of the World' review

The 'Story of the World,' by Susan Wise Bauer is a popular history program written to be used with grades one to four, or for older children to read independently. The text is available in hard cover or as an audio book read by Jim Weiss. It is currently also available in Korean, both Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and Turkish, with further translations in progress. The accompanying activity guide is available as a paperback or download from Peace Hill Press. The activity guide includes suggested reading, colouring pages, map work, narration prompts, craft ideas and other such activities. Don't miss the chicken mummy! All the cool mums and dads let their kids make chicken mummies!



Volume 1: The Ancient World

Rosie's review

I'm using the text and parts of the activity book with my grade one daughter. A typical chapter will see us attempt narration, do the map work, colouring page, watch vaguely relevant Horrible Histories clips (insert link for earlier blog post) and often some supplemental reading. I have bought a few decks of Oracle cards to use as props when learning about the gods. They are convenient and it helps keep them all straight if I can point to a picture when I'm reading a wonderful tale with an inconveniently long cast list! As this is a world history program, I also inserted a chapter of our Australian history book on the pre-colonial period into the SOTW chapter on early nomads. 

I don't like the chapters on the early Jews as they present Bible stories as history instead of literature, so I skip them. I also find it strange that there are three chapters on the Jews and none at all on the Hittites whose empire lasted a thousand years, so I searched Amazon for some supplemental material to include them, but didn't find much. I must also confess that Daughter remembers very little of the actual history content, but hey, we have to talk about something and she enjoys it. The chicken mummy was a hit, and one day she absolutely insisted we stop school so she could ring Nanna and tell her about Persephone. For a language delayed seven year old, I consider this a perfectly good use of our time and we plan to continue with the series. 

http://investigatingthelandscape.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/horrible-histories-by-sotw-chapter-v1.html

Jack's review: 

Story of the World 1 started our journey of exploring history. We used the activity guide alongside the main text. This mainly helped me get used to the process of doing narrations. The kids enjoyed the coloring pages and map work. I have bought the activity guide again for subsequent levels, though the reading suggestions aren't helpful at all here because our local library doesn't carry any of these things and I can't even begin to attempt to buy all those books. We follow chapters up by watching stuff on YouTube and picking anything related up from the library.

While I noticed a definite Christian bias, I can't say that's surprising. The author is pretty open about her religious views in the Well-Trained Mind, after all. She did an excellent job including bits and pieces from all over the world, something that is lacking in some history programs. 

My oldest "remembers" most of  what she learned about ancient history through Story of the World. That's in inverted commas because the book is still on her bookshelf and I regularly catch her reading it. Stories from that book still pop up in daily conversation regularly.



Volume 2: The Middle Ages

To be continued next year…


Volume 3: Early Modern

To be continued the year after...


Volume 4: Modern Period 

To be continued the year after that if the sky does not fall and the world does not end...


Series Review

Hannah's review:

We do "History Club" with four other families who meet once a week. Each mom takes a turn to host the group and to prepare the activities for the chapter of the week. The afternoon starts off with a recap of the story and an explanation of how the activity fits into this. The kids benefit from each mom having a different approach and talents and knowing that the other families are depending on a well prepared activity keeps everyone accountable! We are doing history club for the 2nd cycle with my younger daughter and over the years with older and younger we have covered the spectrum of crafts, sewing, drama and games initiated by our sporty mom.

Before the history club afternoon we start by reading (or listening to the audio of) the relevant chapter from SOTW. This is mostly for my benefit as my 10 year old daughter enjoys the audio cd's and she has listened to each of the chapters more than once. The audio for each chapter is typically between 5 and 15 minutes long. She might do a colouring page while listening if the picture appeals to her.

The next day we do the review questions and narrations. Again this takes only a few minutes. We also take out any additional books we have and we google away. Our history club keeps us moving along through the chapters, but one could stop and do an in-depth study of just about any of the topics. There is an incredible amount of materials available online developed by other homeschoolers and loads to google on each topic. SOTW has lead to some great rabbit trails and more in-depth study for us. Both daughter's have developed a keen interest in Greek mythology and my ten year old has a neat party trick of naming and describing the Greek gods which impresses most adults!
We spend a fair amount of time in the car and mostly have a history audiobook going. I gave up on matching the audiobooks to SOTW topics, but it does tie up to the general time period. 

For your listening pleasure:
Ancient History Audio: http://www.pinterest.com/hannahwsa/ancient-history-audio/
Middle Ages Audio: http://www.pinterest.com/hannahwsa/middle-ages-audio/

While I had fun making and putting up a timeline and playing with memory cards (available together with a random bunch of other stuff in the file section in this yahoo group here:  https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Hannah_hs_helps I’m not sure how much my daughters or their friends in history club really benefitted. They do remember a surprising amount of the names and details of the stories, but this is due more to repetion than the visual aids. They still don’t have a very good idea of the chronology and even though they did memorise some of the timeline, this has been forgotten. But I figure that they at least have the mental hooks for future studies.

My older dd completed and enjoyed the first three books of Story of the World and a few selected chapters of book 4 before she decided that she did not want to learn about 'all those wars', so we moved on.

Give Away Winners!

It turns out I have two copies of the book so the two winners are:

Anonymous- who wanted to win for Master 6

and

April- who wanted to win for her 9 year old


Do please email us your postal addresses at investigatethelandscape@gmail.com

Give Away!

The weather has been lovely in my part of the world and I am *desperate* to get out into the garden and plant something! I know, however, that if I plant anything before November, the frost will kill it so I am keeping strong and limiting myself to weeding. Weeding is not as spirit lifting as planting, is it?

So this week I offer this little book I acquired in a Book Depository mix up:

(I will post anywhere in the world, and it will arrive providing the Post Office fairies are attentive to their duties. The winner will be announced next Sunday.)

To enter, tell us who would you like to win this for! (And do make sure we will have some way of contacting you.)

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