ten things we love about paths of settlement

This year our family has been beyond blessed to review Geography Matter’s Trail Guide to Learning Paths of Settlement. And when I say beyond blessed I truly mean beyond blessed. This year has proven to be one of the most enjoyable and fruitful homeschooling years that I have had in my ten plus years of home educating. So today, for Top Ten Tuesday, I thought I’d share with you ten things we love about Paths of Settlement.

1. It’s produced by Geography Matters. I love geography. You are talking to the gal who entered geography bees when she was younger. This company produces excellent geography curriculums, but goes way beyond that with their Trail Guide programs – it is all-inclusive and amazing – literature based, thorough, and highly engaging. All I needed to add was math.

2. Ruth Beechick. When I first started homeshooling one of the first books that I read were the simple readers by Ruth Beechick. Her philosophy of learning includes a great deal of hands on learning and reading real books. Not just textbooks, but real, living books. Geography Matters includes quotes, examples, and encouragement from her throughout their books.

3. Mapping. Think back to point one — about my love of geography — and you’ll get why I love this. Mapwork is an integral part of this history program. Grace, my fifth grader, is working on map work for each of the fifty states. She’s also done various overlay map work showing different boundaries — The Line of Proclamation, the Treaty of Paris boundary and so forth. Doing this mapwork furthers her understanding of the history that she’s learning.

4. It includes science. Here’s what I love — the science is incorporated with the history studies. When we read about George Washington we learned about hurricanes, and blizzards, and weather. This year it’s been earth science studies and how they’ve impacted each phase in settlement. We’ve studied water, and the water cycle, and even brought that to molecules, atoms and the Periodic Table. Every topic we’ve studied in science has an example of why we need to learn it in our history lesson. Brilliant, really – this allows the science to have examples and relatability.

5. Hands on. See the picture below? That’s an early picture of one of our science lessons where we made a salt dough {yes, I made gluten free salt dough} map of the eastern coast of the United States and then {eventually} the continental shelf and ocean floor. I love that in addition to the books, reading, and paper work that there are active and engaging hands on activities.

6. Lapbooks. Yes, I wrote an entire post about Geography Matter’s lapbooks {called Lapbooks Saved the Day} and how much I love them. Well, once again, I want to impress upon you how brilliant lapbooking can be for a student. It provides a portfolio, breaks up the day, and reinforces learning. We love looking through Gracie’s lapbooks. This is one we did earlier in the year — it’s Unit 2 — and you can see how history, science, and mapping are integrated.

7. Copywork. Copywork is amazing. Everyday Grace has a time of copywork. She’s copied passages from her readers, from the Declaration of Independence, from the Constitution, from the Star Spangled Banner and more. Copywork teaches grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and sentence flow without tediousness. The more you copy, the more you learn. We can also do these exercises as narration which furthers the learning.

8. Quality of the Readers. Every unit there are several readers and then one read aloud. Our entire family listens as I read aloud. These books are amazing {I highly recommend reading them} — I have learned a great deal about our country, about our Founding Fathers, and about integrity and courage as I’ve read them. The George Washington one is now on my must read list for all homeschoolers.

9. Planned out. It’s all there. From copywork, to reading, to read-alouds, to grammar, to editing, to writing, to science, to history, to mapping, to cooking, and more. It’s all there in Geography Matter’s Trail Guide program. The main books are beautiful hardcover books that will last for years {and many students} to come. I love the convenience and the ease to my day — I simply can open the book, print off the lessons, and off I go. Plus they include numerous charts which helps me keep track of where we’ve been and where we’re going.

10. Great company, great friendships. I’ve been very blessed working along with those at Geography Matters. They have only been gracious to me {after my shoulder surgery and during some sick months} and have truly let me explore their curriculum so that my review is organic, authentic and not rushed. My words are written after using their curriculum for six months. To all of you at Geography Matters, those of you who have become friends, thank you. And thank you also for blessing our family with an incredibly dynamic and engaging year of learning.

So that’s it. Ten things I love about Paths to Settlement. And just so you know, Paths of Settlement is the second in the Trail Guide to Learning Series. Paths of Settlement traces exactly that – the settlement paths that our country went through and the struggles for freedom and nation building throughout our history. Please take a moment and like the Paths of Settlements facebook page so that you stay up to date on products, reviews, and giveaways. And, if you have any questions regarding this curriculum, or how I use it across different levels of learning, about their Bible supplement {that’s my next post}, or more, please don’t hesitate to ask.

linking with Angie’s Top Ten Tuesday

disclosure: I was given the Paths of Settlement program to review in exchange for my honest opinion. All thoughts and photographs are my own. No other compensation was given.