Putting together Trisms

We spent this week getting our stuff together. I read as much as I could beforehand and ordered books to go along with each unit, at least the ones I could find. We still had some things to figure out as we went though. The kids have 3 ring binder with dividers for worksheets (questionnaires), vocabulary, timelines and language arts. We are opting to skip the science assignments since we are using Singapore Science.

One of the Trisms sets I bought came with their timeline, It's About Time, but I wasn't sure I really liked the format. Maybe I would once we got into and maybe I'll hate the one I made, but I made my own anyway. I think I need to tell Middle Child he doesn't need to fit each week's on one page, but at least he did a decent job of squeezing it in! I can't wait to see how it works when we get into it - the first week is pretty light.

I got the books for Middle's set, History Makers, ordered up to week 18, I believe. He'll read one book, usually historical fiction, a week. I did a post it note on the front of each one with the week's number on it. This is by far the most organized I get. (If you're wondering, yes, those books are stacked two deep on a shelf. I need to part with some stuff to make room, but it's so painful to say goodbye.)

Some of the books overlap with Oldest's set, Discovering the Ancient World, but mostly, hers were just impossible to find. I think I found a total of 3 for the first few months of assignments. She is the one I want to be doing a lot of reading to go in depth! I think I found something (books we already had! ha!) to fill the gap for the first few weeks at least.

Talk about comparing and contrasting! The Bible is...well, it's the Holy Bible. It's pretty heavy, serious stuff. The Cartoon History of the Universe is evolutionist, humorous and pretty silly, but fairly scientific by most views. She will also be reading creationist theories from different cultures. Some of it is already planned in her book, but I also need to find some outside reading for it. Meanwhile, these two should hold her over for a week or two.

The vocabulary and questionnaires seem to be pretty straightforward. I think I need to come up with some ideas to use or make the vocabulary more interesting. While it's only a few words each week, it's not very exciting or educational to just write definition after definition.

Tomorrow, I tackle IEW so I can figure out those assignments!