An actual post about Homeschooling

A IRL friend is taking a poll on which science and history programs different homeschooling moms use. I guess spring is in the air and everyone's mind is on the same thing....what should I use next year.

Here's what I am doing:
I am, at best, an eclectic, neo-classical homeschooler. I like chronological history but I see the need for a "social studies" program. Why? Because at 9 years old, my son had never heard about Martin Luther King Jr and his work for Civil Rights. (BTW, he couldn't get his head around discriminating against someone due to the color of their skin. It sounded like one of those stupid "old" ideas like burning whale oil for light.)

So here's what we'll be using:
Story of the World and Kingfisher History encyclopedia for the chronological history. We actually do more of a notebooking kind of study using the timeline and notebook sheets from Hold that Thought.
These are beautiful time line figures and the maps on the history CD's are very nice. I use these instead of the SOTW activity guide.
(If any IRL folks would like to see these, just give me a holler.) Then I supplement about 30 minutes a week with a school Social studies book. We just go over it and it usually sticks. We aren't talking complex information here but it is stuff that isn't in "history." I got the textbooks at Insights for a dollar each. Don't spend more for school books. LOL

For science, I actually use another School text as a guide. Addison Wesley called "Destinations in Science." I am not a textbook science person, but these are really great books. They were probably rejected for inferior texts, which is quite sad. We add to it like crazy but there is a good bit of stuff packed into these little gems. I also own Singapore Science. Another good science book. But it has a few unusual foods and plants in it. (Singapore children eat a lot of rice and don't have the same fruits and veggies that we do.) the bones of it are sound though and it does promote scientific thinking. It is not grammar stage science though.
More later....we have to head out to speech.