More Serendipity Answers

I feel guilty asking you a question right now, but it concerns the AmericanHistory trail.  Did you do something previous to this year's plan?  I had already planned on doing that time period with a lot of real books, but was going to start with Leif Ericson and Columbus but would like to catch up to your plans when we get that far along.  Just wondering if you did, could you direct me to some resources (or maybe they are already online somewhere?) I didn't remember seeing it on Serendipity last year.

This is the first year year we've published history plans at Serendipity. The simple answer to your question is only going to make sense for my family. I started with Colonial America because we have two soccer tournaments planned in the Williamsburg area in October. I wanted to be fully immersed in the time period to make the most of a trip to Colonial Williamsburg. My older children will do some reading and watch some videos about the earlier time period (it's in the plans) and the younger ones will catch it next time. It's Real Learning in the context of our Real Life and it's one of the reasons that I set aside the prewritten plans. These suit my timetable:-).

I am very excited to use some of the plans that you have so generously shared with all of us. My question to you is what do you define as little ones and middle children? Where is the age separation there, in your opinion?

The way the plans are written, you can make the call with each individual component. A strong reader but poor handwriter might read in from the "Middle Ones" selections and do copywork from the "Little Ones" selections. There are three different "spines" in the history plans for the Big Kids in order to accommodate the different learners in my house. We'll use all three--but three different children will each do one of them. I deliberately didn't use age or grade separations because I really don't think that way at home. And the categories I settled on are really just loose organizers.