BIBLIOPLAN HISTORY

BIBLIOPLAN

I do NOT receive any compensation for my review from the company. I am merely sharing about products we are using or have used in our homeschool journey that we enjoy.

After homeschooling for 18 years, I have used A LOT of different history curricula. Last year I decided I wanted to change our history. I knew what I had sitting on my shelves wasn't going to be the right fit for the two that are currently in homeschool. I scoured the convention hall at the homeschool convention. I stopped and talked to multiple vendors. Day 2 of the convention, I made it to Biblioplan's booth. A young man approached me and began talking to me about their products. He told me how much he enjoyed history and interjected at some point in the conversation that it was his mom who wrote the curriculum.. I have to tell you that that young man really impressed me. I told him that I needed to do my due diligence before making a decision, but that I was very impressed with him and what he had shown me. As you can see from my picture, their books ended up coming home with us. As we end out our year, I thought I'd share about them. (My high school son used The Modern Years and my jr. high daughter used the Medieval books.

I have really enjoyed this history overall. I do not use every part that is offered in the package, but I'll talk about what I do use. There is a guide that lays out the daily reading and the possibilities of additional books that you can add into the study. There are lots of suggestions. (I haven't done a lot with the extra reads, because we have a separate literature program.) I really like how the textbooks are written. I find the content to be engaging, and often I tell my kids how much I enjoy it as we read together. The biggest win that I appreciate about this particular history spine is all of the "extras' built into it. As we read along, we come across bolded words that are defined in a box alongside the text. This simple step is such a huge timesaver of not having to look words up and allows immediate deeper understanding. Several of the paragraphs are color coded due to additional in-depth information on a topic or flashback information to refresh the memory. Every time we encounter one, I am so thankful for the brush-up. Alongside the textbook is a Book of Maps. Every chapter has at least one fill-in map, sometimes two. There is a provided book of review questions for the chapter that I use. From this, I construct my own test for every two chapters (the provided tests for high school cover 5-6 chapters of material). There is a Timeline Book that can be purchased. As I talked about in a previous post, each child in our house has their own Timeline Book that they use over the entire course of their schooling, so I don't use the included Timeline Book. One other book that we use that comes with the jr. high level, is The Hands-On book. This book is full of activities: food, crafts, games, etc that go along with each chapter. My daughter really enjoys this addition.

Overall, this has been a great fit for us. My daughter will be continuing on with the program. My son will be ready for American Government and Economics. Unfortunately, Biblioplan does not offer that in their current line up, so we have switched him for that reason only.