Maps from Heritage History

I have written about Heritage History, one of my favorite places for online history and literature books in the public domain.  Besides viewing the books online for free, you can purchase an eBook for a Kindle or other reader for only $1.99 each.

Well, I just found another wonderful resource on their web sites. They have collected a whole series of large, color, historical maps onto their Heritage History Maps page so they can be downloaded.  They are organized by a variety of geographic an cultural categories: African, American, Asian, British, Christian, European, Greek, Hispanic, Moslem, Norse, Roman, and World.  The page lists the region, year (that that map is depicting, not when it was published), and description.  It's an online historical atlas that is a wonderful addition to our history studies!

That Resource Site $50 Giveaway

Have you visited That Resource Site for free printables, lapbooks, lesson plans, or articles?  Their collection is large and growing!  And they have quite a give-away underway: a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.  You can enter up to 4 times by writing a blog post (like this), subscribing to their feed, liking their FB page, or simply leaving a comment about their site.  Of course publicizing it decreases my chance, but that's O.K.--That Resource Site is worth telling people about.

Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival

It is time for the August edition of the Hands On Homeschool blog carnival!  As the new school year quickly approaches, these entries are sure to inspire you.

Laura Grace Weldon presents Save Moments In A Memory Jar posted at Laura Grace Weldon.

Pamela presents Dinosaurs and Crazy Ladies at Lake Powell as well as Besides the tent posted at Blah, Blah, Blog.

Jen presents Sorting, Matching, and Pattern Fun posted at Frugal Kids.

Nikki presents Finding maths moments.... posted at Our Journey in Him.

Shirley Ann Vels presents New Planner posted at Under An English Sky

And I present Charles, Boyle, Divers, and Balloons posted at At Home Science. Be sure to check out other activities to go with the Science of the Universe middle school physics series by clicking on the Our House tab under the banner.

A great line up considering it is August.  Thank you for letting me be your host this month.  Enjoy!

Homeschooling with eReaders

I bought a Kindle just before Christmas, and Ds#1 received one as a gift. I planned to integrate them into our homeschooling and they have been very useful. To get the most use out of an eReader you need to understand the difference between a scanned book and a digital book.

Scanned book are just pictures of each page of a book; the actual words on the page have not been "digitized."  These are the books you get from Google Books and Open Library.  These two sources have the most books, and they can be used on eReaders that can read pdf, but they are a bit trickier to use.

Manybooks.net

First, do not convert them to an ebook format.  A program tries to "read" the picture and digitize the words but they are filled with spelling errors.

Another option I use is to put the scanned book on the Kindle, though the print is rather small in the portrait (upright) position.  Because it is a scanned book you can't enlarge the font; but you can change the display to landscape (sideways) and the scanned page enlarges enough to make it easily legible.  The pages are sluggish to turn, and to can't use the bookmarks, dictionary or highlighter, but you do have access to a large library of free books that you don't have to read on a computer screen.

Digital books are for what eReaders were made, and the number of free digital books is growing.  Project Gutenberg and Many Books are two great sources (Many Books gets all their digital books from Project Gutenberg and audio books from Librivox but it is easier to use, IMHO.)  You can download books in a variety of formats to read on whatever eReader you have.  Selections from Tappan, Eggleston, Marshall (check both H.E. and Henrietta Elizabeth), Fabre, Colum, Chesterton, Belloc, and several of the titles I discuss on A Private Eye Nature are available.  While not quite free, Heritage History offers their eBooks, many of which are not available elsewhere, for only $1.99 each.

If you have a Kindle you can also order free books directly from the Free eBooks Collection at the Amazon.com Kindle store.  (Interestingly, Amazon lists the same sources I mention here, though I used them long before Kindles hit the market.) Some of these are formatted so badly that it is distracting.  If you are thinking about buying an inexpensive older book that has been converted to the Kindle format, I suggest downloading a sample and check the formatting first.

As for eBooks for which I actually pay, I have had a mixed experience.  Kindle prices are far better than any hardcover price, especially new-releases.  I have purchased a number of Catholic titles that I have long wanted to read because of the cost savings, like the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: New Testament for only $9.99.  As for paperbacks, sometimes the Kindle price is only marginally less, or even more expensive, so used paperbacks are often cheaper.  This gives rise to the dilemma of buying cheaper, used paperbacks that don't really hold up well or an eBook that requires no storage and will not fall apart?

Buying eBooks for my pre-teen kids is even more limited.  Any picture book is out of the question unless they have black-and-white line drawings.  The vast majority of popular books are pure twaddle (I'll get them from the library I must) or worse if they are morally corrupting. Many of the small Catholic presses do not offer digital versions of their books.  This may change soon, though, as evidenced by Bethlehem Books releasing some of their offerings as eBooks. (Note that this link goes to an eBook search for Bethlehem Books; while all the books they publish are on the list, other books not from them will also appear as you scroll through the pages.)  Also Sophia Institute Press has some books available and plans to expand their Kindle offerings.

While a variety of eReaders are on the market, I prefer the e-ink technology (like a Kindle) to the backlit readers (color Nook or tabets.) Intensely reading and illuminated computer screen is hard on the eyes and the light can interfere with sleep patterns.  Having to find an external lighting source at night is fine with me, and I can read in bright sunlight easily.

Ultimately, my children are the ones that have made our Kindle experience a good one.  They definitely prefer digital books to scanned books, but they prefer the eReader to the computer screen (usually); they even prefer digital books to paper books, but would rather have paper than scanned.   The portability is excellent, especially if you are concurrently reading multiple books; and you always have your bible with you.  You can quickly check the meaning of words you don't know (so the kids may actually do this every now and again if asked).  You can add notes, too, using the somewhat cumbersome but functional keyboard; I often share annotated highlights on Facebook and Twitter right from my Kindle.  And I have saved a lot of money and time by not printing out books too long to read on the computer.

If you are really dedicated to your eReader, you can convert scanned images and then correct the spelling errors before converting it to an eReader format.  If ever I do that I'll be sure to post them.

The War of the Vendee

Navis Pictures is the genius behind St. Bernadette of Lourdes, the film with a cast of all children, most of them homeschooled.  Our family is very excited about the new film with a similar cast coming this fall: The War of the Vendee.



You can read the Wikipedia article, War in the Vendee, to get a general overview of the event depicted in the film.  This would make an outstanding suppliment to a study of the French Revolution, but why wait to enjoy something this good?

I have put together a reading schedule for studying some Founding Fathers and the Revolutionary War.  You can access the pdf schedule here on Google Documents.
Of course you can substitute your favorites on your bookshelves or available through your library for anything that I have listed.  That's the beauty of a Charlotte Mason education.

US History--the Revolutionary War

We finished the colonization of the United States and now we are moving into the Revolutionary War.  I am focusing more on personalities rather than events, along with some great character formation.  I have not planned out this unit as well as the last yet, but here is what I have put together.

I am reading American Hero Stories by Eva March Tappan to Ds#3.  Eleven chapters cover inspiring people and events of the Revolution.  We are also reading the shorter Jean Fritz biographies in my home library, while ds#2 is reading the longer titles, Why Not, Lafayette?, Early Thunder, and Traitor: the Case of Benedict Arnold We're also using another favorite author of ours, F. N. Monjo (5 short books for Ds#1 and one long one for Ds#2 and Ds#3.)

We are continuing to use An Elementary History of the United States (for ds#1 and #2) by Eva March Tappan, but only 4 chapters relate to the time period we're covering.  This book will give the boys the basics of the events of the Revolutionary War.

Along with those chapters they will also continue reading The Catholic Pioneers of America by John O'Kane Murray.  Seven biographies are relevent to our time period, from Casimir Pulaski to Lafayette.  Included is the longest survivor of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll. Other signers accused him of having less courage than they did because so many other Maryland citizens had his same name, and so he added to his signature, "of Carrollton," to be sure the king knew which one.  This book continues to enrich our US History studies from which Catholic accomplishments are typically excluded.

Ds#3 has started the Treegate Series by Leonard Wibberley from Bethlehem Books, starting with John Treegate's Musket  Each of the three books in the series are available as a Kindle edition for only 3.95 each.  The other two books are Peter Treegate's War followed by Sea Captain from Salem (Treegate)



We own and enjoy many of William Bennett's books and so I pulled Our Country's Founders: A Book of Advice for Young People.  We'll skip the second chapter, "Love and Courtship," unless we have time at the end since the boys will be far more interested in the other topics at this point in their lives.

I was looking at what they needed to read for this week and I noticed at the end of Israel Putnam at Bunker Hill is the note, "Adapted from Eva March Tappan, American Hero Stories."