heartofdakota.com

Ladies,

As we're back from our first convention and now have the first week of plans complete (and all of the content ready to head off to our web designer to get moving onto the website), I have a moment to post one more sneak peek.

As we designed the World Geography guide, we wanted to be sure to stay with our more CM focus and include wonderful living books along with the narrative spines scheduled within the new guide. We didn't want the students to suddenly hit the high school years and wonder where all of the wonderful books they have enjoyed through HOD have gone! We also didn't want our students to only have readings that were on the heavier or more factual side and miss out on the joy of reading for pleasure that goes along with reading engrossing books that immerse you in a certain time or place.

So, with this in mind, as part of the World Geography guide we developed a "Living Library" of books that enhances the study of World Geography. These books will function in a similar way to our Storytime books from our previous guides, and as such, the books selected as a part of the Living Library were chosen for their text connections to the geography plans.

The books in this particular set are not intended to fulfill your student's high school literature credit, as students are scheduled in the "Literature" portion of the World Geography guide to read separate higher-level literature to fulfill that need. Instead, the books in this package were chosen to make geography come alive and to help students experience various places around the globe through the lives of the people who traveled to and lived in these places. A daily reading schedule for the books is provided in the guide and follow-up activities are scheduled as well. This set of books is highly recommended, unless you need to economize, however it is not required to earn credit in World Geography.

I'm not going to list the books in the Living Library here, as I truly want you to read their descriptions right along with each title. So, you'll have to wait to glimpse these terrific books in our sneak preview that will be coming to our email list before the content hits our website. I just wanted to share this wonderful news, as I know it will bring joy to so many student's (and momma's) hearts!

Blessings,
Carrie

I love this! Thank you so much Carrie! We have such wonderful learning to anticipate!

This sounds great! I love the name "Living Library" and am looking forward to seeing the book titles included. It is going to be hard to wait to get to this program.
I am falling more in love with HOD every day, and we haven't even started using it yet.

I can see how much care and detail you have put into this curriculum and am looking forward to beginning HOD with my family.

Mary in CO

Thank you for all your hard work. Congrats on the 1st conference.

I am wowed that you are able to write this guide in the amount of time you did. Shew!! I don't know how you do it, but I am glad you do! LOL. God bless HOD.

What are you going to do with yourself when you're done with all the guides? Hehe. (((Hugs)))

I know, I know, it's so unfair... BUT I got to see the Living Library at the convention and you are going to LOVE it!
And I love the name "Living Library"! It sounds so much more grown up than Storytime and very suitable for a high schooler.

I also love this idea. I just saw today how important this component is. We finished up reading Shipwrecked for storytime and my ds was truly excited that Commodore Perry was a part of this book. His history spine reading made it where he understand the importance of establishing trade with Japan and the storytime reading made it "real" to him. To have book characters that he had become attached to play a role in the negotiations truly gave it more meaning for him.

I'm only sad that he will be reading these on his own and not as read alouds since we are doing storytime as read alouds all the way through MTMM.

Okay, don't laugh too hard, but will this be something that the parent "can" still read to them? Storytime has always been a treat for both my son and myself, as it's his time with just me and we can spend it having a great adventure in books! I treasure this time with him, and I know he wouldn't want to give it up just yet (at least right now, he feels this way ). He may feel differently as we approach ninth grade, but I was wondering if it was geared that way, or if it was intended as more of an independent box now for high school?

Thanks so much, Carrie for another perfectly lovely feature of the new guide! I don't think we've yet to meet a HOD book we didn't love!

Definitely need a like button for this! It sounds wonderful. My 16 yo has told me repeatedly how much he enjoys the reading in HOD.

Ladies,

I am so glad that you are excited and that you enjoy the title "Living Library". I thought it captured the focus of the this box of plans very well too!

On a sidenote, Lisa, you can certainly read aloud the books from the Living Library to your child if desired. I loved reading them myself, so I'm sure you would love them too!

I also think that as parents we can always choose to be more involved in our kiddo's day than the guide denotes, so this is always an option in a variety of areas. Sometimes what the students are doing is just too good to pass up!

Blessings,
Carrie

Carrie you just made my day in saying we could still read thes aloud if we want. I will leave it up to Noah, but I bet he will still want me to read it at least for 9th grade.

Carrie,

Any possibility you might be able to share more about the Living Library? I'm eager to learn more about it!