Teaching history can be a difficult subject to tackle. Author of Pathway to Liberty, Jayme MacCullough is a homeschool mom that was teaching multiple grade levels at the same time. She understand the difficulties that homeschool families face and she created a curriculum that worked for her family and she felt better taught the foundation of American liberty. Since then she has added World History into those same studies.
Pathway to Liberty - World History is a Christian based curriculum. The layout is extremely easy to use. The weekly lesson plans are broken down into weekly outlines, and you as the parent just preview what you will be teaching that week, and make sure that you have any appropriate book recommendations for each of your students. Also included each week are vocabulary for students to explore, as well as appropriate Bible passages to go along with the principles of that weeks learning. Older students will have assigned research topics that they will be required to write papers about.
The multi-level teaching is incorporated by the literature books that students will be reading that week. Grade levels are assigned different comprehension questions, literature books, and even vocabulary. So there is a little work for parents, the lessons plans for each week are fully laid out with reading passages broken down to daily assignments and even maps & diagrams ready to print. There are a few other materials that you need to have on hand. One is a notebook, and also internet access to watch videos online.
Pathway to Liberty encourages immersion education. This allows students to really dig into material, instead of just getting exposed to it in small doses the way most history programs work.
There is a suggested program using Pathway to Liberty. Year 1 Universal History, Year 2 The Middle Ages, Year 3 U.S. History, and Year 4 World History.
There are four lessons each week. You can see from this sample below that the material is really laid out for parents. We received all of our materials as easy to download PDF files. (You can also purchased printed materials if you wish.) So I was able to print the student workbook pages that I wanted the girls to complete.
All the levels are grouped together in the Teacher Guide. We were using Level 2 and Level 3 World History during this review period.
The Teacher Guide refers students and parents to read passages and pages throughout the Chain of Liberty book also written by Jayme MacCullough. I really enjoyed this specific passage. As a history lover, this is something I tell my students constantly.
In the beginning of each week in the Student Workbook, there are Teaching Objectives. The student can easily see what is expected of them each week.
How did Pathway to Liberty, World History Level 2 and Level 3 work for us? I am currently teaching history to two different grade levels right now. They both learn drastically different. But I found that I was able to adapt the material to each girl. Our girls did not write down as much as is encouraged, since handwriting is very frustrating. But we read through the materials on the schedule daily. You can really adapt the Pathway to Liberty History curriculum to your student's abilities. Items that you left out before, can be gradually added back into their studies as their abilities and skills change. So this time we did not add any writing assignments. But we did discuss and work on vocabulary and scripture.
Depending on the lesson, and your child's reading abilities, you can expect lessons to run about 20-30 minutes at minimum without much extra research. Fortunately there was a lot of crossover in their two levels, but Level 3 questions were a little more in depth for the same material. I really did like the book suggestions for both the girls. In fact, thanks to this introduction to the Story of U.S. books, I have started Brayden in the U.S. History studies of the Pathway to Liberty curriculum.
The schedule for Pathway to Liberty - World History is both easy and almost feels laid back, even though students are learning an incredible amount of information. We started mid-way through the "year" with Level 2 & Level 3. We were actually all the way up to World War 2 in our history studies. So we spent the review period studying World War 2 using Pathway to Liberty - World History series.
The questions we encountered in the studying guide caused Caty to ask many more questions, which we would then research answers to. I love how following the guide really drew her interest out in her history studies. We ended up doing extra research and making recipes as if we were eating on World War 2 ration schedules. She planned out meals and we watched Youtube videos on this subject. It was eye opening, and made us think whether we could do that if we had to. The adaptation that I had to make for her was that there was no writing. I had to do all her work verbally with her.
This was a minor issue for me. I was very glad to see all the adaptability that could be done with Pathway to Liberty - World History series. This ability really helps parents of students with learning disabilities. Most of the titles that we found were available on Audiobook, so even reading was not an issue for us. I could start the main book reading even while we were traveling in the van, this provided even more flexibility!
I can say that I am now hooked on Pathway to Liberty - World History series, and I plan on continuing to use the Pathway to Liberty - US History with Brayden. The girls will start that series next fall since we are finishing the World History this year. We will be a little out of order, but it will not be a big deal.
Click on the link below to see how other members of the Homeschool Review Crew used this curriculum with their families.
Do you know where we can find more of this curriculum? It looks like the site is down and the company went out of business - no warning or explanation to find.
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