The Homeschooling Handbook_ From Preschool to High School - Mary Griffith [79]
With travel, you can take the “we are there” approach to history and geography. You can design a themed tour for yourselves—follow the Oregon Trail, visit Revolutionary War sites, or try finding routes of the Underground Railroad. Or, you might just visit a particular area and explore what it has to offer.
We have crossed the United State five times, three by train. We take the Charles Kuralt approach, seeing the back roads and interesting locals. We go on all the tours—maple sugar making, candle factory, cheese making, lumber mills, and so on—that we can find. Our favorite reference is the AAA TourBook for each region. It has helped us find countless great places, events, waterfalls, fairs, festivals, museums, and colorful characters.—Carol, California
The Internet
No discussion of learning resources today would be complete without mentioning the Internet. The Internet is vast and varied, ranging from the unbelievably impressive to the abysmally useless. Fortunately, dozens of search engines are now available to help sort through the ever-expanding glut of FTP and Web sites. Just to tantalize you, here’s just a tiny sampling of what’s available, from large institutional sites to those created and maintained by individuals. (Uniform Resource Locators [URLs] are given in Appendix C; Internet resources about homeschooling are covered in the next chapter.)
VolcanoWorld Home Page—a great earth science resource; even includes a “Volcano of the Week” feature.
The Smithsonian Institution Home Page—visit all the Smithsonian Museums online, including the museums of American Art, American History, Natural History, the American Indian, Air and Space, and the National Portrait Gallery.
The Exploratorium—San Francisco’s great hands-on science museum online.
The Library of Congress—the vast resources of the Library of Congress at your keyboard: the “American Memory” photo database; Thomas, the congressional bill database; current exhibitions; library services and research tools; and the Library of Congress catalogs.
Natural Math—an intriguing collection of activities and ideas for learning math with an unschooling approach instead of traditional rote methods.
World Wide Arts Resources—from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, a huge, worldwide database of Internet resources on the visual and performing arts, architecture, film, literature, and more.
Bad Astronomy—one determined astronomer’s valiant attempt to document and counter the ever-growing body of misinformation about astronomy brought to us by Hollywood and the news media; with links to other astronomy and general science sites.
The United States Civil War Center—an impressive (and ongoing) attempt to collect all Civil War–related links found on the Web.
Virtual Renaissance—travel back in time to a Renaissance town at this virtual living history site, complete with historical characters to guide you (and plenty of links for learning more).
The Human Languages Page—links to over 1,800 language-related sites on the Web—online lessons, translating dictionaries, native literature, software, and more.
The Quotations Page—a catalog of Internet quotation resources as well as a large-scale quotation site itself.
Great Writers and Poets—links to writer’s personal pages and pages about writers, lists of literary awards, and more.
Digital Librarian—“a librarian’s choice of the best of the Web.”
My Virtual Reference Desk—a mind-boggling collection of links to newspapers, magazines, dictionaries, shopping, sports, almanacs, and other reference sources.
Cornell Theory Center K-12 Gateways—links to resources in math and science, arts and social sciences, and others for educators.
The Halls of Academia—from the TENET Resource Center, links to sites for careers, history, art, government,