Tuesday: Library Day...

I've declared Tuesday as Library Day. I'm not sure if that will work beyond this week, but we're going to try. We are limited having only one working vehicle, so I had to take Vic to work this morning before we could go anywhere. After some other errands, we headed to the library.

You'd think the kids were at an amusement park. They love trips to the library and because of this fact, so do I.

After deciding to teach a chronological history, somehow working in geography and government as well, I was on a hunt for books on early human existence. You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to find such books written at a juvenile level, especially just at the local public library. I finally found a book about the days of the mammoth, that had some information about early humans in it. I stuck it in my basket. I found another book about early civilization - wonderful. I stuck it in the basket. Near that book was a book about dinosaurs. Well, I though, dinosaurs did come before people, and what's the point of teaching about life on earth if I'm not starting at the begining right? I stuck the dinosaur book in the basket. Soon I found another book about dinosaurs with more detailed information and some great pictures. That went into the basket too. I browsed some more. Look, a book on how the earth was formed; volcanoes and earthquakes, water and wind erosion. Into the basket. Oh look, a book about the origins of the universe. Well, we are starting at the begining. Into the basket.

After all this, I decided that was a huge amount of stuff to cover at once, and we probably would not get through it all with the amount of information I was comfortable with, within the time I have the books checked out. I decided to wait on humans and just focus on the origins of the planet, and things that came before people. After we got home I was thinking about the orgins of the universe, and how this would be a great lead in for a unit on the solar system. That could take up a couple of weeks. *Sigh*

The good part of this story is the idea of units. We could do the solar system unit while learning about the origins of the universe. With the formation of the earth and dinosaurs, we can do units on erosion, geology, and evolution. We can study prehuman species. We can learn about the origins of language. And religion. There is literally no end to the stuff we could come up with and learn about. I should be feeling overwhelmed right now, but I'm actually pretty excited.

After I have a chance to find some of the units I'm thinking of, and print them, plan activites, and start them in practice... well then I'll be overwhelmed.