How We Used Uncle Eric Books and Bluestocking Guides to Homeschool High School

The following is a post from contributing writer Kris Bales of Weird, Unsocialized Homeshoolers.

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My oldest child is just about ready to graduate. She just lacks a math and a science credit that she’ll be finishing up this fall. For all intents and purposes, we’re finished with high school for her and are preparing for life after high school. There are a few things that I wish I’d done differently with her, but there is one thing that I did amazingly right.

I used the Uncle Eric books and Bluestocking guides to create her senior year history and literature courses.

Brianna has long been interested in World War I and World War II, so I decided to let her really delve into the topics her senior year (something I should have done long before). Modeling her schedule after my younger kids’ Trail Guide to Learning schedule, we chose a biography, a historical fiction, and one or two non-fiction books to round out history and literature for each six weeks of school.

The Uncle Eric World War I and World War II books, along with the study guides, made up the spine of Brianna’s history. She really enjoyed them and wants to read some of the others. We both like the way the books encourage kids to think rather than just stating facts, which are sometimes one-sided in traditional history books.

We had some really interesting discussions about the how’s and why’s of both World Wars and the parties involved.

One of the things that we both enjoyed about the series is that author Richard Maybury points out the domino effect of history – how the events and ideas prior to World War I let to the war and how the two wars have affected history since.

Each of the books in the entire Uncle Eric series are written as a series of letters to his niece or nephew, so they’re very conversational in style, engaging, and easy to understand.

The Bluestocking guides that were written to go along with the Uncle Eric series (and many other titles) include:

• Comprehension questions for each chapter
• Application questions
• Research activities
• Essay assignments
• Thought-provoking questions
• An answer key

Some days there were just a few questions. Other days there were many, along with long-term research projects. Basically, I just assigned what I thought was useful for Brianna, which meant that some days were very light, while others took a bit more time. I would usually give her a due date for the longer-term research projects.

It says something about this series that my somewhat reluctant-learner teen never got behind on her history assignments. She really looked forward to reading the series and the study guides. I’ve got some of the other books in the series, along with their study guides, sitting on my Amazon wish list.

We’ll definitely use the Uncle Eric books and the Bluestocking study guides as my younger kids get into world history – and I’d like to use Whatever Happened to Penny Candy and the accompanying guide to study economics with them.

What have you found that’s been a really good fit for your kids?

Kris, who blogs at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers, is a homeschooling mom to three amazing kids and wife to her unbelievably supportive husband. She enjoys photography, running, and drinking sweet tea. You can connect with Kris on her blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest.

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This post contains affiliate links.