Ok, I admit it, I’m a Little House on the Prairie junkie. We have all nine seasons of the show on DVD, my girls have their own collections of the books because I didn’t want to share mine from childhood, and we have most of the “My First Little House” series because I couldn’t wait to introduce them to my girls. So what does this confession have to do with Dollar Homeschool and Eclectic Education Series? Well, many of the books included in the series are the same books Laura and Mary would have used in their schooldays.
Dollar Homeschool has collected over 50 books that were used in schools from approximately 1865-1915. These include all the McGuffy readers, Ray’s Arithmetic, Thalheimer’s histories, Pinneo’s Grammar, courses in nature studies, the constitution, book-keeping, courtesy and manners, and many more. A complete list of books along with a short summary of each is available on their website. While many of these books are available for free online, Dollar Homeschool has created CD-ROMs with each book as a pdf file, bookmarked and searchable for ease in finding information.
In addition to all the textbooks, the teacher in me was fascinated by the manuals of methods and other discussions of teaching in rural, one-room schoolhouses. While times have changed, and teaching practices along with them, most of these procedures used back in the day are easily transferrable to today’s home school. Many of these schools operated on a limited budget and most of the students either shared books and materials or made do with limited amounts of paper, as opposed to the way my children go through paper today!
So, how have we used these? To be honest, I’m still wrapping my brain around if or how I will use these. Although I love the concept of the one-room schoolhouse and many of the methods they employed, much of the content is dated. When reading over some of the math exercises, most of them use agricultural examples and units of measure. No matter how much I find the idea of farming appealing, I really don’t need to know how much seed yields how many acres. As Ray so wisely pointed out as I was talking to him about it: so it’s the methods you like, not so much the content. Yes! Someone needs to write this for a modern era, with contemporary examples.
I am planning to use some of the materials in Ray’s Arithmetic with Maggie as she has finally finished the math we started at the beginning of first grade (she’s almost done with second). It emphasizes concrete and mental exercises before ever putting pen to paper. I’m going to employ our whiteboards as slates and have her do math “like Laura” in hopes that it will produce fewer groans. I might even let her wear her bonnet.
Nathanael has asked for some advanced math books to keep up with a couple of his friends. I’m going to have him work through some of these over the summer and see where it takes him. I’m also going to be reading through the nature studies and manners book to see how I can incorporate more of that into our days.
A few concerns: The illustrations in many of the books, so classic and well drawn in the print editions, come through blurry and smeared. This is not only an aesthetic problem, but many of the exercises refer you to a picture that is impossible to interpret. happening. In addition, all have been scanned in black and white, and many of the primary materials refer to shapes by their colors. My preschoolers couldn’t use these pages. Finally, my usual complaint about e-books—I’m already attached to my computer too many hours a day. In order to use this well, I’d be printing a lot. I did resize some of the documents to print two pages on a single sheet, but it would still use up a lot of paper and ink.
The bottom line: The set of CDs costs $159. If someone had offered this to me during my early days of homeschooling, I probably would have jumped on it, as I would have had the time to really figure out how to make it work. You could use this for math, reading, composition, and spelling from preschool right through 12th grade. Obviously the history and science materials are lacking updated knowledge, but really, does history change? Or is new information added. Some of the grammar rules are also outdated, but keeping a current grammar handbook would help you find which ones to teach.
