Homeschooling Abroad
Homeschooling—
Canadian Style!
We can take good resources and make
them better by custom ;tting them to
our children’s interests, learning styles,
and even nationality!
By Susan Pickran
Our family began our home- schooling journey just a;er my daughter’s fourth birth- day. What began as a means
to prepare our children for school soon
become an instrument to prepare our
children for life. Our daughter, Faith, is
now 14, and our son, Caleb, is almost
12. We are so thankful to God for gently
leading us into homeschooling, which
has allowed us to truly walk alongside
our children as God directs their paths.
One of the challenges we encountered
early in our homeschooling came as a result of purchasing much of our curriculum from U.S. suppliers. Some of the issues were easily recti;ed. Canadian play
First day of school, September 2011
money from a game supplier was substituted for the American money in our
math manipulatives. Metric workbooks
replaced the Imperial measurement lessons. Spelling words such as color and
center were e;ortlessly changed to colour
and centre.
Particularly challenging were the
history lessons. Many of the language
arts programs included books that introduced U.S. history. If a book about
George Washington was suggested,
should we replace it with one about Sir
John A. Macdonald? Should we read
both? Was there a way to combine the
two histories?
With a little research, I found some resources that worked for our family. For
the most part, when a schoolbook that
dealt with U.S. history was introduced
in a language arts program, we read it.
Many of the grammar, spelling, and writing activities referred to those books, so
we le; them in the program. ;e extra
information about another country’s
history proved to be interesting for our
children.
I was thrilled to learn that Ambleside
Online had Canadian pages at www
. amblesideonline.org/Canada.shtml.
;is website had many resources that
helped me to design our own Canadian
history studies. Other resources we used
were books by Donna Ward, including
Courage and Conquest: Discovering
Canadian History.
Because of our close proximity to the
U.S., what I really wanted was a way to
combine Canadian and U.S. history into
one story. What was going on in the U.S.
when Canada became a country in 1867?
Why did so many Loyalists leave the
U.S. and settle in Canada? To what location were the French settlers from Nova
Scotia taken during the expulsion of the
Acadians? I found an out-of-print set of
two books published in 1967, George
Brown’s Canada in North America,
Volumes 1 and 2. ;is set of books brought
the histories of the two nations together
into one, and they became the spine of
our history studies. An understanding
of the con;icts between England and
France was also important to complete
my children’s understanding of our
country’s history and unique identity.
;e War of 1812 was especially interesting to study from both a Canadian
and American perspective. Because of
the fact that no borders moved at the end
of the war, and due to the indecisive way
in which the war ended, there were times
when it seemed that Canadian history
books and American history books were
describing two di;erent wars! In the
end, this war did promote unity among
the inhabitants of Canada. It brought
the English, French, and Native Peoples
together to ;ght as one. However, this
con;ict with our “neighbours” made our
children take a serious look at the devastation that comes from wars.
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