10 Reasons to ~LOVE~ the Catholic Schoolhouse Tour Guide

10 Reasons to ~LOVE~ the Catholic Schoolhouse Tour Guide

Sometimes we refer to Catholic Schoolhouse as a ‘spine’ of your homeschooling, on which you add all the extra books, crafts, activities, games and fun to round it out however fits your family.  If the ‘spine’ had a name, it would be called the CSH Tour Guide.  The memory work is laid out in the Tour Guide for your whole year of schooling – one week at a time- for all your subjects: History, Religion, Music, Art, Math, Language Arts, Science, Latin and Geography!

It may just seem like any old book at first glance. But a lot of thought was put into the Tour Guides to make them awesome! Ok, by awesome I mean useful, convenient, functional and beautiful.  Here are some of my favorite {easy-to-miss} aspects of the Catholic Schoolhouse Tour Guide.

  1. The front and back covers are laminated and made of sturdy heavy weight cardstock.  The pages are also heavy cardstock.  That means these books were made to last!
  2. The Tour Guides are spiral bound so they can lay flat… or fold all the way around backwards…or even stand up on your school table for display in your schoolroom! 
  3.  Yearly overview  page shows the whole year at a glance and Quarterly overviews show the whole quarter on one page.
  4. The backs of the week overviews are blank. Write your own book lists, plans, ideas or lessons on the backs!
  5. Did you notice those big waves on the bottom of the quarterly overviews?  They make it easy to find the next quarter.
  6. The Week numbers are in big font at the top, but also in the bottom right corner so it’s easy and fast to find the week you’re on by flipping through.
  7. Color coding! Tour 1 is Green all over!  Not just small Tour 1 in the corner, but the whole cover is green.  Then Tour II is Blue and Tour III is Orange.  I can easily see which Tour Guide I’m grabbing off the shelf, then quickly grab the corresponding CDs, Science or Art Book.
  8. The Timeline pictures in the Tour Guide match the History Card pictures- reinforcing what images my students associate with events in History.
  9. Everything is integrated- for Tour 1 that means US history, US Geography, US Art, US Saints, even US music (once the US started having it’s own music).  Everything that CAN go together IS together so your students can make connections between subjects.  Looking at the beginning of this year our History starts with Native Americans, while they study Native American sand art, while they study St. Kateri… it’s awesome!
  10. The inside of the back cover is a dry-erase progress page so you can check off when you master your memory goals! (this is only for Tour I at the moment, but will be on future editions of Tour II and Tour III)

If you’re looking to purchase your own Tour Guide to love, check out the CSH Store Page to purchase your copy right now!

What is your favorite aspect of the Tour Guide? Tell me in the comments below!

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