History//Geography Question

[chooper786]

We are using a private online school's independant study program for our 13 year old. We use their curriculum...tests, assignments, answer keys, etc. The only difference between what we are doing and a regular online school is that I am the one teaching and grading everything.

The History/Geography class has a lot of research paper (11), maps assignemts, disussion questions, section review questions in the book, and of course tests.

I have a few questions...

Does that sound like too many research papers and busy work? Would you cut out some of the papers and maps assigments?

I'm thinking of cutting out some of the papers and most of the maps but I'm concerned about being able to give him a geography grade as he's going to public school next year. Not to mention I want to be sure he learns everything he needs to know at this point.

We are studying US history/geography from 1860-present day. Are there any good online resources for that time period in geography? Maybe some maps/geography things we could use in place of the maps provided by the program we're using?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It would depend on the scale of the papers, and how they are integrated in the whole package. If the papers are to check the information retained from a module and can be done in a reasonable amount of time, fine. If not, maybe you should scale them down or reduce the number with broader scope topics.