This curriculum is one of our biggest hits. In my opinion, the activity guide is a must have and is a wealth of wonderful projects that bring history to life and provide the glue for their brains to hold onto the information. I also recommend getting the audio CD's of the textbook. I don't know about you but my pronunciaction abilities of ancient rulers and warriors is pitiful. Plus, I think they get tired of listening to Mom's voice and it is nice to listen to some other chick yakkin' for a while.
We do history 3x week. Typically this means they listen to one section of a chapter on Monday and do a narration page. Wednesday we do the second section of a chapter and make another narration page. Friday we do one of the activities listed in the activity guide and any map work for the chapter.
Narration pages are difficult to teach and I want them to focus on succinctly telling me the important parts of the story instead of worrying about spelling and handwriting. For this reason, after we listen to the audio CD of the chapter segment we go to the computer where we work together to come up with three or four sentences that tell the important bits of what we heard. Then I print this while they draw/color something on the page that goes along with the lesson.
I keep a special box of top quality colored pencils, gel pens, markers and crayons. This art box only gets brought out for history so the kids are anxious to use the items each time we do a narration page. After they draw the picture I ask them to tell me about it and then I write down a summary of what the picture illustrates on the narration page.
This narration page goes into their history notebook. Sometimes I’ll use the coloring pages in the activity guide instead of doing a narration page. I limit them to only having to do a maximum of two history narration pages a week.
The activity guide lists some great library books that further the history lessons. I pick some to assign for assigned reading.
We changed our pace throughout this curriculum. Some topics really light their fire like studying the Egyptian Myths and Greek Myths. We camped out in that section of the book for a couple of weeks. Other chapters we might just do the narration pages and then move ahead without doing any additional activities or crafts. I try to keep in mind that my purpose is to provide pegs of knowledge on which I’ll hang more education as they get older.
This is BirdMan painting like a caveman as we studied the nomads. The kids took some Kroger bags, tore them open and then crumpled them up to their hearts delight. Then we smoothed them out and painted our versions of animals and cavemen hunting.
When we studied ancient temples and the Ziggaraut of Ur, RocketMan built his version out of candy! See the steps?
GooseyGirl made hers out of Legos
The Greek Myths really lit them up. Here they are with the labyrinth they built. Silver, the cat, was Theseus and Elizabear was the fearsome Minotaur.
BirdMan wanted to build his own labyrinth because Kiwi, the bird, really wanted to be Theseus. Thankfully, we had enough blocks!
These two history books are recommended in the Story of the World Activity Guide. They both get dragged around endlessly through our house. My kids love to pour over the pictures. The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia isn't needed until the fifth grade cycle of history. However, my kids adore this book now. Be warned, though, it does go into a bit more detail about wars than the Usborne Book of World History. However, you can look inside each of these books at Amazon and see if it is appropriate for your family. Just click on the picture. Also there is an internet linked version of the Usborne book. For my family, we enjoy sitting in bed reading so having links to explore on the internet wasn't going to work well for us. However, many people do enjoy that bookl.
All of the activities that we do to extend the lesson come from the activity guide. I especially like the booklists that I can use to reserve our goodies from the library for the upcoming week's lesson.
The audio CD of Story of the World is a real blessing. The kids can listen to it while I prepare things for the activity. Some families keep the CDs they are done with in the car, so the kids can listen to it over again. They really love it. Plus, it has recently been redone with Jim Weiss's voice. If you haven't discovered him yet, you'll be VERY impressed. His voice is riveting. I know the cost of this program can add up but it is worth every penny. The lessons stick to their brains and create so many opportunities for thought and conversation.
You Might Be a Homeschooler if:
Your children talk about Zeus and Aphrodite the way other children talk about Spiderman and Power Rangers.
Great HS Advice:
Always remember to teach the child, not the curriculum.
