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I had an interesting thought as I reviewed our state's CSOs (Content Standards and Objectives) this evening. I saw a thread on this forum about this information and thought it might be worth a look.

 

We are using SOTW, Usborne's Encylopedia, an atlas, globe, various maps and real books for our history study. I am completely in support of studying history chronologically.

 

How do you incorporate various aspects of social studies into this? Having never seen volume 4 of SOTW, I'm not sure if this is an issue, but what about things like how government works, supply and demand, agricultre, citizenship, and various other topics that aren't exactly history? I know they are part of history, but how (and when) is that covered? It seems more like economics, but not entirely. When I was in ps, we had a Civics class in middle school that taught such concepts.

 

I'd love to hear thoughts and ideas about this. This is stuff my son is very interested in anyway, so I'm not overly concerned about it being very difficult, I'm just not sure how to implement it. Thanks!

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It makes a nice topic all to itself. I have a vague, misty memory that maybe SWB suggests it as an area of specific study in the high school years? I know that is when my state expect it.

 

I figured that when he gets to be old enough to understand more about 'systems' I will take him on visits of our city, county, state and fed gov't offices.

 

My son is on his second trip through the history cycle. When we started with the third book, which covers the begining of US hisory and stops just before the US civil war, he was already making connections between greek/roman history, the enlightement and US history. He continued making those connections all through the fourth book. That tells me that when he gets to high school, he will be ready for a larger discussion about civics and the process of it all.

 

His father and I are political junkies, to put it mildly, so he is primed to find it interesting.

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I remember reading something about taking some time to study your own state's history, but that would be later on I think. Maybe I need to do a re-read!

 

I'm not going to get too worked up over my state's CSOs, but it's still an interesting thought. If you were going to sort of incorporate it along with the history, it would be best to begin at the beginning, right? They had supply and demand in Greece and Rome and Egypt, too. He's a fifth grader, and he's interested in that kind of stuff, so could we go ahead and do that sort of thing? It seems like it might take a little planning on my part to cover those topics in context. Do you think that's the best way to do it, or would it be more teachable and retainable as a seperate subject? Hmmm.....

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A lot of families cover this stuff accidentally, during morning devotions, geography and literature.

 

Morning Devotions used to take us about 1 1/2 hours, and all sorts of current events, church history, martyr updates, Operation Prayer requests, etc ended out covering a lot of civics. And then my younger son got fascinated with communism after being introduced to the idea in Acts of the Apostles and we watched a lot of documentaries and read a lot of books till instead of me convincing him that communism was bad, he convinced me that bad people used communism to get what they want, but that communism itself is just another form of government with it's strengths and weaknesses.

 

Almost anything that isn't fitting into the schedule can be squeezed in through a few documentaries, watched while having a couple snacks. Whole pages of state standards can be covered in the time it takes to consume a box of crackers :-)

 

The fact that you are aware that you'd like to squeeze in some civics, will alert you to possibilities to cover it nontraditionally, as they appear.

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what about things like how government works, supply and demand, agricultre, citizenship, and various other topics that aren't exactly history? I know they are part of history, but how (and when) is that covered?

 

Those come up throughout history. As soon as you go beyond just listing dates and explore why things have developed a certain way, these issues must be brought up.

It is impossible to thoroughly study Ancient Greece without discussing the political system of Athens, early ideas of democracy, limits to citizen participation etc. these themes have to be revisited when studying Rome, because an understanding of a republic is important. Feudalism as a different form of government is crucial to an understanding of the Middle ages. And our current political system will naturally arise when American history is discussed, because it is central to the whole development of the country. At that point, I am planning to go a bit more into depth and cover details of the government system.

 

Supply and demand, too, is a central theme in history. It begins early on, when an agricultural surplus enabled a division of labor that made it possible to have specialists who produced other things than food. It is a central aspect in trading, and economics had a big impact on the development of civilizations. Economics and geography come up when comparing Greek to Roman civilization etc.

 

So, I think a good history course deals with these aspects "as you go".

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Those come up throughout history. As soon as you go beyond just listing dates and explore why things have developed a certain way, these issues must be brought up.

It is impossible to thoroughly study Ancient Greece without discussing the political system of Athens, early ideas of democracy, limits to citizen participation etc. these themes have to be revisited when studying Rome, because an understanding of a republic is important. Feudalism as a different form of government is crucial to an understanding of the Middle ages. And our current political system will naturally arise when American history is discussed, because it is central to the whole development of the country. At that point, I am planning to go a bit more into depth and cover details of the government system.

 

Supply and demand, too, is a central theme in history. It begins early on, when an agricultural surplus enabled a division of labor that made it possible to have specialists who produced other things than food. It is a central aspect in trading, and economics had a big impact on the development of civilizations. Economics and geography come up when comparing Greek to Roman civilization etc.

 

So, I think a good history course deals with these aspects "as you go".

 

Are concepts like this explained in SOTW? I'm only in Volume I, so we're just getting started. We will also be using the Usborne Internet Linked Encylopedia of World History. I guess that's why one chapter will be covered for a whole week (or longer!) We will be supplementing our own reading and studying on these various topics as they apply. It just makes sense that they will be easier to understand in context.

 

I guess economics and specific government classes will come later. I just noticed in our 5th grade CSOs for our state, it has a lot of government based knowledge listed, both state and national. I don't particularly care about that, but I know at some point TWTM recommends letting the kids take some standardized testing to get them used to it, and that stuff will undoubtedly come up on the tests.

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I do not know about in SOTW vol 1 or 2, but much of what we are covering this year doing Sonlight core 3(which I am using in a modified early modern history course) makes it easy to cover those themes as does my Canadian history study we are doing along side core 3. We will be doing a more indepth gov't study next year, which will include a field trip to the legislature building to watch a session etc like the ps do in grade 6, but over all most of those sorts of topics are covered alongside the regular history material. I can not speak to the ancient or medieval studies as we have not done those ones.

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