What are you all using for history during middle school?

[Laura W.]

I'd love to hear how you're liking history revealed! It's front runner for us in Jan.

 

Eta- history hasn't been a strength up until now. I'd like to do history revealed for 5&6th and then omnibus in 7th.

 

I thought it was good last year, but this year we're enjoying it even more.  I spent time thinking through what worked and what didn't, and have done some adjustments.

 

I like having the recordings.  Some of my children like them, some don't, but they listen and do some narration.  They were really over the head of my youngest school-aged child - even with the young learners activities he really didn't get much out of it and hated history.  This year (in 2nd grade) he is doing FIAR.  The children studying History Revealed are in grades 11, 8, 7, 5, and 5.  After using it for a year, I think 4th/5th grade is about as early as you'd want to use it.

 

I also like her 4-week cycle - basic information week, a week to dig in-depth into a topic or two selected by the child, a hands-on week, and a week in which the child produces some kind of project to wrap up their learning.  It works great, but can be adapted if you get to a unit where you  want to spend more time.

 

In the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th weeks, the manual includes a lot of ideas.  It's great for the children to be able to pick and choose the activities and projects that interest them.  Some of my children aren't terribly fond of history, so I assign something or give them a choice between two of her ideas that I think are most do-able for that child.

 

I really, really like the multisensory aspect of the program.  I have some children with learning differences, and it is important for them in order to cement their learning.  Of course, "normal" children also learn better when more senses are engaged.  In her resources, she lists a few movies, educational dvds, etc, but I have searched out others in order to try to have 1-2 items like that per unit.

 

One problem with the 3rd and 4th weeks that I ran into was implementation of the hands-on.  My science labs don't get done unless I have a complete kit on hand - and I discovered it was the same for hands-on history.  So this year I invested in some kits and am using Project Passport as well - those will help us get weeks 3 and 4 done more effectively.

 

HTH.

 

Blessings,

 

Laura

[mom31257]

I wanted to add a comment about my dd's middle school years. I had just learned about classical education and wanted to try some more classical approaches to history. Here is the sequence I used those years.

 

6th: MOH Ancients 

7th: Kingfisher for the rest of world history's major events with outlining, timeline, etc., and historical fiction

8th: Sonlight Core 100 which uses Hakim's US History

 

I don't feel like she really retained anything from 6th and 7th grades other than information she knew from living with a history teacher dad. She absolutely hated Hakim. After finishing 3 of the 10 books, she asked for something else, any textbook. I gave her the 8th grade BJU textbook. She loved it. She retained so much more once she actually had a textbook for a spine. She enjoyed some of the fiction, but she didn't really learn anything from it.  She wanted to study ancient and medieval more in depth in high school, so I used Biblioplan. She did learn a lot with it, but it had weekly worksheets and tests. 

 

 

 

 

[AMJ]

Time for another plug for my favorite history supplement:  Stanford History Education Group's (SHEG) Reading Like A Historian (sheg.stanford.edu)!  A great addition to any history curriculum, teaching kids to carefully consider the source and think critically about history.  You can do less or more writing in conjunction with this, as you see fit.  If you want your kids to write thoughtful output in response to questions or essay assignments this is the way to go.  Entirely free, and all available online.  Go check it out!

 

[JadeOrchidSong]

I wanted to add a comment about my dd's middle school years. I had just learned about classical education and wanted to try some more classical approaches to history. Here is the sequence I used those years.

 

6th: MOH Ancients

7th: Kingfisher for the rest of world history's major events with outlining, timeline, etc., and historical fiction

8th: Sonlight Core 100 which uses Hakim's US History

 

I don't feel like she really retained anything from 6th and 7th grades other than information she knew from living with a history teacher dad. She absolutely hated Hakim. After finishing 3 of the 10 books, she asked for something else, any textbook. I gave her the 8th grade BJU textbook. She loved it. She retained so much more once she actually had a textbook for a spine. She enjoyed some of the fiction, but she didn't really learn anything from it. She did want to study ancient and medieval more in depth in high school, so I used Biblioplan. She did learn a lot with it, but it had weekly worksheets and tests.

Can you please share how dd used BJU? Did you teach from the TM? And what is Biblioplan high school like? Thanks!

[mom31257]

Can you please share how dd used BJU? Did you teach from the TM? And what is Biblioplan high school like? Thanks!

She continued reading the fiction books from Sonlight, but I replaced BJU for reading from Hakim. I mainly had her read and outline the textbook (sometimes) and do some of the student activity manual pages as well as tests. I used the TM to do the discussion questions and review before tests, but I didn't do daily teaching.

 

Biblioplan high school used their own "textbook", the Companion for each year's course. Each week there was a map to complete as well as a 2 page worksheet with fill-in-the-blank answers, short answers, short essay answers, and a research essay. The tests would be over various length units (4-7 weeks material at a time), and would come word-for-word from these activities. I didn't have her do every research essay because we simply didn't have time. I had her choose one per unit. 

 

Dd actually enjoyed the geography aspect quite a bit and learned so much. Near the end of the 2nd year, she was given an empty map of the Eastern hemisphere, and I was amazed at how much she was able to label from memory. 

 

I've considered using it for high school with ds, but I really want to evaluate his situation then before deciding. It would be my other choice besides BJU.

[LMD]

I'd love to hear how you're liking history revealed! It's front runner for us in Jan.

Eta- history hasn't been a strength up until now. I'd like to do history revealed for 5&6th and then omnibus in 7th.

 

 

 

 

I thought it was good last year, but this year we're enjoying it even more.  I spent time thinking through what worked and what didn't, and have done some adjustments.

 

I like having the recordings.  Some of my children like them, some don't, but they listen and do some narration.  They were really over the head of my youngest school-aged child - even with the young learners activities he really didn't get much out of it and hated history.  This year (in 2nd grade) he is doing FIAR.  The children studying History Revealed are in grades 11, 8, 7, 5, and 5.  After using it for a year, I think 4th/5th grade is about as early as you'd want to use it.

 

I also like her 4-week cycle - basic information week, a week to dig in-depth into a topic or two selected by the child, a hands-on week, and a week in which the child produces some kind of project to wrap up their learning.  It works great, but can be adapted if you get to a unit where you  want to spend more time.

 

In the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th weeks, the manual includes a lot of ideas.  It's great for the children to be able to pick and choose the activities and projects that interest them.  Some of my children aren't terribly fond of history, so I assign something or give them a choice between two of her ideas that I think are most do-able for that child.

 

I really, really like the multisensory aspect of the program.  I have some children with learning differences, and it is important for them in order to cement their learning.  Of course, "normal" children also learn better when more senses are engaged.  In her resources, she lists a few movies, educational dvds, etc, but I have searched out others in order to try to have 1-2 items like that per unit.

 

One problem with the 3rd and 4th weeks that I ran into was implementation of the hands-on.  My science labs don't get done unless I have a complete kit on hand - and I discovered it was the same for hands-on history.  So this year I invested in some kits and am using Project Passport as well - those will help us get weeks 3 and 4 done more effectively.

 

HTH.

 

Blessings,

 

Laura

Thanks so much for your reply, I found it very helpful! Very encouraging, as your comments matched the impression I had! It will mainly be for my rising 5th. My boys will be more tagging along & I had planned to use FIAR too! I had a similar thought with kits so I've ordered hands on history for the rrr time period to help us out.

 

Thanks again!

[TwoEdgedSword]

BJU Heritage Studies has worked well here and we are sticking with it. We're adding BJU online science too.

[HS Mom in NC]

Greenleaf Guides for the Famous Men series are designed for discussion, but can be used for written assignments.  I bulk mine up a bit with more related literature and essay type assignments and biographies as needed because they're designed for late elementary or early middle school depending on a child's abilities.

[Haiku]

We have used and enjoyed several of the Homeschool in the Woods products. They are not secular, but I just point out the Christian bias in things and move on. We have also read from The Story of Mankind by van Loon. Additionally, we will be using the American History Sourcebook combined with the Stanford History Education Group's primary source lessons as part of our American history studies. We will also be reading A Young People's History of the United States and using lesson plans from Zinn Ed. I have found that my kids enjoy history MUCH more when it's not following a strict one-time-period-per-year, outline-yourself-into-oblivion, read-a-boring-history-encyclopedia approach. My kids like projects and stories.

[nobeatenpath]

We are using History of the Ancient World with the study and teachng guide, and supplementing with extra reading, documentaries etc. I only hope that more study guides are written for the other books in the series!

[KrissiK]

I don't feel like she really retained anything from 6th and 7th grades other than information she knew from living with a history teacher dad. She absolutely hated Hakim. After finishing 3 of the 10 books, she asked for something else, any textbook. I gave her the 8th grade BJU textbook. She loved it. She retained so much more once she actually had a textbook for a spine. She enjoyed some of the fiction, but she didn't really learn anything from it. She wanted to study ancient and medieval more in depth in high school, so I used Biblioplan. She did learn a lot with it, but it had weekly worksheets and tests.

I did a very classical "living books approach" to my kids' history ever since we started homeschooling 6 years ago. For me, I hated history until I started reading Thomas Costain's biographies on the Plantagents and realized there was so much more to history beyond the textbook. But my kids are retaining nothing. They don't particularly enjoy history, either, even with the approach of good historical fiction, biographies, etc. But so much has been made of how horrible history texts are and on and on and on, so I really felt that I needed to teach this way. Finally, this year we switched to the A Beka history program. I know BJU is good, too, but I had already spent so much $ and A Beka fit my budget more than BJU. And I wouldn't say that my kids love history, but there is more understanding and they seem to like it better this way.

 

So, all that to say it is nice to be validated that it's not a horrible thing to switch to a text based history program. I have felt the need to be so apologetic when people ask me what history we are using, but I guess I shouldn't anymore.

 

ETA: I wonder if my kids prefer the textbook because it is more concrete. It deals more with facts that they can retain and understand, rather than just people. My kids are all very very concrete in their thinking yet. Which is developmentally appropriate.

[Soror]

For my son we using/will be using lots and lots of books. He loves to read and learns well through stories and books. What we are not doing is Sonlight though, neither of us are big fans of historical fiction, we find it very tedious to go through the big story for bits of facts which may or may not be entirely accurate. We read narrative non-fiction and other good non-fiction. Occasionally we might read a few historical fiction but only if the book is also a great book as well. Actually, there are a lot of books suggested as "living books" by CM and other sites that we just don't care for at all, finding a lot of them to be quite boring. We do like authors like Freedman, Marrin, Sheinkin, Murphy etc. My son is not a big fan of projects, he would rather read any day, so we keep to reading.

 

Now, my oldest daughter is entirely different thus far. She is not a big reader yet and even once she is fluent I don't see her being quite the reading addict he is, she is no where close to as engaged with read-alouds as he was/is. She, on the other hand, loves projects. I believe I'll be trying Winter Promise with her this coming year and I can see using other similar programs with her as she gets older. I can see her perhaps even using textbooks as she does enjoy her independence and things that are straight forward, only time will tell though.

[Sunnybuddy]

I used Biblioplan. She did learn a lot with it, but it had weekly worksheets and tests.

Would you recommend Biblioplan for 6-8 grades?

[mom31257]

Would you recommend Biblioplan for 6-8 grades?

 

I did not have a child in that level when we used it, so I'm probably not the best person to ask. They also did not have the Upper Middles pages when I used it, so I took a look at the samples of those as compared to the high school level. The similarities in what is covered would probably prevent me from using BP for a child all the way through; however, either level covers great material. I downloaded the 3 week free sample, and it doesn't include the tests. There are tests to upper middle and advanced, so you'd have that option. Have you looked at the 3 week samples? Those might give you a better idea. 

[blessed3x]

Hmmm...just curious, does no one do TOG anymore?

 

 

ToG!  :hurray:

[Momto4inSoCal]

My plan is biblioplan along with story of the world for 5 and 6th then omnibus but I've heard omnibus isn't really a full history so I might add something to that. 

[diaperjoys]

We're planning to use BiblioPlan Medieval for our 7th, 6th, 4th, and 3rd graders. LIterature and geography are scheduled in, as well as a selection of optional spines (MOH, SOTW, etc)