Story of the World not working. Now what?

[jens2sons]

Thank you everyone for all your thoughts.  I looked more in to AO, SL and BF and I'm seeing that if I want to use their programs, they will have their flaws too.  AO has booklists but I have to come up with the extras.  SL has the book lists (too many in fact) and the schedule but in order to get through it all, I'd have to do a 3rd year of ancients and I just-can't-do-that :bored:.  I think we are both ready for Medieval times.  I called BF yesterday and the gentleman that answered the phone had terrible customer service skills. He actually told me to call Rainbow Resource.  He told me that "we are getting old and so we won't be making anymore revisions or any new versions of our guides".  That killed it for me.  So guess what?  I'm back to   :banghead: SOTW.   I guess I will just have to remind myself that there is no perfect curriculum (just like there is no perfect church, LOL) and it's okay at his age.  I will 'try' to do some projects.  Ugh.  For us, it's important to move forward in teaching at least some sort of history.  I just go crazy when it goes out of chronological order.  Call me OCD I guess.

 

 

Edited January 8, 2016 by jens2sons

[LindaOz]

I am leaning more toward this idea at this point. I am also looking in to tweaking AO to make it work for me since I can do so much of it inexpensively. I don't have much faith that my library has the books that I need. Most of the books I need I have to either download or buy.

.

 

Yes, you would probably find a lot of reading to go along with the Usborne pages at AO. Certainly, you could use CHOW to 'flesh out' what you read and then add any extra books you find in the library or elsewhere. Www.mainlesson,com has lots of free downloadable books.

[SEGway]

We had some of the same things going on with SOTW for the younger crowd. At our house, I switched to Child's History of the World by Hillyer. I think it flows a lot better from story to story. We read a section and narrated 3x a week. (with some coloring/activities from the SOTW AG as they seemed interested; but usually not)

 

Since you already have the AG for ancients, you could maybe look up additional read-alouds on whatever topic sparked interest. Or add just mapping? 

 

My kids remembered a lot more from a straight read-through of CHOW than they did from SOTW. 

We now use SOTW as an audio book and/or optional non-fiction free reading.

 

 

[redsquirrel]

Thank you everyone for all your thoughts.  I looked more in to AO, SL and BF and I'm seeing that if I want to use their programs, they will have their flaws too.  AO has booklists but I have to come up with the extras.  SL has the book lists (too many in fact) and the schedule but in order to get through it all, I'd have to do a 3rd year of ancients and I just-can't-do-that :bored:.  I think we are both ready for Medieval times.  I called BF yesterday and the gentleman that answered the phone had terrible customer service skills. He actually told me to call Rainbow Resource.  He told me that "we are getting old and so we won't be making anymore revisions or any new versions of our guides".  That killed it for me.  So guess what?  I'm back to   :banghead: SOTW.   I guess I will just have to remind myself that there is no perfect curriculum (just like there is no perfect church, LOL) and it's okay at his age.  I will 'try' to do some projects.  Ugh.  For us, it's important to move forward in teaching at least some sort of history.  I just go crazy when it goes out of chronological order.  Call me OCD I guess.

 

Can you give me some examples of how it isn't going in chronological order for you? Because that is the opposite criticism I usually hear about SOTW. There are, very broadly speaking, two ways to approach world history, chronologically and geographically.  SOTW is chronological in it's basic organization.

 

You don't get all the Africa chapters together, for example, and then move on to China, starting from the beginning again. Only to be followed by going back to the beginning with India.  That would be geographical.  An imperfect example of that, is Pandia Press' History Odyssey. It uses SOTW, but you do the chapters is a different order because she is moving around geographically.  Egypt always messes that up a bit in ancient history because it has been around so darn long, lol. You sort of do have to circle back round to Egypt at least twice, unless you want to do a big huge Egypt unit from beginning to end...which some people do. Nothing wrong with that.

 

http://www.pandiapress.com/publications/history-odyssey/

 

SOTW tends to the more chronological. She spends some time in a place, of course you move forward because that is how we move through time, and then you move to a different location and go back to roughly the same period and see what was happening there.  I think of it as the 'meanwhile, back at the ranch' approach to history. You don't hit everything because there is only so much that can be covered. The most common complaint that I have heard about SOTW is that some people don't like moving from region to region in the chapters. They find they prefer to stick with one area for a while longer and then start with another from the beginning. They find the focus on chronology instead of geography frustrating.

 

I had the opposite experience with Pandia Press level 2.  We found missed the more chronological take on things, so we moved to the K12 books for logic stage history. It is more of a mix of the two, but still chronological at it's heart.

[happypamama]

He may just not be an auditory learner. I read SOTW1 to my son and my daughter when he was in second grade and she was in fifth. She remembered it all pretty well. He liked it but didn't remember anything. I figured it was no big deal and just wanted him to get a little exposure. I started out the next year reading SOTW3 to him -- big step in level since we didn't do SOTW2 in between. He recalled nothing, even when I stopped frequently to ask what he recalled. It wasn't sticking at all. By that time, he was a pretty good reader, so I handed him e book and asked him to read the section to himself.

 

He went from not retaining anything to practically quoting it back to me. And he loves history now!

 

And you know what else? He remembers more than he thought. Three years later, he's doing ancients again, but a level up, while I'm reading SOTW1 to the little brothers (and DS2 is repeating tons of it back to me, almost word for word). DS1 remembers the maps and some of the names. All those little pegs were in the back of his head, even though he didn't realize it, and now he's finding them again and adding more to them. He's just really not so much of an auditory learner like DD and DS2. (Tbh, they've all always been that way. DD and DS2 have always been the kids who can repeat a story or song lyrics back after one or two tellings. DS1 never has. But he can hear a guitar riff once and play it back -- he's a kinesthetic and relates learning to movement.)

[jens2sons]

I called and talked to Sonlight and came up with some ideas!  I also figured out how I won't have to go through the ancients again.  I looked through their website and found that my son is old enough (and ready) for SL Core C.  I also figured out how to order just the history, geography and Bible so I don't have to take all the other books in the package.  

[In2why]

Do you remember anything you read when you were 8?

 

To me the idea is exposure, enjoyment, etc. If he is bored with it that is another thing though. I'd switch for that reason.

 

He is going to go over history every year until at least 12th grade.

[LindaOz]

I called and talked to Sonlight and came up with some ideas! I also figured out how I won't have to go through the ancients again. I looked through their website and found that my son is old enough (and ready) for SL Core C. I also figured out how to order just the history, geography and Bible so I don't have to take all the other books in the package.

That's great. I hope you love it!!

[...................]

My kids liked SOTW and I think it's a fun easy to use curriculum. They especially loved the Middle Ages. You could try skipping through volume 1 and getting to volume 2. My kids were never very interested in early hostory. I think we camped in the Middle Ages for 3 years!!!!! I think early history is pretty boring, even as a history lover...the closer to the Middle Ages the better! My kids also love English hostory in particular and there are some great homeschool resources written from that perspective.

 

History should be fun. It shouldn't take much time, that is better spent on math and the other basics. :) do something fun that Interests both of you. !! Try the Middle Ages!

[Momto4inSoCal]

I sort of think the problem with ancient history is you are cramming something like 5000 years of history into a year. All you can do is learn surface information about each culture. Since our basis in western civilization is Greece and Rome some people spend a little longer on that but its hard to really flesh put any part of it since you are moving so fast. I'm sure you could spend years and years going through ancient history of you really wanted to. Once you get to middle ages it slowes and then you spend 2 years learning about 500 years of history bringing them to modern where they can relate a little more. Plus there are a lot of opportunities to do hands on field trips with American history. My kids actually told me on a recent trip they didn't want to churn butter again since they've done it so many times lol. And they know how to make a few different rag dolls. Anyway, glad sonlight worked with you hope it all works out. We use SOTW as an audio lesson in the car. My kids love the stories so I would give Susan Bauer Wise two thumbs up on it :) there is no one size fits all curriculum so hopefully you will find your fit.

[...................]

You can still go in order....just skip the stories in SOTW1 that you find less inspiring...

[Haiku]

We re-arranged SOTW so that we read all the chapters about a specific culture together. When my kids were 5 and 6, going chronologically didn't matter because they barely had a grasp on the concept of time. It made no difference to them whether two events occurred at the same time or 1,000 years apart because they had no idea what 1,000 years meant.

[Guest]

K12 1st-4th is like an interactive SOTW. It took my guys from "blah" to "Wow!". Even some of the stories are the same becasue, as I understand it, SWB had a hand in writing it! We use it as Independants. Worth every penny!