How do you get through SOTW Vol.4 in 36 weeks?

[Sarawarden]

I've just received the SOTW Vol.4, which we'll be using next year (I have to plan in advance because I live out of the country) and I've noticed that there are 42 chapters. I realize that prior volumes also have 42 chapters, but in the past volumes there were always a couple of chapters that were smaller in content, that I could combine into one week's worth of school time. But, I'm not seeing how to do that with Vol. 4? Each and every week looks comprehensive and I'm wondering how those currently studying in Vol. 4 are breaking up the curriculum to fit in their school year? Thanks in advance for your insight. 

[Lori D.]

Ideas:

 

- start early

Six weeks before the rest of your school work, get started on SOTW 4 and do 1 chapter a week. By the time school starts, you'll have 36 chapters to match your 36 weeks of school.

 

- double up

For the first 6 weeks of school, do 2 chapters of History a week while doing a lighter load of work in the other subjects -- or wait to start 1-2 subjects until you're back to 1 chapter of History a week.

 

- slow down

Decide to take 1.5 or even 2 years to cover Modern history. There are SO many major events and key people that slowing down gives you time to really absorb it all and use some of the many great supplements out there -- documentaries with footage of 20th century people and events, feature films set around big events, biographies of important figures, etc. Or, by slowing down, you have time to include some US History into the World History. Or, use the extra time to integrate some Geography studies into the Modern History (cultural geography, nations & capitals, world religions, etc.). Or, use the extra time to set aside SOTW 4 for awhile and do a unit on State History, or an elections-based Civics/Government unit, and follow the Presidential election next fall. Or, by slowing down the History you have time to include a matching Science topic, like the space race/space exploration.

 

- don't worry about it

Do the amount of chapters that you can and that you want to during the school year -- which gives you the flexibility to also skip History a few times during the school year if other things come up. And just skip what you don't get to. Or let DC finish the remaining chapters on their own during the summer. Or, if you have about 12 chapters left by the end of the school year, save it and start the following school year with the remaining SOTW 4 chapters. Or… ;)

Edited January 20, 2016 by Lori D.

[My3girls]

I can't get anything done in 36 weeks. lol

[Zoo Keeper]

I don't do it in 36 weeks.  I break it into two years for jr. high. This leaves more room for rabbit trails research projects, documentaries, and outside reading.  I like breathing room when studying history.

 

I take two years each for SOTW 2 and 3 as well.  This post explains how I schedule it out.  Sometimes I even follow that schedule...;)

[Pen]

My ds listened to the whole of SOTW multiple times all in one year using the audio recordings.

[RootAnn]

I had to expand history to three days a week. We don't do many of the projects this year, so I can get away with three days per week vs. four days per week. However, I also built in a couple extra days for the major conflicts (the wars, for example) when we get to them. We do extra things then. I also do schedule a couple of extra days for projects or games.

 

I'm going to get the whole book done in about 34 weeks at this pace. 

[Pink and Green Mom]

I followed this schedule (she has 36 week plans for each of the SOTW books, by the way).

 

http://barefootmeandering.com/images/planning-modern.pdf

 

 

[Milknhoney]

We struggled with history all the way through, but when we hit SOTW 4, that was the worst. It wasn't so much the quantity that got to us as how much he struggled to recall the details in the review questions, and I was sitting there getting frustrated thinking about how I couldn't have answered the questions either. And that was after listening several times through the chapter in the car and then reading it. And finally I realized that I really didn't care if he learned all of this stuff. I thought that I would care about expanding beyond the standard material covered in western history, but when it came down to struggling over it, I realized that I didn't. 

 

All that is to say that the way we managed SOTW4 was that I just skipped over chapters that I felt were unimportant. Can you be a functioning member of society without knowing about this event? Well I had for 38 years so... skip! Doing this gave us the extra time needed to add depth with other books from the library... which is supposed to be the whole point of the classical model, right? 

 

There's always time to go back over the missed topics in logic or rhetoric stages. Maybe we never will but... sometimes you have to tell yourself that or drive your kid crazy trying to cram a whole college-level education into grammar stage...

[HS Mom in NC]

I divided the readings by 36 weeks.  There are several readings in each chapter.  That gave me a good idea of about how many readings per week needed to happen.  Then I looked at my year calendar and noticed which weeks would be shorter (Thanksgiving, Christmas, the half week I'm out of town for an annual hike, etc.) Next I looked at the chapters and saw which were longer and shorter.  I planned them with those factors in mind. Not everything will fit perfectly in a box, so I don't fret about it.  If we end up starting a new chapter's first reading on Friday or doing the last reading in  chapter on a Monday because that keeps things moving along a better pace for us, that's what I do.

I think the most important part of SOTW 4 is using the Activity Book's outlines.  There are narration questions,  an outline to fill in, and a couple of paragraphs to write from the outline. I may not ask every narration question, but those related to the outline are my top priority.  If my kid can't answer those, then I hand the kid the book and say, "OK, look it up." Then the outline gets filled in and the paragraphs written.

I also don't think every reading is so essential to an elementary education that I have the kid do it in its entirety. I may read some readings aloud, ask a few questions about the most important ideas and call it good. We're more intensive (narration questions, outline, mapwork and written paragraphs) with the readings I think are the most important and relevant.

[kalusignan]

We school 42 weeks (36 weeks during the school year + 6 weeks summer school), so I can technically fit it in. But, with SOTW, I try to just. move. on. when we miss something. I don't fret if we miss something or even a whole week. I don't try to make it up; we listen to the audio in the car and move on.

 

I prioritize our week like this 1) read or listen to the chapter 2) answer comprehension questions and narrate 3) map work 4) additional reading 5) activity

Sometimes we get to all 5, sometimes we just do just 1. It's really ok with a content subject like history, especially for elementary.

 

If you stick to just reading and narrating and even map work, you can easily do 2 chapters in a week.

[redsquirrel]

I just count up all the subchapters and then do some math. I figure out how many weeks of school I want to do, and then I actually give myself some leeway, lets say 30 or 32 weeks instead of 36.  That gives me space for sick days etc. Given my number of days/weeks I have to so school and how many sub chapters there are in SOTW, how many times a week, do I have to read from SOTW.  It usually ends up being a number like...2.7 which means I have to read from SOTW twice a week, with the occasional third time a week.  It all seems to work out as long as I give myself enough time and also work some catch up days into the mix.

 

It's not that difficult. I've got all the way through SOTW 1-4 twice now and always finished each book in our school year. We generally read from SOTW twice a week and did the map work and colouring page. Some weeks I had to schedule three SOTW readings. We always did the review questions and the narrations from the AG. I never skipped those.  I did projects maybe once month or so?  We did more projects in books 1-2, and fewer in books 3 and none in book 4. We usually also had a fiction book going that related to what we were doing in SOTW.  I got those from Classical House of Learning.

 

I am hardly a task master,lol, we never felt rushed and we did what we needed to do.

 

[Garga]

There are 84 sections in the book (2 sections per chapter). 84 / 36 = 2.33 lessons a week.

 

For the first part of this year, we had history 4 times a week. The first three days were reading a section. Day 4 of history was for projects, leftover mapwork, putting things on the timeline, whatever.

 

After Christmas, we've dropped down to 2 or 3 times a week to finish by May. I did that on purpose. I like to have more work at the beginning of the year and to taper off at the end. Also, if something derailed us at the beginning, then I know I'll have plenty of time to make up days. (Which did happen with our Language Arts. We will have to double up on LA lessons for a few weeks this year. Oops. We can do those extra LA lessons when we used to do history.)

 

This is my 2nd time of using SOTW for history for my kids. I do not supplement history with other books this time around. For right now we just read SOTW and then move on to other subjects.

 

The first time I did a cycle of SOTW, I did a lot of supplemental reading, so it can be done. You just have to do history 4 days a week, or even 5, if you read a lot of supplemental material.

Edited January 23, 2016 by Garga

[Coco_Clark]

I never finish a SOTW book in a year. We judged started 3 last week. I figure all 4 will take me a good 6 years.

[allisonknits]

We are working our way through SOTW4 now, and have been doing 4 days of history some weeks (roughly every 3-4 weeks), with the other weeks being 2 days of history, plus supplemental things on other days. It's worked pretty well, and this is actually the last 4 day week for our school year. I agree with PP that I prefer to schedule more work for the first part of the school year and then taper off towards summer.

[Sarawarden]

There are 84 sections in the book (2 sections per chapter). 84 / 36 = 2.33 lessons a week.

 

For the first part of this year, we had history 4 times a week. The first three days were reading a section. Day 4 of history was for projects, leftover mapwork, putting things on the timeline, whatever.

 

After Christmas, we've dropped down to 2 or 3 times a week to finish by May. I did that on purpose. I like to have more work at the beginning of the year and to taper off at the end. Also, if something derailed us at the beginning, then I know I'll have plenty of time to make up days. (Which did happen with our Language Arts. We will have to double up on LA lessons for a few weeks this year. Oops. We can do those extra LA lessons when we used to do history.)

 

This is my 2nd time of using SOTW for history for my kids. I do not supplement history with other books this time around. For right now we just read SOTW and then move on to other subjects.

 

The first time I did a cycle of SOTW, I did a lot of supplemental reading, so it can be done. You just have to do history 4 days a week, or even 5, if you read a lot of supplemental material.

 

Thank you so much for your insight. I like your approach and it sounds very doable for our family. 

[Sarawarden]

Ideas:

 

- start early

Six weeks before the rest of your school work, get started on SOTW 4 and do 1 chapter a week. By the time school starts, you'll have 36 chapters to match your 36 weeks of school.

 

- double up

For the first 6 weeks of school, do 2 chapters of History a week while doing a lighter load of work in the other subjects -- or wait to start 1-2 subjects until you're back to 1 chapter of History a week.

 

- slow down

Decide to take 1.5 or even 2 years to cover Modern history. There are SO many major events and key people that slowing down gives you time to really absorb it all and use some of the many great supplements out there -- documentaries with footage of 20th century people and events, feature films set around big events, biographies of important figures, etc. Or, by slowing down, you have time to include some US History into the World History. Or, use the extra time to integrate some Geography studies into the Modern History (cultural geography, nations & capitals, world religions, etc.). Or, use the extra time to set aside SOTW 4 for awhile and do a unit on State History, or an elections-based Civics/Government unit, and follow the Presidential election next fall. Or, by slowing down the History you have time to include a matching Science topic, like the space race/space exploration.

 

- don't worry about it

Do the amount of chapters that you can and that you want to during the school year -- which gives you the flexibility to also skip History a few times during the school year if other things come up. And just skip what you don't get to. Or let DC finish the remaining chapters on their own during the summer. Or, if you have about 12 chapters left by the end of the school year, save it and start the following school year with the remaining SOTW 4 chapters. Or… ;)

You're awesome. Great approaches- all of them! Plus I felt like I could breathe again after reading your ideas. Thanks!

[Lori D.]

Great approaches- all of them! Plus I felt like I could breathe again after reading [these] ideas.

 

Realizing you have options, and that it is OKAY to change the way you do things, even mid-year, is very freeing. Esp. when "life happens" and something comes up during the school year that forces you off your great plans and schedules. ;)

 

ENJOY your history studies! Warmest regards, Lori D.