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Do you mean you hate it so much you put it off? Or what else is going on? Are you trying to read all the supplemental books and do all the activities and it's too much?

 

If you don't like it, we can help you find something new.

 

If you're trying to do everything, don't. Just pick one or two things to do (or no things) for each chapter and then move on.

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Do you mean you hate it so much you put it off? Or what else is going on? Are you trying to read all the supplemental books and do all the activities and it's too much?

 

If you don't like it, we can help you find something new.

 

If you're trying to do everything, don't. Just pick one or two things to do (or no things) for each chapter and then move on.

I agree!

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I just keep feeling like it is not enough. I feel like things are missing so Ive been trying to supplement with movies and other activities. Then I'll start adding something else in because I still feel like Im missing something. Conversely, my daughter did SOTW 2 in her last school and has near perfect recall of everything they studied. I just want this to be a deeper experience since she loves history. I am way off course with my plans. I should be half way through story of the world and focusing on US History by February.

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:grouphug:   

 

Please keep in mind that History is fractal and never ending.  Just how much breadth and depth are you attempting to go with a 10 year old?  I think you need to sit down and evaluate exactly what your goals are for this season in your child's life.  Are you hoping she becomes history professor material by 11?

 

Honestly, there is a LOT of history to study and it will never end.  There is no finish line.  If she really loves history, then go at a pace and at a depth that is interesting for her but don't burn both of you out trying to cover so much breadth and depth that you bog down and get demoralized or kill her interest.  She has her whole life to study history.  Why the rush?  Again, what are your goals?  What are her goals?  

 

FWIW, my parents both loved history.  They studied it forever but they recognized it isn't a race.  They paced themselves.  There is no way to study ALL of history.  And if you approach it as such, it is a losing proposition.  

 

:grouphug:   I hope you find a path that works for both you and your child.  Best wishes.

Edited by OneStepAtATime
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Weekly:

Read the text, discuss, narrate, and do some map work. Read some relevant, fun, library books for each chapter.

 

Monthly:

Every third or fourth chapter add in a video or project.

 

Yearly:

Have student read 4-8 chapter books over the course of the year. Choose a few excellent things to read aloud, literature or novels/ historical fiction.

 

If you want to add more writing, add an outline to the narrations/ summaries each week.

 

This is easily doable in about 4 hrs per week, woth some extra for a movie or a project.

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I just keep feeling like it is not enough. I feel like things are missing so Ive been trying to supplement with movies and other activities. Then I'll start adding something else in because I still feel like Im missing something. Conversely, my daughter did SOTW 2 in her last school and has near perfect recall of everything they studied. I just want this to be a deeper experience since she loves history. I am way off course with my plans. I should be half way through story of the world and focusing on US History by February.

Is this the first go-around in history?

 

If so, just lay the groundwork. Get through the material without going into depth yet.

 

The second go-around, you can add more depth.

 

By the third go-around (in high school), you can start to specialize. Check out college requirements and make sure those are done, but you could also choose to pick a time period and flush out everything from that time period. It could be part of your core high school class (again, being sure you're meeting college requirements) or an elective.

 

 

But for a 10 year old...don't forget you're laying the groundwork now. She needs to know the basics and you add to them later. Taking weeks for one chapter isn't going to get you far.

 

Perhaps you could take the next couple of weeks and just read the entire SOTW3 book together, cover to cover, like a novel. No stopping. No activies. Just read. While reading, look for the places on a map, but keep going.

 

Then, after the whole book is read, pick historical topics from the book that you really, really like and want to share with her and go into depth on those topics until it's time for American history.

Edited by Garga
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I wonder if part of it is that SOTW 3 covers the time period with American history but isn't truly American history. I have seen lots of people end up down never ending rabbit trails trying to add full American history to SOTW 3 and it can end up taking forever. Maybe you would be better off with a program that combines World and US for you so you aren't feeling the need to keep adding. After all, you can always add something else when it comes to history. I use Biblioplan, but there are other options as well. 

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Liberty's Kids makes a nice American History add-on. 

 

When we did SOTW 3 the first time, we took a few extra weeks for the American history chapters. There is a middle ground. It doesn't have to re-arrange your whole year. We often do history through the summer because my kids think it is fun. Good time for extras, projects and areas they would like to go deeper in. 

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It has been two months. Two whole months and we are still in the first chapter of SOTW 3. I kind of want to drop it but I do not know how to proceed with the Kingfisher's or Usborne Encyclopedia. Suggestions?

 

I'm not really sure how you accidentally spend two months on one chapter.  The first chapter in SOTW3 is literally just 10 pages.  The subchapters are 'The Holy Roman Empire" and "The Riches of Spain"

 

How do you spend 2 months on 10 pages?  I am assuming you read them long ago and have gone off on your own independent study?  I admit that I still find it confusing.

 

That is longer than one might spend if one were taking a college class, assuming it wasn't spending an entire semester on the founding of the Holy Roman Empire. 

 

It's good that she loves history...but your goal is not to teach ALL of history to a ten year old.  You goal is to make sure that she continues to love it and gets a feel for the subject. There will ALWAYS be more history to study, but unless you are making a particular point in time your life's work, and some adults do, you need to move on.

 

Switching to an encyclopedia isn't going to solve the problem. There will still be things you deem 'missing'...an encyclopedia can have less information than SOTW, which will put you right back to where you started. 

 

You say that you keep feeling like it's not 'enough' and keep adding things in. You must have access to a very good public library to have found two months worth of resources for that one chapter.  It also seems like that is the answer to your problem.  It sounds like you have to change your approach and learn to move on. Or, I guess you decide that you are indeed going to spend the year studying Charlemagne and mining conditions in early Latin America under the Spanish monarchy. 

 

Do you have the SOTW activity guide?  It has some nice discussion questions and some ways to guide narration. You do that and you move on to the next chapter in the next week.

 

Assuming you want to stick to your original schedule, you might want to just leap ahead to where you 'should' be and carry on as best you can.  I have to imagine that your studies of Charlemagne and the Spanish Monarchy, will serve you well as you carry on.  You say that last year you studied SOTW 2 and it sounds like you got through the year...so just do what you did last year.

 

OTOH, if indeed your daughter has fallen in love with a particular subject or time period..if you are following her lead, then you could always let her keep reading what she likes in that area, while also carry forward with SOTW 3.  My son wanted to spend a lot longer on the Greeks in 5th grade. It was our second run through the history cycle and he knew he wanted to know more.  I set him up with a secondary reading list and assignments.  So, we studied Ancient history in 5th grade, but we also had a side study of ancient Greece that went deeper. We got through Ancient History in the year and he got to read a whole lot more on ancient Greece. We did the same thing in 8th grade. We studied Modern History, but we also did a more in depth unit on the US Civil war and the US Civil Rights movement.

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I am doing extra reading separately from history time. So each child has their own reading time scheduled into the day with a book from the time period, mostly literature, but occasionally a non fiction.

 

Then we have history time. This is when we use the encyclopedia, timeline, mapbooks, and do writing/outlining a couple of times a week. (If we were still using SOTW this is when we would do it. My kids are logic stage/rhetoric stage and have been through SOTW series twice already.)

 

Then I have a read aloud time. In our current read alouds, I have a stack of books I read a chapter from or a few pages from. They do not all match the exact current page spread they are in from the encyclopedia. Translation, you can move on in SOTW, but still continue your read alouds from Egypt or whatever. Then you just switch to your next read aloud when you finish one.

 

Example of read alouds: Today I read a missionary tale from Hero Tales (completely unrelated to our history. It is just a good book I want my kids to hear.) Then I read a chapter from Maia of Thebes, a fiction book set in Ancient Egypt. I read a myth from Tales from Egypt. And I read a few pages from Ancient Israelites and Their Neighbors. My Odd is currently reading the Old Testament for her Literature time on her own and from History of the Ancient World for her History Text. Mdd is reading a Children's Bible for one of her lit books and some of the Egyptian mythology on her own. We are also reading from an encyclopedia on Ancient Egypt together, but didn't get to a page in it today. And I read aloud from Du'Laire's Book of Ancient Greek Mythology and from MP's Astronomy book. Girls are working on a Girl Scout Badge which required some  Astronomy/Mythology review and we are in the Ancients this year anyway. So we did some of it. I will actually read the book in full once we finish with our Egypt read alouds, but I jumped ahead because they needed it for this badge.  And my mdd's actual history reading and timelining and mapwork during her history time had nothing to do with any of these cultures. Today she read about and did work around Ancient Africa. :) But she has already done some history pages on the Hebrews and Egyptians. They are cultures I am emphasizing more in my read alouds. I do have a book from Africa. We will get to it at some point this year. We just aren't there yet. (I made a master list for the year.)

 

So my point is, we are reading several books from Ancient times from different strands of history. That is all during our assigned read aloud time which is separate from their history time and separate from their silent reading time. I just make sure I schedule time in the week for each of the above. If they keep moving forward at the rate I assign in their own reading and history work, and I keep moving forward in a stack of books for read aloud/discussion each week, we cover a lot over the year.

 

Projects, anymore, I do one a month or every couple of months. One dd did research and made a travel poster of Egypt so far this year. A lot of our projects in learning come from other sources. Both do science projects. Both entered art and photography into our state fair. Both take co-op classes which assign different projects throughout the year.  They are both scouts and can pick badges that enhance what we are learning at home. Sometimes I can help mold assigned projects from other places around things I want to emphasize from our at home studies including history.

 

Some years we have heavier history years. Other years may be more heavily focused on science or art as far as outside classes and projects.

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I just keep feeling like it is not enough. I feel like things are missing so Ive been trying to supplement with movies and other activities. Then I'll start adding something else in because I still feel like Im missing something. Conversely, my daughter did SOTW 2 in her last school and has near perfect recall of everything they studied. I just want this to be a deeper experience since she loves history. I am way off course with my plans. I should be half way through story of the world and focusing on US History by February.

 

If she's just 10yo, how much do you think you need to do with her? I think you're probably supplementing too much and taking the fun out of it. That she "loves history" does not mean you have to cover every little detail.

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I'm doing SOTW 3 with my 3rd-grader (having also done 1 and 2). Here's what works for me:

 

- I listed all the weeks of school I plan to do so I know how much time I have. With each week, I jotted down which chapter (or occasionally two) I want to get done that week. (My spreadsheet is in my signature if you want to see how I do it--click the tab for this year.)

- I printed timeline cards on cardstock and cut them out. We put them on a wall timeline as we get to them.

- I write down any special events or field trips with the week also. (E.g., because of where we live, we were able to go to Williamsburg/Jamestown this month. More often, we go somewhere closer, like the state history museum.)

- The Monday before, I request any library books I want, so they're ready to pick up on Friday and start using the following Monday. At times, I will be supplementing with more US stuff.

- Each day, I read a section of a chapter aloud and we talk about it. Today I read the part about Henry Hudson. That's the end of the chapter, so tomorrow we'll look at a library book about a Native American tribe. (Usually there are fewer section than days, so we read the library books or other books I own.) We review once in a while.

 

We do not have the activity book. Since your DD is older, you may want to have her write a quick summary of each section or chapter, or do map work.

 

HTH.

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I'm doing SOTW 3 with my 3rd-grader (having also done 1 and 2). Here's what works for me:

 

- I listed all the weeks of school I plan to do so I know how much time I have. With each week, I jotted down which chapter (or occasionally two) I want to get done that week. (My spreadsheet is in my signature if you want to see how I do it--click the tab for this year.)

- I printed timeline cards on cardstock and cut them out. We put them on a wall timeline as we get to them.

- I write down any special events or field trips with the week also. (E.g., because of where we live, we were able to go to Williamsburg/Jamestown this month. More often, we go somewhere closer, like the state history museum.)

- The Monday before, I request any library books I want, so they're ready to pick up on Friday and start using the following Monday. At times, I will be supplementing with more US stuff.

- Each day, I read a section of a chapter aloud and we talk about it. Today I read the part about Henry Hudson. That's the end of the chapter, so tomorrow we'll look at a library book about a Native American tribe. (Usually there are fewer section than days, so we read the library books or other books I own.) We review once in a while.

 

We do not have the activity book. Since your DD is older, you may want to have her write a quick summary of each section or chapter, or do map work.

 

HTH.

 

 

Wow!  Do you have a blog?  I would love to know more about how you plan your year.  Impressive!  Thanks for sharing.

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Wow!  Do you have a blog?  I would love to know more about how you plan your year.  Impressive!  Thanks for sharing.

 

Oh, thanks, but that post is pretty much the whole system right there!

  1. Start far ahead--I always prefer to front-load things--,
  2. make a calendar on a spreadsheet,
  3. choose and buy the materials for each subject,
  4. pick what to do for each week and stick it on there,
  5. do any printing out the month before and put things together,
  6. do what the plans say, or change them as needed,
  7. and turn the box gray when the item is done.

(I used to teach school; it gave me a head start on thinking in grids.)

 

Feel free to copy anything that looks useful to you as you're making your own plans. :)

Edited by whitehawk
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