Story of the world

[momof4...]

Has anyone waited and just started SOTW in grade 5?

My boys in grade 1/2 are doing Canada my country from Donnaward. 2/3 I thought we would do native studies and 3/4 do Canadian history . So 4/5 - 7/8 we would go through SOTW with the activity book .

[Garga]

We did. It's not necessarsily written for that high of a level, so I'd assign some extra reading for the boys. It might not have been perfectly at their level, no, but they learned a ton from it.

[Kiara.I]

I like doing Canadian history in context of world history. You could always add it on just as a read-aloud, without doing activities or anything. I just think it's FUN to cover Egypt and Greece and Rome and castles....

 

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[momof4...]

I have the first book but I didn't want to start now because this is our first year .. they came from public school so we are getting into a good routine of math and reading and language arts . I also have 4 year old and 22 month old plus one on the way. I plan to read them books about history .. we have some of the reading lists books that SOTW recommends . We have a living science book we are reading and our read aloud so I'm not sure about adding in SOTW as another read aloud. When my boys are in 4/5 I will have a K and grade 1 and then a 2 year old ;) so thinking all 4 of them could do it then and I will add extra work for the older two .

[YsgolYGair]

I thought it might not be enough, but after reading the introduction to the 4th book, I'm quite happy to wait on it until those ages. SWB says in the 4th book that SOTW 1 is designed for grades 1-4, SOTW 2 is for grades 2-5, SOTW 3 is for grades 3-6, and SOTW 4 is for grades 4-8. So, it seems that 5-8th is not too far out of the age range for the books. 

Edited January 21, 2017 by YsgolYGair

[Momto6inIN]

I would have no qualms about doing that. Seriously, none whatsoever. Add in some novels at their reading level and a once a week summary/outlining writing assignment as described in TWTM and you're good to go for both history and literature.

[Peaceful Isle]

We do story of the world up to 7th grade. My kids still tell me they learned so much from them! Can't wait to start again with my little guy.

[fourisenough]

I think that should work well. My kids don't remember much history that we did k-3, sigh... I thought I'd start this year with my 2nd grader, but we've gotten distracted, so I think I'll just re-start the series in another year or two.

[Susie in CA]

My boys are much older now. We actually used SOTW twice. In grade 1-4 the boys usually did the coloring pages while I read out loud to them. In grades 5-8 I still read the SOTW chapters aloud; this way we also discussed it. However, this time around they also did outlines from other books, read tons of additional books and we did different (more advanced projects).

 

In short, you can use SOTW later, earlier or, like us, twice. :-)

[GeoKitty]

My kids came out of public school.  So we did SOTW in fifth grade (and seventh grade).  We did all four volumes in one year.  We read a chapter a day, did the review questions from the activity guides, as well as the maps.  My fifth grader also put together four lap books - one for each volume.  (My seventh grader did different projects for each volume - typing notes while I read aloud, creating a project a week, maps, research etc).  It worked great!

[Garga]

Oh--my bit of advice: do the mapwork if at all possible. My boys enjoyed doing them, and they effortlessly learned where most things are. No, they don't know every country in Africa or some of the finer points of where things are, but they know the general places that most things are. They won't be utterly embarrassed if anyone asks them if they know where Scotland is or someplace like that. They won't point to South America or something like that.

 

My boys enjoyed coloring in the coloring sheets while I read out loud to them. And they don't like coloring other things, just the SOTW activity sheets with markers. Don't know why. There was just something about those sheets they loved coloring. I liked reading it out loud because I would pause every paragraph or so to discuss what we were reading. I found that if we didn't pause and discuss, they didn't remember it as much.

 

We also did a few of the projects that struck our fancy. There aren't any coloring sheets in Volume 4, which really bummed out my kids, and I think the maps didn't ask you to color things in a certain way--you just labed the maps in Volume 4. Prior to Vol 4, the instructions for the maps had you using different colors and drawing arrows or little pictures on the maps (pyramids in Egypt or something like that.) For Vol 4, I would tell them to label things in different colors and draw some arrows and they never knew that it wasn't in the book to do so (the colors and arrows.)

 

Starting in book 4, I had them outline after we read and also had them write a narration. My boys hated doing that part. Not sure I'd slog through the outlines and narrations again or not if I could go back in time. If I had to do it again, I think I'd have them outline and narrate every other chapter, switching between chapters. That way, they'd get the point on how to do outline and narrate, but it wouldn't feel as burdensome.

 

 

My boys did SOTW together. The oldest was in 5-8th and the youngest was in 2-5th.

Edited January 22, 2017 by Garga

[Ausmumof3]

We are using it this year for 5th, 3rd and 1st. Sonlight doesn't hit it till higher grades. I will use some supplemental reading but not heaps.

[2_girls_mommy]

Since we did it in full in elementary school, once we got to our 2nd round of history, we just used it as a supplement. But I definitely read from it regularly still. 

 

I just wanted to add that my sis taught 6th grade social studies one year in a public school and used vol. 1 as their history text. She used a public school teacher's blog and lesson plans that someone had made up instead of the AG.  She didn't feel anything was lacking. 

Edited January 24, 2017 by 2_girls_mommy

[SebastianCat]

Sonlight uses SOTW in its middle school world history Cores, covering 2 books per year, with supplemental history books and living books added.   I think using it for a 5th grader would be fine, but like others, recommend that you require a bit more than just reading at that age.   With the ages of your kids, I think you have a good plan.   If you are looking for additional historical fiction to add for your older children, check out Sonlight's book lists (Core B and Core C for younger reading level, and Core G and Core H for older reading level).