OleanderRain Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 This is probably a question for the non religious... I'm not sure if Christians teach this... Anyways, I'm currently reading WTM and I'll be applying it next year, we're doing K now, but I'm curious...where does prehistory fit in? When do you teach about how the universe and earth was formed, dinosaurs, stone age, and ice age? What curricula do you use to teach these subjects, if any? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
melmichigan Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 I am using SL but use SOTW and the Usborne IL Encyclopedia of World History. They do a nice job on prehistory. We used that and a few of the literature selections from the SOTW AG. That is roughly the first 100 pages. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tdeveson Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 I teach from the big bang to the first appearance of homo sapiens in science. This includes all our ancestors after our branch separated from the other primates. Once I get to homo sapiens, I teach it as history, or more properly, as anthropology/archeology tucked into our history lessons. I teach it the year I teach the Ancients and tuck in the information before we get to the nomads. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thowell Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 The ice age and dinosaurs are both in our history MOH. This is not something all Christians disagree with just the time period in which it happened. we of course teach from a creation stand point so no big bang theory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonnia Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 My beliefs line up with the Theistic evolutionists - I am a Christian who sees no conflict between religious belief and scientific theory. Evolution was just the process through which God created and continues to affect His creation. (please no debate - I am only trying to answer the original question. :)) We covered pre-history lightly, maybe two weeks with my 6 yr-old, before we began Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and Israel. I briefly explained the differing viewpoints and how sometimes the debates could become pretty heated. (This is a great point to stress being respectful of others whose opinions are different.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimson Wife Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 I also lean towards a belief in theistic evolution but teach about "Intelligent Design" and YEC as well. My kids are too young to get into the specifics of the debate but when they're older I'm planning to have them read the arguments made by both sides. We started our study of history and our study of biology with a unit on hominid evolution. I really liked The Best Book of Early People by Margaret Hynes and DK Eyewitness: Early Humans. We also watched the Dawn of Man series from BBC. We cover the Big Bang and the creation of the universe as part of our study of astronomy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shukriyya Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 You might like these books. Lovely illustrations and poetic writing. They're a collusion of science and pre-history. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiana Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 You might like these books. Lovely illustrations and poetic writing. They're a collusion of science and pre-history. These look awesome, thanks, bookmarked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aurelia Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 We chose to do it before starting the first volume of SOTW. Our activities are/were more science than history, since I found a free unit study on dinosaurs at Currclick when I was downloading the Connect the Thoughts prehistory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sleepymommy Posted October 21, 2009 Share Posted October 21, 2009 We're doing it now in Kindy, but we're not going too deep. We are reading parts of Usborne's History of the World, DK's Early Humans, the trio of books posted in the link by pp and the giant timeline from Charlies Playhouse. I'm more introducing him to concepts, I'm sure we will go back and review a lot of this in the coming years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EKS Posted October 21, 2009 Share Posted October 21, 2009 At the beginning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moniksca Posted October 21, 2009 Share Posted October 21, 2009 I fell into it accidentally. My ds was really into dinosaurs last year and I figured I might as well go on from the beginning. I believe that when he is older he can decide for himself the debate between creation/evolution. I'm a christian who believes somewhat in evolution so I'm teaching both. I like the Usbourne books. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom31257 Posted October 21, 2009 Share Posted October 21, 2009 I am a Christian, but if I were going to teach it (although we do tell our kids about the belief in evolution), I would do it before Ancients. I just bought the Usborne Internet Linked World History book and about 100 pages are prehistory. I was disappointed, but you would probably love it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IsabelC Posted October 21, 2009 Share Posted October 21, 2009 General prehistory fits in nicely with biology and earth science. We also have a few books about human evolution so that slots in before the first volume of SOTW (although SWB is religious, she has deliberately left the beginning open so that parents can incorporate their own preferred version). Also you can fit in a lot just incidentally as you read through the ancients. Eg you read about Prometheus stealing fire from Olympus, then you discuss how this myth was used to explain things the ancients didn't know/understand, and you mention that fire was really in use about 800,000 ago and this probably started by accident. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LibraryLover Posted October 21, 2009 Share Posted October 21, 2009 You might like these books. Lovely illustrations and poetic writing. They're a collusion of science and pre-history. Well that's a new one on me. Thank you. I was listening to John Denver today, in fact. (I looked around the site not just the one link). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AudreyTN Posted October 21, 2009 Share Posted October 21, 2009 Before starting the Ancients. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skirch Posted October 23, 2009 Share Posted October 23, 2009 You might like these books. Lovely illustrations and poetic writing. They're a collusion of science and pre-history. Thank you for suggesting these books. I ordered them the other night and received them yesterday - they are beautiful books and perfect for young children. I can't wait to read them with my daughter.:001_smile: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greta Posted October 23, 2009 Share Posted October 23, 2009 Just before we started SOTW Vol 1, we did a little mini-unit on human evolution and prehistoric human existence. I just pieced together what I could find at the library with what I remembered studying these topics myself in college. It doesn't have to be anything too formal, especially at such a young age. Just introduce the general idea. At the time, I did not know about the books from Dawn Publications (that have been linked in this thread), but if I did, I would have used those. We have since purchased them and they are really nice. I think we used some DK books and made a rough timeline of human evolution. We study evolution in more detail in the context of our biology studies, and the big bang in the context of astronomy. But if you're looking for a good general overview of all of that, those "The Universe Tells . . . " books are great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patchfire Posted October 23, 2009 Share Posted October 23, 2009 In first grade, we combined history and science for the first few weeks and did prehistory then. Next go around, we'll cover it for a week at the beginning, but I also have some books and videos I'll be requiring her to read (no other work) over the summer preceding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ravin Posted October 23, 2009 Share Posted October 23, 2009 Well, we talked about evolution when we started our present animal study, by making a big Tree of Life poster. The base has one celled organisms, and we talked about how those are still around but multi-celled plants, animals, and fungi evolved from them. We're just wrapping up invertebrates and starting on vertebrates this week. We'll finish off with a week on mammals and a week on human evolution, sticking us on the tree with everything else. We'll go more in depth when DD is older. I didn't address it at all in history this year; we started in on a book called How Children Lived, and the first 2-page spread is on Ancient Egypt, so we just started there. I like the way the book avoids drawing a line from one kind of life to another as social evolution; they're in chronological order, and represent different stations of life as well as different cultures. We're not using SOTW entirely because the first chapter and the whole "unwashed nomad" thing just stuck in my craw. I have a degree in anthropology, and it has shaped some of my opinion of such things. I like the look of those books above, btw. I'll have to see if our library has them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terabith Posted October 23, 2009 Share Posted October 23, 2009 The Tree of Life sounds wonderful! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura W. Posted October 24, 2009 Share Posted October 24, 2009 Part of it we cover in science: Origin of earth and universe - when we cover astronomy and earth science Ancient animals (like dinosaurs) - either in biology or earth science Even ice age/stone age climate, animals, etc we study in science. The only part we study in history is early man. That took us about a week or so before diving into ancient history. Blessings, Laura Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kalanamak Posted October 24, 2009 Share Posted October 24, 2009 Anyways, I'm currently reading WTM and I'll be applying it next year, we're doing K now, but I'm curious...where does prehistory fit in? When do you teach about how the universe and earth was formed, dinosaurs, stone age, and ice age? Universe formation, second grade. Ice age and dinos, I did the whole of K, and kiddo loved it. Many resources, e.g. The First Dog, You Wouldn't Want to be A Mammoth Hunter, Maroo of the Winter Caves, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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