SOTW.....what would you do?

[ChristusG]

I'm trying think of next year. I have two DD's. One will be 6 and one will be 3. The older will be doing first grade and of course the younger will not be doing school (I may do a bit of Little Hands to Heaven, but nothing formal). Eventually I will be homeschooling the 3 year old when she gets to kindergarten. Should I wait to do the SOTW when I can do it with both kids together? Or should I do it with my first grader this next year? Or should I wait till my first grader is a bit older?Will she get the maximum benefit out of it at only six years old?

[K&Rs Mom]

I started with a 6 & 4yo, and the 4yo liked to hear the stories and do some of the crafty stuff, I just didn't expect anything out of her. She remembers some of it, and will pick up more on the next rotation. I didn't insist on her joining us, but she usually wanted to because of the "story" aspect of SOTW.

[ProudGrandma]

you could easily wait until you have a 7 and 4 year old (approx) or you could go on and do SOTW next year. I know that doesn't really help...other than to say that either way you go, would be fine. If it were me, I would wait. I started my 4 year old in SOTW (along with a 7 and 8 year old at the time) and we did things like Aubrey did. A 4 year old would more likely "cooperate" with the process better than a 3 year old. So that leaves to open as to what to do next year...READ, READ, and READ...historical fiction and non fiction books...if you do that, you will be doing more than any school...at this age all they do is "social studies"...which include VERY LITTLE history (in my expereince anyway). Hope that does help some.

[redsnapper]

I'd start now. Like it was said earlier, the 3yo can enjoy the stories and maybe a coloring page. But also if you are doing history in a 4year cycle, she can then jump in formally at whatever stage of history you are doing in that year.

 

Have fun!

-Melissa

[Alice]

I have a 6 yr old and a 3 yr old. We did SOTW Ancients this year for 1st grade. Ds LOVES it, he daily tells me how much he loves history so it's been a success here. The 3 yr old doesn't really sit in on much of the reading time but he absorbs some it just because their imaginative play has centered around history this year. They went through a phase of being Achilles and Odysseus. They are actually playing "Roman army" right now. The 3 yr old has joined us for activities we've done, if he wants and usually he gets something out of it or just thinks it's fun. My plan is he'll join in more formally with whatever we are on when he gets to 1st grade. Until then, he can play along if he wants.

 

ETA: I'm glad I started with my 6 yr old this year. I thought it was the perfect year for all the myths and stories. He really has loved it. That obviously will vary by child, but I think it's at least worth trying and doing to their interest level.

[Pam L in Mid Tenn]

Start with your first grader now and add your younger child in when she starts school. Then they can rotate through history together from there.

[2_girls_mommy]

SOTW is great for 6 yr olds! I agree w/others. Start it now. Let 3 yr old do as much as she wants. She might enjoy some of the painting and projects and additional story books. Dont' have her do maps or narration or anything.

 

Don't require any formal work until she is 1st grade, and she will just start history with whatever level you are on then. I agonized about this when I was starting 1st w/my oldest too. Mine were 6 and 4 then. Next year when we start vol. 3 they will be 8 and 6. This will be the first year that the youngest will have her own history notebook and will be expected to do the maps and narration. She has been listening in to the stories and doing coloring and activities all along though. Many of the additional read alouds are in story form with beautiful pictures, so she has gotten a lot out of those too. HTH.

[Ali in OR]

My two that I home school are the same age difference as yours and we started SOTW when the older was 6 and the younger 3. My younger one has tagged along since day 1. She sits through all of the reading (SOTW and in our case, picture books recommended in the AG, and Biblioplan K-2 readers). She has always done the coloring pages. She asked for map pages this year in first grade. I will start narrations with her next year when she will be in 2nd grade and we will be back in Ancients again. So for our second time through, I will consider her "official" and require more from her, but she has always enjoyed our history studies and already knows a lot.

[ChristusG]

I think you guys have convinced me to go ahead and use it this year, for first grade. Should I get the book or the audio CD's? And also, is the activity book really good? I thought about getting that as well.

[Chris in VA]

I think you guys have convinced me to go ahead and use it this year, for first grade. Should I get the book or the audio CD's? And also, is the activity book really good? I thought about getting that as well.

 

If you can afford it, get both the CD's and the book! You can listen to the Cd's as review in the car or at quiet time. But if you have to choose just one, I'd get the book--I like to read aloud to dd, and I like the "snuggle" aspect.

As for the AG, DEFINITELY! I'm a big AG fan.

[Aurelia]

We use the book and activity guide. I wholeheartedly recommend them! The AG has the coloring pages and maps and supplemental activities. I bought the CDs, but Ariel doesn't really like them. She's not an auditory learner, though.

[everlastingstarflower]

The activity book is definitely worth the price. My dd and ds love the coloring pages. We did a few of the art projects and the kids both loved them. If we had more time we would have done more but, I'm planning to use SOTW I again when my dd is in 5th and my ds is in 3rd so maybe we'll get to more of the art projects then.

 

We also checked out a lot of the additional/historical reading books that are listed in the activity book from the library. The thing I like about SOTW II activity book is that they tell you what reading level the books are on, where as SOTW I doesn't and it's a little harder to determine if your child will be able to read those books on their own or not.

 

My kids had trouble with the narration part outlined in the activity book. They always wanted to recount every detail verbatum from the story, which is waaaayyy too much for a K and 2nd grader. So it was nice that they have some narration sentence ideas in the activity book. I just wrote out the sentences that were appropriate for each child's age and had them do copywork. I'm hoping to be able to take the end of this school year to help them learn how to do the narration better so that next fall, they'll be able to do some of the narration on their own. So don't be discouraged if your 6 yr. old doesn't do the hand-written narration part. I think they add that to the curriculum so that parents can use it for handwriting/writing/history all-in-one if they want to.

 

There's also a test booklet that goes along with SOTW, which we haven't used. When I re-use the curriculum when my kids are older I'm going to concentrate more on having them do the narration themselves and taking the tests to make sure they're retaining what we've read and maybe do some more of the art projects just because they're lots of fun and we haven't done much this time around. Plus, I think that since we've done all of the coloring pages this time and the coloring pages will be a little too young for them once they're older it'll be another way for us to use the same information but with a different twist. (We'll save money on curriculum, too!)

 

My kids also love to act out the stories in their playtime. We read so many books about myths, etc. and it was great to hear them playing out the stories that they had read about in the extra books. My ds, who is 6, even made a trident with his tinker toys so he could be Pseidon. It was priceless!

 

We did not get the CD. I didn't know that there were CDs until a couple of months ago but, I probably wouldn't get it just because I like the reading time with my kids and our budget would thank me for not getting the CDs. I can see how it would be helpful if you didn't have as much time for reading or if you wanted to be able to be working on something else while allowing your children to hear their history lesson on their own.

[AngelBee]

I think you guys have convinced me to go ahead and use it this year, for first grade. Should I get the book or the audio CD's? And also, is the activity book really good? I thought about getting that as well.

 

If possible, get all of the above :D

[EppieJ]

I think you guys have convinced me to go ahead and use it this year, for first grade. Should I get the book or the audio CD's? And also, is the activity book really good? I thought about getting that as well.

 

We did the book for volume 1 and a few of the activity book pages. But, I tend to try cramming too much into a year (and ds doesn't usually care for coloring), so I ended up buying the audio books. Ds loves those! Each time I handed him a volume (we now have all 4) he would take it to his room and sit for hours listening and playing with his legos. I never had to schedule it.

 

I just wanted to mention to you that another great thing that goes very well with SOTW v1 is History Pockets: Ancient Civilizations http://www.evan-moor.com I used the History Pockets in K then did some of the mapping, etc. from SOTW v1 activity pages with ds while we went thru the book in First. I'd have done them together if I'd known how well they fit.

[Macrina]

If possible, get all of the above :D

 

I agree. Also lots of other ideas on my SOTW inspired blog, link below.