Need serious help! 1st grade history & SOTW.

[HFClassicalAcademy]

I'm planning 1st grade right now and we are definitely going with SOTW 1. My big confusion? All the books listed in the WTM for history (read alounds and such). What should I get? What should my history schedule look like?

 

I don't understand if I'm supposed to do SOTW and nothing else OR SOTW with lots of read alouds to accompany what we are studying. I'm thinking the latter. I would love to know how you all have scheduled this accordingly since I feel hopelessly and completely lost at this time!!!:confused:

 

How many books to get? Which books to get? I feel like I don't know anything at this time!! Please, please help me! We are planning on starting in June, so I need to figure this out so I can purchase accordingly and fast!!

 

TIA so so so so much!

Liz

[Philothea]

Liz,

I just begun our next school year and I am using SOTW for first grade/ K-5.

 

Following a schedule that looks like this:

 

Mon: SOTW Narrative

 

Tues: Books borrowed from the library read during literature time on Ancient history, and a project

 

Wed: No history--we do science

 

Thurs: No school

 

Fri: (second part of science-- a project) Another history narrative using SOTW

 

Sat: Books from the library about the Ancients and/or a project

 

If there is any geography involved we do a map or observe a globe, and so on. We do some kind of geography every day just because it is DS's favorite.

 

I also keep all of the library books available for use during free or reading time. Even if they cannot read/ will not read the books they do look at the pictures.

[Lucy in Australia]

Whatever you do, don't panic! Honestly, in first grade, if your child does nothing else but read SOTW and talk about it with you, he'll learn a lot.

 

When each of my sons started, all we did was read the chapter(s) in SOTW, and I would ask them to tell me in their own words what they found interesting. Some days I had to prompt them quite a bit, other days they would talk my ear off (usually the bits that involved gory battles got them going). At the beginning of the year, I had a look at the index in SOTW to see what the topic of each chapter was. I then searched our library database to see what books they had that corresponded to those topics and we borrowed books through the year. Some weeks we didn't have any extra books, some weeks we had extra books but they were boring & a waste of time, and other weeks we did lots of extra reading. I didn't buy any extra history books (we couldn't afford them at that stage), and really, in retrospect, we didn't need them.

 

Just think of any extra books as the "icing on the cake". Good luck! :)

[Sandy in Indy]

This year (first grade), I've read SOTW and we've done a few of the activities. I think ds has had a nice intro to history and next year I'll add in some things to make it "meatier." My focus this year has been on phonics and math.

[Southern_mom]

Hi,

I will use SOTW and also purchase the SOTW Activity Guide. This Activity Guide lists extra reading, projects and activities for each chapter. It also contains maps and coloring pages by chapter.

 

Before we start a chapter, I will browse through the suggested reading, pick some titles and see if the books are available at our local library (I just go to my libraries website and start searching the titles). I make sure that I have gotten the library books before we start the chapter.

 

 

I'll schedule a day for reading the chapter, a day for doing the maps and coloring and review(review questions are also in the Activity Guide), a

day for the projects I choose to do. Depending on how long the extra reading books are, we'll do them through out the week.

Also, there is a yahoo group just for SOTW 1 that has scheduling ideas.

 

HTH.

[Osaubi]

I alternate btwn science(2days a week) and history(3 days a week). We have more history b/c that is what my ds5 likes the most.

 

Day 1-Read the first section of SOTW. We do the review questions, narration page, and map work.

 

Day 2-Read second section of SOTW. Review questions, narration page, and coloring page.

 

Day 3-If there is a third section we would read it this day. If not then I let my ds pick what books he wants me to read during history.

 

 

Some people may do a project on day 3, but my ds doesn't care for the projects. All of the books we read we get from the library.

 

 

Here is a link to a SOTW notebook/planning pages that really helped me figure things out.

 

http://www.lulu.com/content/796912

 

 

 

HTH,

Kim

[HFClassicalAcademy]

Thanks for the suggestions and schedules. I think I'm beginning to stress less about this now. I also really thought the SOTW workbook on Lulu was great!

 

I'm off to schedule history! I'm sure my blog has been waiting for this addition.

 

Liz

http://hfclassicalacademy.blogspot.com

[Harriet Vane]

We get whatever books we can at the library and don't worry about the ones that are not available.

 

We read the history unit and summarize, do some activities, and read library books ad hoc. Dd is 11yo--she reads the library books on her own. I read ds his history library books (he is 7yo). We test at the end of the week.

 

I don't worry about buying history books--we just get what we can at the library. We are probably able to get about half of what's recommended this way? For some units not many books are available--for other units we might get 3/4 of the books.

[Reya]

You don't have to get any particular book. Check out what your library had first, then your local used bookstore. Our local library is really, really awful for historical resources, so I end up buying almost all our extra readers, but I try to get as many as possible used!

[kls126s]

and I'm planning on doing History two days a week and Science two days a week. (We do school four days a week and Friday is saved for electives and field trips.)

 

I used that workbook that Kim linked to for my SOTW planning also. Basically I decided that on day one we would read the section, do a notebook page (narration and illustration), and do any mapwork. Depending on how long this takes and what books I could find in our library, we'll do extra reading from library books. On day two we'll read the next section, and do a project. My daughter loves all those gluey, painty, messy projects, so all the hands on stuff will be a hit here.

 

I'm working in MOH history too to get a bit more biblical history and plan to follow the same idea when I do those chapters. We school year round, so I'm planning on this taking a long year to finish.

[WTMindy]

I'm planning 1st grade right now and we are definitely going with SOTW 1. My big confusion? All the books listed in the WTM for history (read alounds and such). What should I get? What should my history schedule look like?

 

I don't understand if I'm supposed to do SOTW and nothing else OR SOTW with lots of read alouds to accompany what we are studying. I'm thinking the latter. I would love to know how you all have scheduled this accordingly since I feel hopelessly and completely lost at this time!!!:confused:

 

How many books to get? Which books to get? I feel like I don't know anything at this time!! Please, please help me! We are planning on starting in June, so I need to figure this out so I can purchase accordingly and fast!!

 

TIA so so so so much!

Liz

 

SOTW is enough by itself. You don't need any other books. However, some of them are very good. I would put all the books on hold from the activity guide that our library had. Some weeks we would read all of them and some weeks we would read none of them, it just depended.

 

We loved all 4 volumes of SOTW!