Finishing STOW vol 2 in 1 year or not?

[HollyDay]

I planned on doing history this year until SOTW vol 2 was done. But, now I am thinking about only finishing MOH vol 2. It stops a few hundred years before STOW. I have been using both books this year. I can always pick up vol 2 again next year and flow into vol 3 - I just dont want to rush history. We try to include literature whenever possible - so that extends the program out quite a bit. I can press on and finish next month. But, I would leave out literature I know we would enjoy. That means starting vol 3 late and probably not finishing it up in 7th grade. That means starting vol 4 late and not finishing it in 8th grade. That means high school plans might need to be altered.

 

Someone tell me not to sweat this one.

 

Or tell me it is a big deal and press forward to stay on schedule.

 

Thanks!

[Chris in VA]

My second grade daughter will be in school next year (I'm going to post about that in a minute on the general board), so I've wondered whether to finish SOTW 2 this year, also.

 

We just finished Columbus and the Explorers. We can probably do 4-6 more chapters before our year ends the second week of June. But coming up, we have Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Age, The Reformation, and other goodies. So I think what I'm going to do is just keep the same pace as we are on now, and maybe just read the rest of SOTW during the summer. I want to read her some of Lamb's Tales of Shakespeare (I read Midsummer to her 3 years ago, and she still refers to it, so it must have made an impression), and do some other fun activities. I think I will just casually take 10 days or so during those hot, boring summer months, and slip in the rest of the readings, and plan maybe 10 fun activities from the AG.

 

How far have you gotten, and how much would you have to "rush" to finish? Would it free you to remember that you do not have to go really deep this go-round? You can mention some things and go much deeper in the second rotation, and then stay "on track."

 

Or, you can linger, have a lot of fun, and inspire further studies--the sort of "Oh, I remember loving this part!" approach (not that dc won't have that same attitude if you just skim it). If you go too deep too soon, expecting too much retention, then you run the risk of their eyes glazing over now, and them coming back to the subject with distasteful memories.

 

Kinda gotta sort this out for yourself--but that's my .02 anyway!:D

[Ali in OR]

Like Chris said, you probably need to sort it out for yourself. What feels right to one person may not sit well with another. I don't think it's a "one right way" kind of issue. Here are two ways I would feel comfortable about finishing, but I am a strict four year cycle kind of person!

 

1) Do history year round this year. We'll be doing this this year, actually starting year 3 early because there is so much I want to read and do that I think we'll be more comfortable fitting it into a year than cramming it into 9 months. That said, we'll keep it light this summer. And history is our favorite subject and mostly all we do is just read--no papers, projects etc.

 

2) Finish SOTW but in a less complete way than your normal standards. If you have a car trip planned, see if you can check out the SOTW v. 2 CD from the library and listen to the part you haven't hit yet. We listened to all of v. 1 on a road trip to CA and really enjoyed reviewing the whole year we had just finished. And dh learned a lot! In addition to the CD, pick a few of the lit resources you want to add and make them family read-alouds this summer.

[Kate in Arabia]

I posted about something similar a couple days ago, we are way off the history rotation. Ds is finishing 4th grade and we are still in SOTW 2, we just talked about the Black Death yesterday.

 

I think I have decided to just keep going forward as we have been. We spent a long time (2+ years) on the ancients, and have spent a little longer than a year on SOTW 2 so far (we started it the end of last year). Looking ahead, I'm thinking we will end this year with the chapter on Moghul India and start up with the explorers in the New World when we come back in August.

 

It's going so well, it is my kids' favorite subject, I am reluctant to tinker with it too much, kwim? I figure we can balance everything out eventually, no?

 

Kate

[BarbaraL in OK]

This is turning out to be our second year of not... quite... finishing our history by summer break. I decided to plan on repeating the scheme we did this year: wrap up the previous year's study in the first several weeks of the new year and then move on to the new stuff.

 

Last August-to-mid-September, we finished our Ancients study -- SOTW1 for dsThen7 and The Story of Mankind for dsThen11, plus enrichment books. Then we started our Middle Ages study -- SOTW2 and History Odyssey Middle Ages 2. (After a month or so I aligned SOTW2 with HO-MA2 for my sanity.)

 

Right now we have finished the medieval Europe study (2/3 of HO-MA2, more or less) and are doing the study of the non-European world at double speed. I decided to focus on reading (overview/spines and some enrichment) and mapwork but drop most of the HO writing projects. My aim is to be done with the non-European medieval study by the end of May, when we need to end schoolwork.

 

We have a somewhat busy summer, but in the intervals between camps etc., we'll enjoy Shakespeare (summaries, plays, Shakespeare in the Park, movies). We start our school year in mid- or late August, so that's when we'll spend about a month studying the Renaissance -- possibly more but with Shakespeare already tackled I think we'll be okay. I really didn't want to squeeze all the life out of the Renaissance by zipping through it before summer, so this is a good plan for us.

 

I have no idea if this is going to happen every year, but it's working out okay. If we ever needed, for some reason, to catch up and finish on time, we could. I'd just have to speed up a bit sooner (or NOT slow down quite so much over the winter!!).

 

Good luck!

[Mommy2BeautifulGirls]

I have been struggling with something similar myself. I really want to start SOTW with my 4-year-old who is going to be doing 1st grade stuff next year. However, I also have a 3-year-old, so I was debating on waiting on it for another year or so. What I have come up with is this: I'm going to take a slower, deeper approach, doing lots of activities, reading lots of outside literature just to make sure that the 3-year-old gets something out of it, too. Ideally, I can stretch this out for a year and a half if we're schooling approximately 9 months. I'm not sure how this approach will work out, since I've not really gotten into mapping it out yet, but with the number of sick days we had this year and how behind we are now, I'm sure stretching it out won't be an issue.