Q re history spine for Medieval Times - 6th grader

[JessaMae]

I am planning to study from the fall of Rome to the Reformation next year with my kids. My oldest will be in 6th grade and my youngest in 3rd. We have not used SOTW so I plan to use that with all the kids. However I would like something a little meatier for the oldest. I have been reading about both History Odyssey and K12 Human Odyssey: Prehistory through the Middle Ages.

 

Can anyone compare/contrast these two "Odyssey" books for me? Do you recommend one over the other for any reason? It seems like the K12 book is more of a history textbook and the HO book has assignments and then you find another spine to go with it? Is there another spine you would recommend instead?

 

Does anyone have a schedule to line up one of these spines with SOTW? Or would it be not too hard to do myself?

 

Also, has anyone used the Kingfisher Atlas of the Medieval World? Is it worth having?

 

Thanks for your help :)

[Avila]

History Odyssey isn't a spine. It is lessons plans to coordinate all the various components of doing WTM history. It uses the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia and The Story of Mankind as spines for the logic stage.

 

Biblioplan does the same sort of thing, but it includes Mystery of History and SOTW. It would work as a schedule for multiple kids of different ages.

 

Are you still planning to do MFW from your signature? I wouldn't think you would need to add either of these to make that work. If you aren't going with MFW, doing HO with SOTW or doing Biblioplan with MOH and SOTW would both work. The K12 book could be added in to HO to replace TSOM, if you wanted to go that route. I replaced it with Dorothy Mills' books.

 

But HO and Biblioplan both are going to be off sequence for what you are doing, since they both cover Rome in Ancients and move on in their Medieval plans. You would have to buy both years to cover what you have planned. HO does offer a try-before-you-buy option on their web site, which gives a very generous sample to check out.

 

The Kingfishers Atlases are nice, but they are pretty light, IMO. You will get better map work with MapTrek or within HO or Biblioplan. We weren't always even able to find the info in the atlases to do our HO maps. The KHE was more helpful for that on its own.

Edited June 6, 2011 by Asenik

[JessaMae]

Wow Asenik - thank you for all that info.

 

History Odyssey isn't a spine. It is lessons plans to coordinate all the various components of doing WTM history. It uses the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia and The Story of Mankind as spines for the logic stage.

 

I was wondering about HO - the samples just seem to be lesson plans and I didn't know if there was text also. Thanks for clearing that up. So basically it's the same as using the AG from SOTW as far as Kingfisher being the spine, but it gives more grade-level work to be done along with?

 

 

Are you still planning to do MFW from your signature? I wouldn't think you would need to add either of these to make that work. If you aren't going with MFW, doing HO with SOTW or doing Biblioplan with MOH and SOTW would both work. The K12 book could be added in to HO to replace TSOM, if you wanted to go that route. I replaced it with Dorothy Mills' books.

 

I do have the next level of MFW (what's in my sig is from this last year.) However, I have been thinking of just doing SOTW and following more of the WTM process - outlining, narratives, and such. There is a lot of MFW that we don't end up using and my dds really did not like Streams as a spine.

 

But HO and Biblioplan both are going to be off sequence for what you are doing, since they both cover Rome in Ancients and move on in their Medieval plans. You would have to buy both years to cover what you have planned. HO does offer a try-before-you-buy option on their web site, which gives a very generous sample to check out.

 

I didn't realize this re the schedule - thanks for letting me know.

 

The Kingfishers Atlases are nice, but they are pretty light, IMO. You will get better map work with MapTrek or within HO or Biblioplan. We weren't always even able to find the info in the atlases to do our HO maps. The KHE was more helpful for that on it's own.

 

I had heard this about the KF Atlases also. I will check out Map Trek. Do you think the SOTW maps in the AG will be too light/simple for a 6th grader?

 

 

Thanks so much, Jessica

[Avila]

HO is going to assign outlining, map work, summaries of important people, and timeline work, along with reading literature from the time period. It is quite a bit more work than SOTW, but it does follow WTM recommendations for the age group pretty closely. You can do SOTW along with it, but it won't line up exactly. HO level 1 actually does use SOTW, and it doesn't line up with level 2 either.

 

The maps are included with HO, if you buy it. I like their map work, but you don't get a lot of guidance for it, since HO currently has no answer key or teacher manual. It didn't bother me that much, but it is a frequent complaint among users. But I think the SOTW map work would probably be fine, even for an older child who hadn't done it before.

 

HO is pretty dependent on the KHE as a spine. I don't think you can complete the assignments without it, so how well you and your child like the encyclopedia approach will determine how well you like HO. I did add in the Dorothy Mills' books to make it a more narrative experience. But my oldest DD really liked the KHE, so that part worked well for us. I would imagine the K12 book would provide the same narrative add-in. I also added in the Famous Men books for each year. I found that they really helped with information for writing the summaries.

 

I think, if what you are going for is WTM scheduled for you for the logic stage, HO level 2 should fit the bill. It really helped me figure out what that should practically look like. I haven't followed HO completely since ancients, but it really helped me structure history, and I still use a lot of the ideas it gave me for planning.

Edited June 6, 2011 by Asenik

[JessaMae]

Excellent, Asenik. Thank you so much. I will definitely consider everything you've mentioned!!

[KarenNC]

k12's Human Odyssey is a great secular textbook (we are using it), that is done in a more narrative style than most. Not anywhere near as busy as most middle school texts I've seen. You do need to know, however, that you would need both vol. 1 (prehistory to 1400) and vol. 2 (takes it up to 1917) to cover the Middle Ages in a WTM schedule. I'm using those two books along with Joy Hakim's Story of Us to cover the majority of our logic stage history. k12 has a vol. 3 that goes up to current (well, 2007 as that's the publication date ;)), but it's what they use for their high school modern history.

 

I haven't seen the revised AG for SOTW level 2 (we had the original series), but I believe it was going to have additional information for logic stage? I know Sonlight uses SOTW for their middle school level (2 volumes a year), so they might have something that would be useful.

 

I have a rising 6th grader, so we're going to be using Human Odyssey, the k12 teacher/student pages that go along with it (Intermediate world history A and intermediate world history B) and various other things I have at home (as well as videos from Discovery Streaming) for the Middle Ages.

[JessaMae]

Karen NC - thanks for your reply - can you tell me more about the K12 teacher/student pages?

[Momling]

You might look at Oxford University Press's "The Medieval and Early Modern World".

[KarenNC]

Karen NC - thanks for your reply - can you tell me more about the K12 teacher/student pages?

 

You do need both, as the teacher pages do not contain the text of a lot of the questions, etc in the student pages. They are also only part of the k12 program, as there are a number of activities to do online. The assessments are primarily online as well. I can't speak to those as we are using the printed portion only. There are a variety of exercises--charts, geography, guided writing of papers of various sorts, additional websites, activities like making a travel brochure, lots of questions to answer in one's history journal, etc, but not the hands-on kind of things from the SOTW AG (it is aimed at 7th grade). I'm adapting a bit as I used the beginning of this for 5th grade.

 

For Middle Ages, between the two courses, I would say that there are 310 pages in the student materials. Intermediate World History A, unit 12 lesson 19 (after fall of Rome) to end, 130 pp, and B, lesson 1 to unit 7 (English Civil War), 180 pp. It depends on where you want to put the break point.

 

I'll take as an example one of the lessons on the monasteries. The student is expected to read the given section in the text. In the student pages is a further paragraph about monasteries, a list of the lesson objectives, the required materials (in this case, it's all in the student pages), a list of keywords and pronunciations, and a reading guide. Online activities are "use what you know" and the lesson assessment. Student is then instructed to preread the next section of the text for the next day's lesson. The Reading guide asks a variety of questions about the text, prompting the student to make some connections and think a bit more deeply about the reading.

 

The teacher guide for the same lesson reproduces the paragraph, objectives, keywords and pronunciation, gives the pages the student should read from the text, answers to the online exercise ("Use what you know"--in this case student is pretending to be a monk and writing a letter describing the monastery, gives the list of points that should be included), two websites to extend the learning and questions for student to consider while exploring those sites, what the student should be noting from the prereading, three additional websites and the answers to the online assessment (questions are not given).

[JessaMae]

KarenNC - thank you for the detailed reply! That helps a lot.

 

Momling - I'll take a look!

[HappyGrace]

My dc are the same ages; doing same time period next yr w/ Biblioplan-as PP said, it uses MOH/SOTW. You can definitely do it in a WTM way! I will have older read MOH, then she'll outline from the old white Kingfisher and do the narratives, etc. too. I do add in extra books, movies, etc., because they like history, but BP gives me the framework.

 

BP is cheap enough you could buy the Ancients one too for the Rome portion. I don't use any of the "extras" that BP sells-I have my dc make their own timeline figures, etc., and use the maps from SOTW/MOH.

 

If you search logic board, I asked about a month ago if SOTW is enough for logic stage. Mixed answers, but I decided I need to do MOH since I want a lot more church history, etc.