mama25angels Posted July 11, 2011 Share Posted July 11, 2011 I noticed that you do American history every year in conjunction with you World history. I was wondering if you do a complete overview of world history every year or if you do Ancients one year, Middle Ages/Ren. the next year? Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs Twain Posted July 11, 2011 Share Posted July 11, 2011 That is interesting to get a personally addressed post! I have thus far preferred to do a world history overview rather than the four, five, or six-year cycle as most other people do that I know. My goal is to get the big picture of world history into my kids' heads if possible. We go more in depth on a few areas each year as we do the overview, such as last year we concentrated a lot on ancient Greece, and this year we will focus more on ancient Egypt and Rome. My personal opinion is that review in history is very important, which is why I want to teach the overview every year. I don't know if my kids would remember things that I only taught once every four or more years. So the way I do history is sort of philosophically different from the standard classical approach, though I use mostly the same materials. I'm not saying that the cycles are not effective or are not a good way to teach (since most of my friends do that), and I'm not trying to start a controversy--this is just my personal opinion! :001_smile: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom&nana Posted July 11, 2011 Share Posted July 11, 2011 Mrs Twain, That is very interesting. I've been drawn to Epi Kardia which is a curriculum that seems to approach history in much the same way that you described. How are you covering American? Are you going into deeper studies with it or doing a yearly overview with it as well? Or is the American included in your World History overview? Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mama25angels Posted July 11, 2011 Author Share Posted July 11, 2011 aquiverfull asked the same questions I wanted to ask, but I do have one more, how do you do an overview of world in 1 semester? Do you CHOW? Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mo2 Posted July 11, 2011 Share Posted July 11, 2011 :bigear: Curious what materials you use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs Twain Posted July 11, 2011 Share Posted July 11, 2011 I haven't seen Epi Kardia. I will have to look into that. I have used CHOW and really like it. I like Builders of the Old World, and I'm starting to look at A Little History of the World. For American history I also do an overview. I really liked Eggleston's A First Book in American History, and Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans. This year I found a book at our homeschool convention that I never hear of before: Exploring American History (D. H. Montgomery) which also has includes a test booklet. It seems like it will work well, and it has more detail (which I like) than some of the other elementary American history resources I have seen. For American history, I loosely follow the Core Knowledge sequence of history, so I won't go all the way through modern times until my kids are older. For instance, the first time I did American history, I only covered explorers up to a brief part on the War of 1812. Along with the overview, I also try to go more in depth with two or so subjects, such as with Jamestown/Plymouth, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, etc. For world history, I usually start a month early in August and go a little more than a semester to try to get what I want covered. History has become the favorite subject at our house, so it works out o.k. for us to start in summer. I also skip the first two or three chapters of books like CHOW since I don't agree with them (prehistoric cavemen, etc.). So therefore American history is actually less than a semester which has been working out fine. I think the biographies and historical fiction may be the things that stick the most with my kids, though. For instance, my husband read Johnny Tremain with the kids this year, and they can remember things like the British marching to Lexington and Concord. I am planning to get a copy of All Through the Ages so we can find more books like Johnny Tremain. Lap books have also been a great way for us to solidify history knowledge. This year I read one book and did a lapbook with my son on the Civil War. I was amazed at how much information he retained as a result of doing that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mama25angels Posted July 11, 2011 Author Share Posted July 11, 2011 (edited) I haven't seen Epi Kardia. I will have to look into that. I have used CHOW and really like it. I like Builders of the Old World, and I'm starting to look at A Little History of the World. For American history I also do an overview. I really liked Eggleston's A First Book in American History, and Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans. This year I found a book at our homeschool convention that I never hear of before: Exploring American History (D. H. Montgomery) which also has includes a test booklet. It seems like it will work well, and it has more detail (which I like) than some of the other elementary American history resources I have seen. For American history, I loosely follow the Core Knowledge sequence of history, so I won't go all the way through modern times until my kids are older. For instance, the first time I did American history, I only covered explorers up to a brief part on the War of 1812. Along with the overview, I also try to go more in depth with two or so subjects, such as with Jamestown/Plymouth, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, etc. For world history, I usually start a month early in August and go a little more than a semester to try to get what I want covered. History has become the favorite subject at our house, so it works out o.k. for us to start in summer. I also skip the first two or three chapters of books like CHOW since I don't agree with them (prehistoric cavemen, etc.). So therefore American history is actually less than a semester which has been working out fine. I think the biographies and historical fiction may be the things that stick the most with my kids, though. For instance, my husband read Johnny Tremain with the kids this year, and they can remember things like the British marching to Lexington and Concord. I am planning to get a copy of All Through the Ages so we can find more books like Johnny Tremain. Lap books have also been a great way for us to solidify history knowledge. This year I read one book and did a lapbook with my son on the Civil War. I was amazed at how much information he retained as a result of doing that. Thank you!! I hope you can stand some more questions :blush: but i'm wondering how do you "plan" or do you? This post has me thinking that doing things the way you do I can actually get more done. Do you plan any projects? Or do you just do lapbooks? What do you use for geography? I have the mapquest maps and I love those. One more question, do you start at the beginning every year or do you just pick up where you stopped the previous year? Thank you Edited July 11, 2011 by mama25angels Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom&nana Posted July 12, 2011 Share Posted July 12, 2011 Thanks for explaining that Mrs. Twain. I'll be checking back in to see the answers to mama25angels new questions. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs Twain Posted July 12, 2011 Share Posted July 12, 2011 Thank you!! I hope you can stand some more questions :blush: but i'm wondering how do you "plan" or do you? This post has me thinking that doing things the way you do I can actually get more done. Do you plan any projects? Or do you just do lapbooks? What do you use for geography? I have the mapquest maps and I love those. One more question, do you start at the beginning every year or do you just pick up where you stopped the previous year? Thank you The way I plan is pretty simple. I pick one spine for world history (say CHOW) and one for American history. Then I figure out how many chapters I want to cover. I start at Adam and Eve/the beginning of civilization, and then go up to Columbus for world history. After that I start American history with Columbus up through whatever I want to end with, which I usually decide by using the Core Knowledge Sequence for my kids' grade levels. So yes, I always start at the beginning and go through the whole thing. I am leaving out modern European history for now, not for lack of interest but rather for lack of time, and because I want to concentrate on giving my kids a solid foundation in American history. I count how many chapters I need to read in both books, and then I count how many days we have to do history doing I chapter each day. I have a 36-week schedule for school, so I plan about 33 or 34 weeks times five days per week and see if that is enough to read all of the chapters. If it is not, I read the extra chapters in August before school starts. So far it has been great, and I love it. I'm sure I don't go into as much detail as people who do a four-year cycle, but I think the overview is quite enough for my kids to try to get down in elementary school. I am planning to do two or three lapbooks on world history and two on American history. They take us at least a month each to do. I usually find premade ones and extra things to them which saves a lot of time. These are my favorite projects to do because the kids get so much out of them which they actually remember. The other project-type thing I am doing is a timeline. I bought a laminated poster from Geomatters so that the whole world history timeline is on one poster-sized page. My summer project is to figure out a basic timeline to teach the kids with a relatively small number of major events to give us a basic picture of world history (i.e. not one with 250 events). I bought all of the Veritas Press timeline cards so that I can pull out the biggest events to put on our timeline and try to get into memory. I try to find interesting biographies or historical fiction that go along with the lapbooks or what we are reading in history. These I give to my husband, and he reads them with the kids before bedtime. That is turning into a great tradition, enjoyed by all. Geography is a work in progress. In addition to looking up the places on the globe or a map as we encounter them in history or literature, I have been doing geography once per week, as a baseline following the Core Knowedge Sequence. Other things I have done for geography include reading one chapter per week of Hillyer's A Child's Geography of the World (CGOW?). Unfortunately, this book has not been updated like CHOW, so it requires a lot of editing on the fly. It was written sixty years ago, so some things have changed such as Alaska becoming a state! However, it is still a gem, and my husband and I have commented to each other that we would be really smart if we knew everything in that book. This year I am planning on going through A Child's Geography--Explore His Earth (Vokscamp) which is mostly earth science, and I bought the Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide from Geomatters which is a K-12 supplemental resource which I plan to use to help teach the Core Knowledge series objectives. At the moment geography is a disorganized mess which is supposed to be my other summer project to figure out before fall. :001_smile: My apologies if this was way too much information than you wanted to read! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seewah Posted July 12, 2011 Share Posted July 12, 2011 I can't tell you how thankful I am that I read this thread! Makes so much sense and I am excited to figure out how I can incorporate both world history and American history into our upcoming school year! THANK YOU!!! :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom&nana Posted July 12, 2011 Share Posted July 12, 2011 Mrs Twain, You can never give us too much information. :) THANK YOU for taking the time to walk us through your plan. I have some more questions. When you take time to go deeper using lapbooks do you continue through reading your chapters or do you stop to work on lapbooks and then resume the daily 1 chapter readings? Also do you pick a different spine each year or read through CHOW every year? I'm wondering do your kids get tired of hearing the same stories? I ask because we have covered Columbus a few times here and my dd said she's sick of hearing about Columbus...lol. Maybe it's just my kid though, she is very picky. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mama25angels Posted July 12, 2011 Author Share Posted July 12, 2011 Mrs Twain, You can never give us too much information. :) THANK YOU for taking the time to walk us through your plan. I have some more questions. When you take time to go deeper using lapbooks do you continue through reading your chapters or do you stop to work on lapbooks and then resume the daily 1 chapter readings? Also do you pick a different spine each year or read through CHOW every year? I'm wondering do your kids get tired of hearing the same stories? I ask because we have covered Columbus a few times here and my dd said she's sick of hearing about Columbus...lol. Maybe it's just my kid though, she is very picky. Thanks! :iagree: you can never give us too much information and THANK you for taking time to answer these questions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs Twain Posted July 12, 2011 Share Posted July 12, 2011 Mrs Twain,You can never give us too much information. :) THANK YOU for taking the time to walk us through your plan. I have some more questions. When you take time to go deeper using lapbooks do you continue through reading your chapters or do you stop to work on lapbooks and then resume the daily 1 chapter readings? Also do you pick a different spine each year or read through CHOW every year? I'm wondering do your kids get tired of hearing the same stories? I ask because we have covered Columbus a few times here and my dd said she's sick of hearing about Columbus...lol. Maybe it's just my kid though, she is very picky. Thanks! Thank you for your interest! This is fun to talk about. :001_smile: Yes, I continue reading one chapter of our history overview book per day while we are doing a lapbook. I have thought this may end up being confusing, stopping at one spot to do a project and meanwhile plowing on with the reading into other subjects, but so far it has worked well. I am planning to do different spines from year to year, though I definitely plan to repeat CHOW since I think it is well written and there are so many interesting stories to read again. I understand what you are saying that it can be a problem if it seems like you are doing the same thing every year, like repeating Columbus over and over. For one, I think using different books from year to year help that because they often contain new or different information that we haven't read before. Also, the overview books I have used don't spend very long on each subject, so we may only be reading about Columbus for two or three days at the most. That is not too long to "suffer" through. On the other hand, if my kids tell me that they already know something like Columbus, then I will ask them questions to see how much they really do know. If they can answer my questions well, then we could skim over Columbus and cover something else more in depth, such as other lesser known explorers of the time or what happened with the Spanish and the native peoples. What often happens with my kids, though, is that they don't actually know the information as well as they think, especially when I ask them to come up with names of places or dates. So then I say perhaps it is good for us after all to read through it again so that we will learn it better. I think my theory of doing history the way I do comes a lot from going through my own education in my profession. The first things learned are the basic concepts and vocabulary. After that is a progression, building upon the basic foundation, where one adds more knowledge and detail to the basic building blocks. Eventually one gets to the place where he can learn how to apply the knowledge to real life situations. I heard a lecturer once talk about it as first we learn the outline. Then we hang details onto our outline, so that it gets fuller and fuller over time. That is my theory of how I am teaching history. I am teaching the big picture outline, and as we go we are adding more and more details to what we have already learned. Mind you this is mostly theory rather than results at this point since my kids are not grown, so take it for what it is worth! So back to your comment about covering Columbus over and over. Even if my kids have heard it all before, I still think it is worth repeating and reviewing, not only to make sure they know it and are not forgetting it, but also to add in more details. It is the same reason that we read the Bible about Jesus being born every Christmas, and read the Bible about Jesus dying and rising from the dead every Easter, and read the Declaration of Indepedence every July 4, and read Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation every Thanksgiving. Even though my kids may have heard it before and may even have it memorized, IMO it can be a useful exercise for various reasons to go over it again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs Twain Posted July 12, 2011 Share Posted July 12, 2011 By the way on geography-- I forgot to mention that I am going to try to incorporate the ideas from the geography chapter of The Core (Bortins). She has a simple and elegant method of learning geography by drawing maps. First the kids learn the continents and oceans and the great circles. Eventually they progress to drawing countries of each continent and major features of the continents, and the fifty states. It is good to be able to name the states and countries, but to be able to draw them from memory would be the best of all. I think the price of the book is worth paying just for the geography chapter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mama25angels Posted July 12, 2011 Author Share Posted July 12, 2011 I must read that chapter, I bought the book last month on my nook when I was in a homeschool funk, but have not finished reading it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom&nana Posted July 12, 2011 Share Posted July 12, 2011 Mrs. Twain, Thank you. I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversations as well. :) Your approach makes perfect sense to me and has given me a lot to think about. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mama25angels Posted July 12, 2011 Author Share Posted July 12, 2011 Mrs. Twain, Thank you. I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversations as well. :) Your approach makes perfect sense to me and has given me a lot to think about. :iagree: wholeheartedly!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs Twain Posted July 15, 2011 Share Posted July 15, 2011 Mrs Twain, That is very interesting. I've been drawn to Epi Kardia which is a curriculum that seems to approach history in much the same way that you described. Aquiverfull, thank you very much for telling me about Epi Kardia. I have not seen that before, but you are right that this page describes the same thing that I try to do, though they phrased it much better than I did! I also printed out their scope and sequence lists for a couple of grades from this page. That is very helpful to me since I have been trying to figure out the structure of my basic timeline. It is great to see what subjects and people they cover for their year overview for various grade levels. Thank you very much! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom&nana Posted July 15, 2011 Share Posted July 15, 2011 You're welcome Mrs. Twain. :) I love the looks of Epi Kardia. Did you see the booklist on their site? They use some of the best books. I've purchased quite a few of them from the K and 1st grade lists and I think they are awesome, beautifully illustrated, engaging living books. So you might want to look for ideas there too. I guess they approach that a little different than you, since it doesn't appear that they use 1 spine book but several books instead. I like the idea of a spine, though, to help keep it flowing and keep the studies on track. I've been thinking about this since we started talking about it a few days ago. I'm so glad that Des asked you this question and thank you again for all the time you've taken to spell it out for us. :) I love this idea for covering an overview of history every year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mommyagain Posted July 15, 2011 Share Posted July 15, 2011 This thread has been SO helpful! Thank you so much Mrs. Twain, Des and Kelli! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs Twain Posted July 15, 2011 Share Posted July 15, 2011 You're welcome Mrs. Twain. :) I love the looks of Epi Kardia. Did you see the booklist on their site? They use some of the best books. I've purchased quite a few of them from the K and 1st grade lists and I think they are awesome, beautifully illustrated, engaging living books. So you might want to look for ideas there too. I guess they approach that a little different than you, since it doesn't appear that they use 1 spine book but several books instead. I like the idea of a spine, though, to help keep it flowing and keep the studies on track.. Yes, those book lists do look great. I will check those out. Another idea if you want to use more living books and less spine is to incorporate a history atlas. After reading a living book, you could read the corresponding section of the history atlas, which would be shorter and take less time than something like CHOW or Builders of the Old World. This year I bought a used copy of The Kingfisher Illustrated History of the World, 1992 edition, as a reference, and I think it is an excellent book. Using something like that with living books could reinforce learning the history facts as well as provide unity for the history course. Thanks for the ideas. :001_smile: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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