How much planning do/did you do for SOTW?

[Gentlemommy]

So I'm planning our first SOTW cycle for next year and going a little crazy with the planning-trying to figure out supplemental reading schedules, coordinating them with the text, printing it time line cards, maps, and figuring out which/when we will do projects. I told two of my fellow HS moms, who were baffled at my obsessive planning. :001_huh:One is using SOTW as well, and one is planning on using MOH. They wanted to know what exactly I'm planning. I don't even know! To be honest, this is my first attempt at true lesson planning, and I don't think I'm doing it right lol.

So what DO you write in your SOTW plans???

[3peasinapod]

I use it with Sonlight B, but all I did was check through all the extra books at my library and write down the call numbers in the book so it's ready for me when we do each chapter. The week prior, I see which activities we might want to do, then when I go grocery shopping, I get what we need then. I also bought the PDF student pages, as I like printing them instead of copying.

[2_girls_mommy]

I don't plan anything, except to order the books for next week a week in advance.

 

I do take the entire student pages to the printer and have a copy printed for each child and 3 hole punched and put into a binder to start the year too.

 

Then during our first history session I read aloud the passage while they color the picture. Then I ask the oral questions. Then we do mapwork. I take a narration from my younger child in my writing, she copies it into her own. The older child fills out an outline (we are in vol. 4) and glues the pictures into her timeline book. We are halfway through 4, so the older now writes from the outline once a week. She does that during her writing period the next day.

 

If there is an activity I want to do in a week, we either do at that time if it is a short one, or we do it for art in our art period the next week, or we do it over the weekend.

 

I don't coordinate the books. I pick them up. DD reads the next book when she finishes the last. I read picture books aloud. We do memory work. DD9 is still reading a book from the Russion Revolution chapter even though we are 2 chapters later. That's ok. I am reading one aloud that is about pioneers. I have in our stack to read here some on the Abolitionists even though that chapter was quite a while ago. It hasn't hurt my girls for our reading to be off from the week of that particular chapter.

[Loving&Learning]

Let me first say that this is my first year of planning for SOTW, so I don't have experience yet in executing our plan. I bought the text, audio CD's, Activity Guide and the student pages in pdf. It took me a couple of hours over a couple of days to do my planning and printing for all of SOTW 1.

 

Checklist

I made my own checklist and I have attached a pdf of it for you in case it might be helpful. I printed enough to have one for each chapter. I write the chapter number at the top. I go through the activity guide and start filling out the form for each chapter. I figure out which activities we want to do and list them and then I have lines below each activity to write notes of what I will need. For the list of items to find, I only list items that are not already in our school area.

 

Notebook

I hole punched my checklists and put them into a large three ring binder. I printed the items that I need for each chapter, marked them off on the checklist as being ready and then put them behind the corresponding checklist. I plan to have a notebook for each child for their completed history work, so it's fine that the pages are hole punched.

 

Finding Books

My library has an option to save lists, so I have searched my library for books that are available with each chapter and saved them with the chapter number. About two weeks before we will be starting a chapter, then I'll just go to my library's website, go to the corresponding chapter book list and request for the books to be held for me.

 

Finding and buying other items

My checklist makes it very easy to know what items will be needed for each chapter. I plan to find or buy items about two weeks before we plan to do a lesson.

SOTW Lesson Checklist.zip

[FairProspects]

I plan a ton for SOTW, but I love history and it is one of my favorite subjects to teach. I first go through and find which books from the AG our library has and which I want to purchase.

 

Then, I set up Excel spreadsheets for each week including what chapters are covered, what supplemental books I will read aloud, and which (if any) are assigned as readers. I note which books have to be checked out from the library and which are likely to have long hold times. I also pick a project for certain weeks and record the materials needed for the project that week.

 

The Excel spreadsheets are printed out for the year in advance and put in my planning notebook. I also pre-print the student sheets needed for the year and organize them by week into the history binder (variation on filing system). Then I check the week in advance from my planner, get any materials necessary (including supplemental/library books), grab the pre-printed maps & sheets from the binder and go!

[Mert]

:bigear:

[nov05mama]

This will be our first year too and I am trying not to go crazy overboard with planning. Since we plan to do the history cycle, I know we will revisit so much more later, KWIM?

I am planning to get at least 1-2 library books with each week, when I can. We will do the Activity Book activities each week and if there is a project, we will do at least one of those with each chapter as well (if not more). I am going to try to do it just a week or two in advance (or maybe a 4 week prep) for books and activities so I have everything ready to go.

There are SO many great 'extras' that I could throw in too, but for our first time going through, I want to keep it a bit simpler I think...

[Ecclecticmum]

I've planned Story of the World for 5 days a week. This is for our own personal reasons. Others tend to schedule it for 2-3 days a week (read chapter, do activity and possibly read some reference material).

 

I can't exactly remember as it tends to differ, but mine goes something like this: Monday Read Chapter, do colouring page. Tuesday: Reference Books, poss. an activity, Wednesday: Movie Day. Thursday: Library Books. and maybe an activity Friday: Internet Links, Lapbook & Audio.

 

I found my online library has a "my lists" that people were talking about in another thread. So I created weeks 1-36 and put all the books I am interested in in the appropriate weeks.

 

What I like to do is schedule and plan as much as possible, actually with a bit of extra/excess activities. I do the same with the library books, excess. As I like the ability to choose even when doing that week, rather than being stuck in a rota of having do to listed items. The excess gives me the ability to pick and choose even at the last minute. So I may have multiple activities listed down, but when we get to that week, we can pick and choose what we want to do then (Sort of like a planned Tapestry of Grace)

 

I have the review Cards, they are printed out and in the back of my Teachers Binder. I have to print out the timeline cards, but this is more for the kids, they like to check off things, so putting up a timeline card for chapter we just finished is exciting to them ;)

 

REALLY, it doesn't need to be that planned at all, depending on what you want to get out of it. I see a lot of people who just read the story, and either do an activity or read another book. End of week. It can be as simple or as complicated as you want. So I would suggest having some tea, some deep breathing, and just going with the flow :)

[Desert Strawberry]

Not enough, I think. The plans never came togethe for me at all.

 

We're ditching the activity book and taking a more freewheeling approach like we did with book one. I have a historical atlas, a world wall map and a globe. I'm making sure that they have good map skills and we're discussing the stories as we go. That's good for me.

[lea1]

Over the weekend, I look up the books recommended in the AG through the library's online catalog and put them on hold. I always do this two weeks before we need them, since it sometimes takes a while for the library to get them. We always go to the library at the end of the week and they normally have most of them by then.

 

We do history Tuesdays and Thursdays. My two sons love to color so on Tuesdays they look forward to coloring the picture while I read from SOTW. When I finish a section, I ask the questions and then one of them narrates. I read a second section, ask the questions and the other narrates. I currently write both narrations down for them. After that we do the map work.

 

On Thursdays we read other books we checked out from the library (I read them aloud) and sometimes we do a project.

 

For the projects, I just look over them as we go and tell the boys about them. When we see one that looks like fun, we do it. We are currently in the middle of making King Tut death masks.

 

As a PP mentioned, we don't worry to much about reading a book a bit late or finishing a project after we have already moved past that chapter. We have lots of kids history books in our own library that my sons read or ask us to read simply for pleasure reading anyway.

[BoZeeCo's Mom]

My older kids love it. Depending on the chapter, we spend anywhere from 3-5 days a week on SOTW. I plan by reserving books from the lib/ ordering books for a chapter aprox 2-3 weeks from starting the chapter. I read one section, ask some of the review questions, and we color the first day. 2nd day we read the next section and answer those questions and read the lib books. I get anywhere from 4-10 books per chapter. We usually do two projects per chapter, so there's that, too. I find also that reading the text a few times to my kids really helps, so I usually will read the text again as they are doing their projects.

[Forget-Me-Not]

We mostly just listen to the audio books in the car and maybe do some narration. We started out trying to do some map work, but that has fallen by the wayside lately. Still, I think it's worth buying the AG just for the maps.

[chepyl]

None really. I play the chapter twice while the kids color the maps and other pictures, do any activity pages...if we listen twice, I let the cd move on to the next chapter. This way we listen to each chapter 3-5 times each over a few weeks.

 

On the day dedicated to that chapter, we do the test as a worksheets. We do it together and discuss it.

 

On Friday we do a lapbook page, I have printed every thing, I just pull it out and we cut and paste. Every few weeks we look back at the lapbook pages for review.

[Jpoy85]

Im glad you posted this. I just sort of assumed id wing it. Im doing Vol1.

[Dolphin]

Honestly...

 

By this point in the year I have bought the pdf of the tests. ds reads a chapter once or twice a week, and I give him the test as a worksheet. In a good week we also do the map work.

 

I have a couple of supplemental things for WWII, but that is about it.

 

At the beginning of the year, I would go a couple weeks before and put things on hold at the library and see what activities we could fit in.

[ErinE]

I want my kids to be familiar with world geography, so the mapwork is a priority in my house. I printed out all the maps and coloring pages at the beginning of the year and store them in a notebook. Every week, I pull out the map and coloring page for the chapter we're studying. We read the chapter first, then do the worksheets. We do very few of the additional activities and only ocassionally add in the supplemental books. My eldest's literature is loosely tied to our history study so I created a worksheet showing the book that goes with each chapter. I was racking up lots of library fines so I ended up purchasing all his books used.

 

I'd recommend you just start with reading the chapter and doing the coloring page and mapwork. As you get more comfortable with the schedule, read slightly ahead in the AG and put on hold books in the library. If it's stressing you out to plan, do the bare minimum so at least history gets done.

[Carrie12345]

Day X - visit library and pick out relevant books (aiming for the recommended titles, but we pick from whatever the library has... when I don't already owe fines!) Day Y- read chapter, comp questions, and narrations. Day Z- map work and any activities we might already have the supplies for. Reading the supplemental books happens throughout the week.

 

My paper planner just says "Chapter X" on the appropriate days.