lindblomnest Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 I am preparing for my oldest child's first grade year and am very excited to use SOTW! I am planning a 36 week school year for us, but have noticed that the book is broken down into 42 chapters. Since we will be reading a chapter a week, we won't get through the whole book. I don't know if I should plan on skipping a few chapters (will this create gaps for him?) or double up a few times (which might wear him out). Please let me know how you used volume one of SOTW in your homeschool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MamaAkins Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 I would just double up on a few shorter chapters or you could plan on covering a few chapters during the summer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrs.m Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 It's pretty easy to double up. Some chapters are very short. Just cut down on the extra reading and activities for those weeks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom24cuties Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 I am doing the first 6 chapters during the summer, then the rest of the 36 chapters during the year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomelay Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 We found with Volumes 1 & 2 that we couldn't make it last 36 weeks, even with the activity book, and we did most of them. Meanwhile, the Story of the Middle Ages took two years. We'll be doing Volume 3 SOTW this year in 36 weeks as well, probably letting weeks pass where we don't read in it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happypamama Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 We do school year-round, and my general plan is to read the SOTW chapter on Monday and then do supplemental books on Tuesday and Wednesday, plus some projects. If we do that, we could easily get through all 43 chapters, including the intro, in a year, but I want to leave extra time to do more reading and exploration of ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman cultures. So I will probably skip the extra projects and reading for a few chapters so that we can read two or three SOTW chapters in a week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boscopup Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 We did one section per day, 3 days per week. Each chapter has 1-4 sections, most of them being 2 or 3. With the 3 sections per week method, you can easily fit it into a 36 week school year. We just did a narration (oral) each day, and did mapwork and possibly project (usually not :tongue_smilie:) on the last section of a chapter. I used library books listed in the AG for our book basket time, which happened all week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mama Anna Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 It's pretty easy to double up. Some chapters are very short. Just cut down on the extra reading and activities for those weeks. :iagree: When I scheduled SOTW 3 for 36 weeks this last year, I had to double up sections on some weeks and on other weeks do both sections and review cards. It made some weeks a bit longer than others, but we'd cut activities and be fine. A couple of things I'd suggest: If you choose to double up with a young child, make sure you know what you'll do about the narration. If you do it all in one day, it could get confusing to narrate two totally different subjects. Dd8 did SOTW3 this year and complained when we were doing two unrelated sections (with narrations) in one day. Also, remember to schedule time to go over the review cards. We didn't do that for SOTW 1 and dd couldn't remember anything about the first 1/4 of the book by the end of her time in it. HTH! Mama Anna Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheAutumnOak Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 There is a blog called "Barefoot Meandering" that has made a schedule for all 4 years of SOTW broken down into 36 weeks... Here are the links...They are PDF files that you can print and use to plan and are the most useful things I have seen to help plan SOTW...Hope this helps... Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeacefulChaos Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 There are some chapters which are really short, that you can double up with the chapter before/after it. :) We would sometimes do one chapter Monday, and another on Friday or something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EastTNmom Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 There is a blog called "Barefoot Meandering" that has made a schedule for all 4 years of SOTW broken down into 36 weeks... Here are the links...They are PDF files that you can print and use to plan and are the most useful things I have seen to help plan SOTW...Hope this helps... Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Thank you so much for posting the links! I had made a note of this website and went back to it and it was an adult website! Same address...don't know what happened?! :eek: so glad it's there! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lindblomnest Posted May 30, 2012 Author Share Posted May 30, 2012 Thanks so much for all the feedback! The pdf's from Barefoot Meandering are very helpful. I notice, however, she does double up on chapters some. Do you think this might be too intense for a first grader? I also have a 4 year old and a 1 year old in our house, so I'd like to keep things as simple as possible for first grade. ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BugsMama Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 My guess is it isn't a popular option, but I rearranged it geographically, and then left out some of it. We are spending extra time on egypt, covering greek and roman history, extra time on the americas, quickly covering india and china.... and skipping the rest. :leaving: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deniseibase Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 I think doubling up on chapters in a week should be fine, as long as you don't try to work on both chapters on the same day. Some of the chapters are fairly short and obscure and can be handled quickly. I just made up a syllabus for my rising 1st grader to figure out how *I* was going to use it, because I want to use the activity guide, too. We'll be doing two chapters most weeks, just reading the sections and doing the narrations 3-4 days a week, and that will still leave us with 7 weeks at the end of the school year to read Horrible Histories :-) So, it can be done fairly easily, but yeah, I wish she had designed it for a 36 week school year too. It took a lot of time to write out the plan on my own, especially coordinating the crafts and all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.