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Story of the World Audiobook


Jess4879
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So SOTW is not our history core...but I really like it. What I am thinking of doing is buying the CD and listening in the car. We are in a rural location, so no matter where we go, it's at least a 30 min. drive.

 

Has anyone else taken this approach? Did your kids retain anything, even if you didn't touch on the subjects again? (My kids are 8, 6, 3)

 

Am I nuts??

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You're not nuts at all!

 

They are fun to listen to and perfect for that sort of thing, I think! I just bought all 4 for this school year. We are using them as part of our history, but since it's audio, we can listen at home or during lunch or in the car. My plan is to listen to all 4 volumes every year during the elementary years (and, since I'm still working on baby #5, we'll be in elementary years for a long time!). I assign readings based on the cycle year we're in, but this way (plus we memorize the Veritas timeline CC style) we get the big picture sweep every year. My goal is for them to know the general flow of history and main people and events in the elementary years, then they can dig deeper and make connections more in the later years and college.

 

I have IRL friends who bought the SOTW audio and exclusively listened to it in the car. They went through all 4 in under a year (might have even been twice a year), and have been doing that, just cycling through the volumes, for at least 3 if not more years, and that's pretty much all they are doing for history, period. They say their kids *know* SOTW and it's been fantastic.

 

Run with it!

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We do own the books and activity books, but haven't read past book one.

 

We've listened to the audio books twice through now, once on our seven state circle tour last year, and once while commuting to lessons this year.

 

DS9 has retained a lot. He even has fav

orite stories and knows which set and disk each is on. DD7, whom we are beginning to suspect is ADHD inattentive, has retained considerably less. Although she was present in the car, I'm not sure she heard them in the first place. Sigh... But she does remember some of it.

 

DH and I have learned a lot of history we never knew from that long trip. (DH didn't commute with us, so he's only heard them once through.)

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That is exactly what we do. We live in a semi rural area and drive over 400 times a week frequently. My husband is hooked so we actually only listen when we're all together. In the past year we've gotten through volumes 1 -3 and are 2 discs into volume 4. We don't match it to our history. Just listen through. When we finish, we'll start over. Even my non-auditory learner has picked up "pegs" to build history knowledge on.

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The audiobooks are worth every penny, imo. We listened to SOTW2 last year for our lessons and it was so nice to have a break from me reading aloud. I just started playing them in the car this past week and have noticed that they remember quite a bit and are picking up more this time around. Today ds said to me, "Mom, turn it up. I love Beowulf!" :D

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We have been listening to SOTW all summer in the car and so far, the kids are retaining it. They act out stories they've heard (put a doll in a basket on a blue blanket and pretended it was Sargon, made their bunk bed into a pyramid and explored the burial chamber, etc.) They've picked library books about the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. A trip to a local museum with an Egyptian art room was especially fun!

 

We're finishing Volume 1 before starting a separate pre-history unit, and then plan on doing SOTW 1 again before starting 2. :)

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I would say, go for it. It is a form of carschooling and it uses the travel time as well as keeps everyone busy during the commute while learning!

We have put SOTW-1 on an ipod for my DS to listen by himself whenever he wants to and he absolutely loves it. He has his own favorite sections, and quite often, pauses a story to find a grown up to ask what a particular word means or for a deeper explanation. He retains a lot even at his age. We do read SOTW to him occasionally. He then goes back to that chapter on audio and tries to correlate what we read to him with the audio track.

We will repeat SOTW when he is older, but I am glad I bought the audio CDs.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was hoping there are people who do this! My six year old is just starting to read and I'm trying to limit how many read-alouds I have to do. He loves listening to audiobooks so I wondered whether at least year one would work if we went audio-only.

 

Does anyone do the student activity guide with the audio-only route?

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FWIW, we had better retention with listening in the car than when I read, or when I had him listen at home. We did do each section about 3 times.

 

That's because kids can't do anything else but listen. :D I make sure to leave the history CDs in the car. We have MOH, SOTW, and Little History of the World, and if I figure out a way to connect the iPod to the car stereo, we could listen to a bunch of others from librivox. I rarely read aloud history unless it's something like Horrible History. I find that it's harder to keep Dd's attention with history unless we are in the car.

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Do it! I bought all the audiobooks because my kids listen to them again and again. My son was in K when I first bought them and both of my kids most recently listened to all the volumes again this summer for fun (without me telling them to).

 

Lias

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I've heard of a couple of people that use the SOTW audios every year (all 4 volumes a year) and the retention seems to be quite high. They get a constant chronological view in the car every year, so yes, I would say it becomes memorized.

 

We've moved away from SOTW to WinterPromise, but I plan to purchase the other two volumes of SOTW (3&4), and play them in the car. We'll have the MP3 versions, so hubby is just going to put them into the mp3 player, and have it so each time we hop in as a family I can just press play and it will resume from wherever it left off. It would be even better to have a song version....my kids seem to learn everything from songs :lol: So since it will be on the MP3 player it also won't affect his radio/CD playing. We just have to re-hook up the speakers to the back of the car.

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