heidip2p Posted September 12, 2012 Share Posted September 12, 2012 I have tried a few different history programs over the years and nothing has quite "fit". This year we are trying Truthquest on 2 different levels. I have our older 2 doing Greece and our younger ones doing American History y1. I am having a hard time finding books from our library even with ILL. I think more than anything I am struggling with everything not being laid out for me. I wish I could find a history program like Apologia is for science. I love, love, love Apologia. This we are using the notebooks and we are getting science done. Any ideas on what we can try that might be a better fit? We tried MOH once before and failed. I think we may have given up too easy though too. Our kids are in grades K, 2, 4, 6 and 8. We also have a 2 and 3 year old with a baby that may have special needs arriving in Nov. I guess I am looking for something interesting but easy and will get done. Also my kids are very crafty so if I can tie that in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
5LittleMonkeys Posted September 12, 2012 Share Posted September 12, 2012 (edited) SOTW with the Activity Guide for the youngers. History Odyssey with History Pockets for the orders (and youngers if you want them all more synced up). Oops, forgot to add: I'm finding that just the SOTW texts with a few living books scattered over the year is plenty for younger dc, especially if you add in documentaries/movies and some additional info from the Internet. HO will give you a list of books for the year that you could just go ahead and purchase or, some of them are in the public domain. Edited September 12, 2012 by 5LittleMonkeys Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hunter Posted September 12, 2012 Share Posted September 12, 2012 It's so funny you are looking for history like your science. I want history like Evan-Morr Daily Science. I'm lucky my library has a fantastic section of social studies books, but as for a textbook, or even a spine...I'm shocked at how little there is to pick from. I'm currently rereading oldschool homeschooling books where moms wrote their own curriculum. When it comes to primary world history, we have gone backwards not forwards. :banghead: This is my first attempt to teach chronological history. I've never needed to teach content systematically before and just added it in piecemeal where I was able. It worked fine with all past students. NOT one I have now though. :001_huh: :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ByGrace3 Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 What about Biblioplan? It is all laid out and you can have all the kids on the same topic. You can choose to use SOTW or MOH as a spine, but honestly 4 weeks in and I think I am in love with the BP companion. We use SOTW audios but the companion is enough of a spine for all ages (you just read certain parts for certain ages). It has readers for each age group, a read aloud to do as a family as well as class time reading as a family. It has maps, coloring, crafts, and cool histories (worksheets). We are loving it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 BJU has a nice World Studies 7 text that you could do with the 6th and 8th graders. Get it with the dvds and it's independent. For the youngers I would use the MP Guerber edition with their guide. Then just add crafts and you're there. We used TQ but only as a booklist to add onto our regular program (VP). It was WAY too destructured to be practical for me. BTW, for endorsements, my dd sat through about 1/4 of the BJU 7 world studies dvd class when we had some MK's visiting, and she LOVED it. And for the Guerber, well that was one of the spines we used when my dd was the age of your youngers, and we enjoyed it. I particularly like the MP redacted version, so that's where I got that recommend from. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom@shiloh Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 You lose me when you say "two different levels". That was the kiss of death for me. Absolute, number one priority is to do the same history with all my kids. Why don't you just do TQ with the older kids and have the younger ones listen in? I'm using TQ Middle Ages. We read the commentary together (with me paraphrasing), then my olders read Story of the Middle Ages on their own(2-4 chapters a week), my middler reads Famous Men on his own (one to two chapters a week), and sometimes I read Story of the World to all of them. I just go through the TQ guide and assign what's next, picking out any other good books that we want to read together. A Journey Through Learning has some great lapbooks that match up well with this. You can use the one that they've put together for TQ, or just get the one for Ancient Greece. AJTL also has notebook pages that would correspond if you'd prefer that to lapbooks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LindaOz Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 I have tried a few different history programs over the years and nothing has quite "fit". This year we are trying Truthquest on 2 different levels. I have our older 2 doing Greece and our younger ones doing American History y1. I am having a hard time finding books from our library even with ILL. I think more than anything I am struggling with everything not being laid out for me. I wish I could find a history program like Apologia is for science. I love, love, love Apologia. This we are using the notebooks and we are getting science done. Any ideas on what we can try that might be a better fit? We tried MOH once before and failed. I think we may have given up too easy though too. Our kids are in grades K, 2, 4, 6 and 8. We also have a 2 and 3 year old with a baby that may have special needs arriving in Nov. I guess I am looking for something interesting but easy and will get done. Also my kids are very crafty so if I can tie that in. I am running history at two levels - well, three actually. 2nd and 4th graders - SOTW. I love this. My older kids did it when they were younger and, honestly, it gave them such a good knowledge base for subsequent history studies. It's really worth doing IMO. I do SOTW with them 3x a week. Usually the first two sessions are reading aloud and oral quiz (with prizes of course ;) ) followed by notebooking. On the third day we look up the relevant section in a history encyclopedia, read and discuss, have a revision quiz, and then do some sort of activity or project. It's easy and effective. 6th and 8th graders - Mystery of History. I try to meet with them 3x a week for MOH. We read, discuss, they do a written narration, and we also do lapbooking and timeline figures. Sometimes there are craft activities suggested in the book. They look up the topic in a History Encyclopedia and read from Oxford Ancient History. I haven't been assigning any other extra reading because they are reading through SL books anyway so they will come across the topics again in their reading. Sometimes I think it's even better that they read the extra books further down the track anyway because it causes them to revisit the event or time period after studying it in their history. My 10th grader is doing Sonlight 200 (History of God's Kingdom) and will then move on to SL 300 which is modern history. She works totally independently here. My 11th grader is also working independently. I don't think it is all that difficult to run the two different levels and it really isn't all that time consuming with the two programs I am using. They are both straight forward and if you have a couple of good History encyclopedias you can use them for extra reading on the day. HTH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staceyshoe Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 What about Biblioplan? This was my thought too. I'm actually ditching Biblioplan for TQ because I need more flexibility. Biblioplan might be a great fit for you. You can get 3 weeks of free samples here: http://www.biblioplan.net/2011/03/biblioplans-free-samples-free-sample.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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