Block Planning SOTW 1 & Reorganizing by Geography?

[MelanieM]

Has anyone worked through SOTW using more of a block planning method, such as what you'd see with a Waldorf main lesson? I'm thinking about going through ancients with my kids this year over maybe a six week period, with SOTW being our only subject of study for that time. We will obviously have to skim some areas doing it this way, but I think it might allow us to sink into some aspects a lot more deeply than devoting just an hour a week. (I guess this might also be called a unit study approach.)

If I do this, I'm considering the merits of reorganizing the chapters to a more geographical approach rather than chronological. I love the way it is written and feel that makes so much sense, but I wonder if it might help our flow if I tweak it. I'm sure I've seen posts about people doing this... Does anyone have a link that outlines this approach?

If you have experience working through SOTW in a block or geographically, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Actually, even if you think this is ridiculous, I'd love to hear those thoughts too, so all feedback welcome. :)

[BugsMama]

I have a geographical schedule posted on my blog- it's hard to link on mobile, but the blog is in the signature, then on the menu it's under homeschool for free- free downloads :)

[MelanieM]

BugsMama, thank you! I found your site just after posting this morning, and your schedule has been very helpful!

Maggie Annie, thanks for sharing your experience. That sounds really similar to what I'm considering. I've been planning things out a little today, and I realize I'm not going to come anywhere close to squeezing everything into one block. So I think I'm going to plan blocks for Egypt, Greece, China, India and Rome, with each block being 2-3 weeks long. And yes, we'll also still do some daily foreign language, math practice, etc. Though we'll do our new math content in blocks as well, to really sink into the subject for a time. I'm looking forward to seeing how it all goes this year!

[MelanieM]

We have been using Math Mammoth the past couple of years, and I've noticed that my daughter naturally works this way... She will sit down and do 20 pages of math at a time, several days in a row (she likes workbooks!) and then not touch it again for a couple of weeks. So this year I want to play into what she naturally seems drawn towards. It makes sense, really... it's exactly how I choose to learn something new myself.

[Amy M]

I used Biblioplan's schedule for a while this year, which chunks SOTW more geographically, but it made me nuts personally. I didn't have other books to schedule with it, so halfway through I went back to going straight through SOTW. I felt better about that after reading SWB's article on whether or not to group chronologically, or sort of chronologically by geographical regions, in her article index on welltrainedmind.com. It didn't make sense to me to skip to chapter 27 for instance and then back to ch 12. (Guessing on the exact numbers since I don't have the schedule in front of me.) Would you rather jump on the timeline or in the map? I guess I don't mind jumping on the timeline a bit, but sometimes I felt we jumped too far.

[MelanieM]

I hear you, Amy. The advantage I see to sticking the chapters together geographically is that we can sink into the culture of a particular area more easily. So if the kids are super into building pyramids and playing out the stories of Egypt, I'm not taking them to Sumer and China and distracting them from that focus before bouncing back into Egypt again. For us the supplemental reading and play is more important than the spine, so we end up either drawing away from a subject that still interests them to move on in the text, or taking such huge breaks that we never get through everything!

That said, I still have my doubts because I think jumping around in the book might drive me a little mad. ha! I can see how the jumping could feel like it goes too far, as you say.

I am thinking that working on a timeline will be especially important this year so that we can tie things together chronologically in the face of all that jumping around. And I think we'll plan to listen to the audio straight through so we can experience the story that way as well.