Does *anyone* like HO Ancients 2?

[shukriyya]

All my searches yield thread after thread of disappointment, heavy tweaking or abandoning completely of HO Ancients 2. I get that there is a lot of writing involved. Is that the only issue or is it a program that sucks the life out of the subject? And if so how? The lit. selections look good and the maps look comprehensive. It uses Kingfisher rather than UILE spine. From the sample it looks pretty good. So why does it have so many detractors?

[Woodland Mist Academy]

I'm presuming you mean History Odyssey. It was not an issue of too much writing for us. It was that it all felt like busywork. It seemed scattered and flighty. Read this, write that, fill in time-line. Then she walked away remembering little and having no sense of connection.

[shukriyya]

Yes, History Odyssey. Busywork is definitely not what I'm after. Was there no opportunity for discussion because it was so choppy?

[Woodland Mist Academy]

I am more than willing to admit that perhaps the fault was mine. Perhaps if we had approached it differently we would have liked it more. Our days include hours of discussion. History Odyssey just didn't seem to lend itself naturally to discussion--at least it didn't for us. That was one reason we switched.

 

 

[shukriyya]

Thanks, WMA for your input.

[AK_Mom4]

We wanted to like it.  We really did.  We used HO Level 1 Ancients, Middle Ages and Early Modern and those were a pretty big success. But when we looped around to go Level 2 Ancients, it just wasn't interesting enough for DD12 to retain anything.  She was happy to finish off by just reading the lit selections and the spine (Kingfisher), but the writing, maps, and timeline mostly seemed like a dreaded chore.

 

We tried again last year (6th grade) with HO Level 2 Middle Ages.  A flop again.  We ended up "finishing" it, but it was a slog.  Which is a real shame as DD12 thought she would like the middle ages material after she read through it.

 

It may be a personality thing - DD is happy this year doing world geography - reading about far away places, cooking strange foods, listening to new music and making powerpoint presentations about each country.  It seems to be sticking with her better to have a more interactive program.  HO Level 2 was just a little TOO independent, I think.

 

[Haiku]

Nope. No one likes it. ;)

 

Yes, it sucks all the joy out history.

 

It's just way too much of go-from-here-to-here-to-here-to-here-to-here ... the attempt to tie it all together ends up making it scattered and disjointed. And the pace is such that you can't really take the time to enjoy anything. We really loathed it, and it takes a lot for us to loathe a curriculum. My kids have always loved history, and with HO Ancients 2 they began to hate it.

[Woodland Mist Academy]

Nope. No one likes it. ;)

 

 

:smilielol5:

 

I am so glad I hadn't taken the sip of hot tea yet. The computer screen would have had the scent of chamomile. 

[momma2three]

I was just looking at it, and it doesn't have any projects or fun stuff.  That seems odd, for something basically designed for 5th graders.  5th graders are still young enough to want to color something in or do a craft or a fun game.  (And yes I know not all 5th graders are crafty, but neither are all 1st graders).  Bummer: so far we're enjoying Level 1.

[Heathermomster]

Too disjointed. My DS hates the red KFH, so we supplemented heavily. The maps are great though.

[KrissiK]

Yeah, I'd agree with the others. Even my heavily tweaked version does not satisfy me. It is disjointed I just don't feel like it gives an over-arching picture. It doesn't connect things..... I'm irritated even after the tweaking, but I don't know what else to do. I'm kind of thinking about dumping the whole thing and just going with a who.e bunch of biographies and a good timeline, but even that..... Ugh! History and science for my 5th grader are just not going well this year. I'm glad we have one more week of school and then our "Fall Vacation" (we do 9 weeks on and 1 week off) and then I can maybe regroup.

[shukriyya]

Sounds like a definite no-go. Not one happy camper on this thread :lol:

[Χά�ων]

Soo what are people using instead? I was debating this for next year.

[mommymilkies]

Poop.  I just bought the Early Modern level 2.  Is it as bad as Ancients?

[Haiku]

Soo what are people using instead? I was debating this for next year.

 

After we dumped it, I just switched to reading The Story of Mankind and added in Horrible History books, You Wouldn't Want To ... books, and historical novels from the library. We continued doing the timeline and occasional paragraph writing. The kids were MICH happier. This year, for Medieval/Renaissance, I am using the Suzanne Strauss Art books along with the same kinds of extras.

[Melissa B]

I like it.  :D  We are using HO Ancients 2 this year, but I bought it to go along with a couple of other things for my history-loving 4th grader.  I've used it in the past with two who didn't really care for history and did have to tweak it some.  Modern Level 2 was the most enjoyable to them. 

 

I like HO especially for the mapwork and writing practice. But, we've never been interested in project-based history. This year we are using it along with Connect the Thoughts and Memoria Press.  Connect the Thoughts also uses Story of Mankind as its spine, but their focus is more about making personal connections with the history being studied. I like the interesting discussions that come from using CTT along with the connections my kids make when being asked to draw something rather than write about it, but that program is rather light and lacking in writing and geography. We are also using the Memoria Press book - The Ancient World (D. Mills) and study guide.  This is for some cultural material: what the people were like in those times.  We do all of the study guide work orally (except for the tests.) With this much material, I don't feel bad about skipping assignments here and there in any of the programs. 

 

Our only real project is a scrapbook we put together through the year.  One page per week, done over the weekend.  I get out the Cricut and paper. I pull out college humanities texts that I purchase for .50 or $1 and they cut them up along with calendar pictures. We sometimes get out paints as well. My only rule is that the pictures have to be relevant to the time period studied.  They can decorate in any way or write anything they have learned (or not write anything.) It is just a way to sum up the week's learning. I'm thinking about doing one for science this year, too.  But that might make it seem too much like school work and not so much fun weekend art.  :)

[happypamama]

Poop. I just bought the Early Modern level 2. Is it as bad as Ancients?

I know; I just bought Early Modern levels 1 and 2 myself, because I liked the samples so much. My kids don't really like to color, and they're picky about projects (they didn't like a lot of the stuff in the SOTW AG), but I liked that HO has writing and researching, because I really felt like they (well, my older one, anyway) needed more of that. I'm hoping they don't end up hating it!

[sagira]

We did not jive well with HO Early Modern Level 1. We tried it in fourth, and jumping around SOTW 3 felt worse to ds and me than the jumping around SOTW 3 does around the world. Ds missed SOTW "the way it was before" and we ditched it. Thankfully, I had only done the trial. It is generous, including a whole ten weeks if I renember correctly. After those 10 weeks, I bought the SOTW 3 AG in pdf and never looked back.

[shukriyya]

Sigh. History, and to a lesser extent science, always seems to come down to cobbling together your own thing. The question is do I cobble from a pre-made curric. or do I cobble from scratch? Hard to say on this one. I do like that the map work and writing is set out already. Discussion is the easy part as it will spill naturally from our readings together so no need for leading qs. Hmm...

[Haiku]

I do like that the map work and writing is set out already. 

 

If you just want these parts, I suggest that you cross off everything else in each lesson and just use a notebook that has maps and writing without all the categories that HO suggests. 

[Woodland Mist Academy]

We are using Human Odyssey (the other HO ;) ). We are also using the Oxford University Press books. Those two serve as our spines. Then we add lots of other books.

 

The Human Odyssey student pages have map work and writing assignments. DD is making good progress answering essay questions, writing outlines, etc using it. The assignments vary. Sometimes essays, sometimes short answer, sometimes comparing and contrasting, etc.

 

History is much better these days.

 

ETA: This approach seems to prompt many more discussions than History Odyssey did.

[dcjlkplus3]

We liked it just fine and and my daughter really liked the history pockets and the independent nature of it. I like the level 2s that we have done (just started Early Modern, and have done Ancients and Middle Ages). We did not finish Middle Ages as we had a hard year in sixth grade with getting anything done! I do NOT like level 1 one much at all so far (My middle child is out of sync with the history cycle and has done SOTW already and is not ready for HO level 2 Early Modern (she would have done fine with the Ancients one).

[KrissiK]

Soo what are people using instead? I was debating this for next year.

I'll be cobbling, too. I'm trying to save our Ancient Egypt unit by reading "pharaohs of ancient Egypt" and using questions from Greenleaf Guide to Ancient Egypt. Also, we'll be doing Jackdaw portfolio for Ancient Egypt. I ordered another Greenleaf Guide for Ancient Greece (got it used on Amazon, so it's not a big deal if I hate it). I'm just going to kind of be making things up as I go, ,I guess. I have a lot of good biographies, and I'll hit those a little harder.

[Χά�ων]

I'm not a fan of cobbling. DS needs more this cycle.

[shukriyya]

We are using Human Odyssey (the other HO ;) ). We are also using the Oxford University Press books. Those two serve as our spines. Then we add lots of other books.

 

The Human Odyssey student pages have map work and writing assignments. DD is making good progress answering essay questions, writing outlines, etc using it. The assignments vary. Sometimes essays, sometimes short answer, sometimes comparing and contrasting, etc.

 

History is much better these days.

 

ETA: This approach seems to prompt many more discussions than History Odyssey did.

 

 

We are also using the OUP book for Near Eastern history and loving it. I got the guide to go which seems to be a combination of busy work and meaningful discussion and writing material. I have looked and re-looked at Human Odyssey over the course of the year but wanted something with more direction. I will look again and also at the student pages. Perhaps that's the route to go. I'm also using CHOLL for lit supplements.

 

I'm appreciating everyone's responses :D

[Woodland Mist Academy]

A word of warning about the Human Odyssey student pages. . .

 

Some of the assignments are to be completed online and you need to be part of K-12 to do so. Sometimes it's a reading assignment, other times part of a test or writing assignment. It doesn't bother me because what is in the book is plenty for us. Others have been bothered by this, though.

[RootAnn]

DD#1 did HO Ancients 2 last year. She liked it for most of the year, but I tweaked heavily. She got behind & I'm mean, so she had to go into the summer to finish it. That, she did not like. 

 

We chose something different this year for a number of reasons, but in many ways, we're doing things in a very HO-inspired way. (And HO is really like WTM logic stage all scheduled out.)

[Guest]

The only part my kids liked was making their own timeline pictures to go along with the dates. The rest was pure drudgery. Of course, they had been reading the Kingfisher and Usborne history encyclopedias for years beforehand.

 

Son 2 did most of K12 Human Odyssey and liked the book fine. He did not like the assignments.

[shukriyya]

A word of warning about the Human Odyssey student pages. . .

 

Some of the assignments are to be completed online and you need to be part of K-12 to do so. Sometimes it's a reading assignment, other times part of a test or writing assignment. It doesn't bother me because what is in the book is plenty for us. Others have been bothered by this, though.

 

Thanks for the heads up.

 

For anyone interested in maps for the Ancient World I just found this curric.

 

And it looks like they've linked up their own map lessons with various spines.

[Alice]

We are liking it so far. I guess I’m tweaking it a little but it doesn’t feel like a lot of extra work. 

 

What we like: 

- I could figure it all out myself but I like having a list of assignments spelled out for ds, it saves me time. 

-He doesn’t like to color or do crafts so he likes that there is none of that. 

-He really likes doing the timeline. 

-So far, I like that it is laid out in chronological order by culture as opposed to pure chronological order. I always felt a little scattered with SOTW going from China to Egypt to India to Africa back to Egypt, etc. 

 

My 2nd grader is doing SOTW Ancients this year and 5th grader is using HO Level 2. I am using the Kingfisher Encyclopedia as well as The Human Odyssey as a text instead of The Story of Mankind. I also got some other books (the Dorothy Mills one and another set of books on the Ancient World). Each week I go through and circle the HO assignments I want him to do. I have him do the reading and sometimes add in other readings. I ask him to take notes on what he reads and to pretty much ignore whatever writing they assign (the “add this to Inventions section†kind of things). He set his notebook up to just be Notes, Maps and People. He takes notes on what he reads, keeps a list of important people he encounters and does the maps. I also bought the Add-a-Century timeline this year for us all to use and we get that out once a week and add things from the week that HO suggests or that he thinks are important. He also reads lots of the supplemental books I get for his brother (like the “You Wouldn’t Want to Be...†books) 

 

So far it doesn’t feel too much like busywork because note taking is something I think he really needs to work on. I consider it a crucial skill so he’s working on that as he’s doing the reading. The maps I think are also a good skill and the timeline visually reviews what he’s learned. 

 

He is not a writer but he needs to work on it. We’re also using WWS and I’m focusing most of his writing time on that. My plan is to have him pick something he wants to learn more about every few weeks or so (roughly once a topic) and to research it and do some kind of extra project. This might be a written assignment or something else. The past two weeks he researched Stonehenge and other megaliths which he found fascinating. I showed him all the extra resources, he read about them, made a very nice model of Stonehenge and then wrote labels to put on the model and show what he had learned. 

 

I guess it is a lot of tweaking, but I’ve come to realize I’m going to do that with any curriculum. What I’m liking so far about HO is that it provides a very nice skeleton for me to work from. 

[Allearia]

We are using Human Odyssey (the other HO ;) ). We are also using the Oxford University Press books. Those two serve as our spines. Then we add lots of other books.

 

The Human Odyssey student pages have map work and writing assignments. DD is making good progress answering essay questions, writing outlines, etc using it. The assignments vary. Sometimes essays, sometimes short answer, sometimes comparing and contrasting, etc.

 

History is much better these days.

 

ETA: This approach seems to prompt many more discussions than History Odyssey did.

We also love Human Odyssey and use the student pages.

[shukriyya]

We are liking it so far. I guess I’m tweaking it a little but it doesn’t feel like a lot of extra work. 

 

What we like: 

- I could figure it all out myself but I like having a list of assignments spelled out for ds, it saves me time. 

-He doesn’t like to color or do crafts so he likes that there is none of that. 

-He really likes doing the timeline. 

-So far, I like that it is laid out in chronological order by culture as opposed to pure chronological order. I always felt a little scattered with SOTW going from China to Egypt to India to Africa back to Egypt, etc. 

 

My 2nd grader is doing SOTW Ancients this year and 5th grader is using HO Level 2. I am using the Kingfisher Encyclopedia as well as The Human Odyssey as a text instead of The Story of Mankind. I also got some other books (the Dorothy Mills one and another set of books on the Ancient World). Each week I go through and circle the HO assignments I want him to do. I have him do the reading and sometimes add in other readings. I ask him to take notes on what he reads and to pretty much ignore whatever writing they assign (the “add this to Inventions section†kind of things). He set his notebook up to just be Notes, Maps and People. He takes notes on what he reads, keeps a list of important people he encounters and does the maps. I also bought the Add-a-Century timeline this year for us all to use and we get that out once a week and add things from the week that HO suggests or that he thinks are important. He also reads lots of the supplemental books I get for his brother (like the “You Wouldn’t Want to Be...†books) 

 

So far it doesn’t feel too much like busywork because note taking is something I think he really needs to work on. I consider it a crucial skill so he’s working on that as he’s doing the reading. The maps I think are also a good skill and the timeline visually reviews what he’s learned. 

 

He is not a writer but he needs to work on it. We’re also using WWS and I’m focusing most of his writing time on that. My plan is to have him pick something he wants to learn more about every few weeks or so (roughly once a topic) and to research it and do some kind of extra project. This might be a written assignment or something else. The past two weeks he researched Stonehenge and other megaliths which he found fascinating. I showed him all the extra resources, he read about them, made a very nice model of Stonehenge and then wrote labels to put on the model and show what he had learned. 

 

I guess it is a lot of tweaking, but I’ve come to realize I’m going to do that with any curriculum. What I’m liking so far about HO is that it provides a very nice skeleton for me to work from. 

 

This is really helpful, thanks :D

 

 

[Χά�ων]

My interest in HO 2 was that it looked a lot NOEO science. DS loves NOEO.

[RootAnn]

DD#1 is sitting here & wanted me to say that she liked the reading, but hated all the writing. (I deleted all the History Pockets, but added a few art & other projects.)

[shukriyya]

DD#1 is sitting here & wanted me to say that she liked the reading, but hated all the writing. (I deleted all the History Pockets, but added a few art & other projects.)

 

Thank you, DD#1 :D

[Χά�ων]

We are liking it so far. I guess I’m tweaking it a little but it doesn’t feel like a lot of extra work. 

 

What we like: 

- I could figure it all out myself but I like having a list of assignments spelled out for ds, it saves me time. 

-He doesn’t like to color or do crafts so he likes that there is none of that. 

-He really likes doing the timeline. 

-So far, I like that it is laid out in chronological order by culture as opposed to pure chronological order. I always felt a little scattered with SOTW going from China to Egypt to India to Africa back to Egypt, etc. 

 

My 2nd grader is doing SOTW Ancients this year and 5th grader is using HO Level 2. I am using the Kingfisher Encyclopedia as well as The Human Odyssey as a text instead of The Story of Mankind. I also got some other books (the Dorothy Mills one and another set of books on the Ancient World). Each week I go through and circle the HO assignments I want him to do. I have him do the reading and sometimes add in other readings. I ask him to take notes on what he reads and to pretty much ignore whatever writing they assign (the “add this to Inventions section†kind of things). He set his notebook up to just be Notes, Maps and People. He takes notes on what he reads, keeps a list of important people he encounters and does the maps. I also bought the Add-a-Century timeline this year for us all to use and we get that out once a week and add things from the week that HO suggests or that he thinks are important. He also reads lots of the supplemental books I get for his brother (like the “You Wouldn’t Want to Be...†books) 

 

So far it doesn’t feel too much like busywork because note taking is something I think he really needs to work on. I consider it a crucial skill so he’s working on that as he’s doing the reading. The maps I think are also a good skill and the timeline visually reviews what he’s learned. 

 

He is not a writer but he needs to work on it. We’re also using WWS and I’m focusing most of his writing time on that. My plan is to have him pick something he wants to learn more about every few weeks or so (roughly once a topic) and to research it and do some kind of extra project. This might be a written assignment or something else. The past two weeks he researched Stonehenge and other megaliths which he found fascinating. I showed him all the extra resources, he read about them, made a very nice model of Stonehenge and then wrote labels to put on the model and show what he had learned. 

 

I guess it is a lot of tweaking, but I’ve come to realize I’m going to do that with any curriculum. What I’m liking so far about HO is that it provides a very nice skeleton for me to work from. 

 

Is The Human Odyssey a good substitute for The Story of Mankind? I am not interested in using TSOM. I own Human Odyssey and was considering using it with HO2 next year.

[Coffeemama]

We're liking HO Ancients level 2! The only tweak I made was eliminating TSOM; we're reading sections of Human Odyssey in its place. Both kids like it too. It's DD12s favorite subject, partly b/c we work on it together. DS 10 hates all the writing, but he needs it.

[Alice]

Is The Human Odyssey a good substitute for The Story of Mankind? I am not interested in using TSOM. I own Human Odyssey and was considering using it with HO2 next year.

 

I’m not sure, I don’t have TSOM and haven’t really seen it. I bought Human Odyssey after seeing a lot of recommendations for it here. I also bought History Odyssey because I wanted to try something a little more laid out. I saw others who said they substituted Human Odyssey so I figured I’d try it. So far, it’s working fine.

[Heathermomster]

If you wanted to look at TSOM by Van Loon, I believe the book is available on Google.docs...My DS grew to like that book.

 

Even though we do not use HO lev 2 anymore, we apply our current history lessons in a very similar way. DS enjoys keeping a notebook with mapwork, summaries, and the timeline (we use timeline software). He asks to work on history.

 

Basically, HO lev 2 can work, you just have to be flexible. DS did not enjoy outlining from the red KFH..

[KrissiK]

If you wanted to look at TSOM by Van Loon, I believe the book is available on Google.docs...My DS grew to like that book.

 

Even though we do not use HO lev 2 anymore, we apply our current history lessons in a very similar way. DS enjoys keeping a notebook with mapwork, summaries, and the timeline (we use timeline software). He asks to work on history.

 

Basically, HO lev 2 can work, you just have to be flexible. DS did not enjoy outlining from the red KFH..

You can get TSOM from Amazon Kindle for free, if you just want to look. I actually don't mind it. It gives a good overview first and then we dig in.

 

One of the problems I realized I was having was that the course was broad, with not much depth. That's fine, and they get that in the first round of history with SOTW, but this time... I just wasn't happy with such a brief overview. Plus, I'm fresh off a lecture from Dr. Perrin from Classical Academic Press, emphasizing depth not necessarily breadth. So, what I have ended up doing with HO is taking it from a world history course to a Western Civ course. I didn't intend to do that, but.... I started with Egypt. I added in "the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt" and the Jackdaw portfolio for King Tut. Then, because DS loves these books, I tackled Greece and added "Famous Men of Ancient Greece" (from Memoria Press) and used the Greenleaf Study guide for that book. Same for Rome. If had to cut some stuff, and I wasn't thrilled, but I feel so much of the love and enjoyment of history is the study of who made history in a deeper way. I learned to love history by reading biographies. So, I'm trying to develop a curriculum that looks like that.

[Χά�ων]

I haven't found anything I feel gives enough depth. I supplement heavily with history and use a lot of living books and biographies. I also pull in documentaries and anything else to help.

 

[redsquirrel]

I sort of cobbled together my own Ancient History, but tried Pandia Press for year 2. It crashed and burned for us. I ended up using Human Odyssey and some Oxford books and doing history as put forward by SWB in the 3rd edition of TWTM. We did that for 6th and 7th grade and it was fantastic.  Now we are in 8th grade and studying Global Modern History, and we are doing all reading and discussion and using WWS as our writing.

 

But we had a great 6th and 7th grade using TWTM method. It was easy and my son really liked it.

[MEmama]

We love it! Surprisingly, even my reluctant writer doesn't think it's too much writing, and I love how gentle it is in teaching solid writing skills. I do supplement, but that says more about my nature than the program. This is the first "real" history curriculum we've used, and I really appreciate feeling like I'm not re-inventing the wheel. I know it's all age and skill appropriate for my son, and he's responding really well to it. We both love history, but this year is more about writing skills than anything else. For whatever reason, those checkmark boxes are a huge incentive even on lazy days! :)

[Χά�ων]

We love it! Surprisingly, even my reluctant writer doesn't think it's too much writing, and I love how gentle it is in teaching solid writing skills. I do supplement, but that says more about my nature than the program. This is the first "real" history curriculum we've used, and I really appreciate feeling like I'm not re-inventing the wheel. I know it's all age and skill appropriate for my son, and he's responding really well to it. We both love history, but this year is more about writing skills than anything else. For whatever reason, those checkmark boxes are a huge incentive even on lazy days! :)

Thanks for sharing, this really helps me.

[shukriyya]

Thanks everyone for your thoughtful and thorough responses. They've been helpful. Thinking we'll go with WTM style history at this point as tempting as it is to have everything set out for us :D

[Istanbulmommy]

My 5th grade, 11 year old DD is just finishing up History Odyssey Ancients Level 2.  She has absolutely loved this program and it has fostered an appreciation of history in her.  

 

She did comment that the History Pockets got "annoying" after a while.  We substituted The Story of Mankind (TSOM) because she was offended by the author's "discriminative point of view".  In its place we now use The Human Odyssey which sometimes she also reads "for fun".  

 

She has loved the style of summarizing and notetaking that she has learned in this program.  Under her own initiation, she applied this system of study to her interest in Ottoman History which she is studying as an elective/hobby.

 

We will use History Odyssey Middle Ages Level 2 for our upcoming 6th grade year.

[MEmama]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we skipped the History Pockets (DS is not a crafty kind of kid) and TSOM, instead opting to go with other resources for the reason istanbulmommy mentioned above.