Multiple kids history question--if you use SOTW for youngers...

[LAmom]

What do you use for your older kids? 7th and up? Do you keep them together (like with TOG/MFW) or use something separate for them?

[LAmom]

Anyone?

[vaquitita]

I haven't done it yet, but wayfarers uses SOTW for grammar students, Guerber's story of books for dialectic students and SWB's history of the world for rhetoric students.

[Stellalarella]

My four younger kids are in SOTW2 this year (ages 6-11).  My 8th and 10th grader are using History of the Medieval World.  We aren't synced up for exact centuries, but close enough for jazz.

[SparklyUnicorn]

My 7th grader is doing Story of US (Hakim).  It will probably take 2 years to get through all 12 volumes so that'll likely be 8th as well.  Then I plan to use SWBs upper level/adult history books.  Prior he did SOTW 1-4.  I tried combining him with his brother last year with SOTW.  That really wasn't so great. 

[katilac]

TOG & similar will have them reading different books on the same topics. They can be handy for staying on pretty much the exact same topic without making your own plans and reading lists. 

 

I'm fine with just being on the same rough topic and/or time period, and I tweak too much to make set plans worth it. 

 

We used SOTW through two cycles as a spine, just for simplicity's sake. It was easy enough to add in more difficult reading and assignments as needed (I only have 2 kids, though). 

 

When they were 7th and 9th, we switched our spine to The Humanistic Tradition, an interdisciplinary humanities survey. I like that it is very complete - history, society, music, art, literature. For literature, we can just read the excerpts within the book, or choose to read the entire work. For art, we can make a trip to the museum, or we can satisfy ourselves with the reproductions in the book, and so on.

 

We did give History of the Ancient World a try, but found that it was time-consuming and an overabundance of material. For me, it is much harder to subtract from this book than add to Humanistic Traditions; it would take a tremendous amount of time and planning on my part. And I do think you would have to subtract if you want to complete the four-year cycle - these books are pretty massive. Plus, it's still a work in progress, and HT is complete and will carry us through high school. 

 

HT is expensive new but readily available used for $10 or so per book. I own the CDs but actually find it easier to just google the included music title rather than hunting down the CD. 

 

The biggest potential con of HT is that it is college level and has challenging syntax and vocabulary, so even strong student may not be able to read it on their own. We do history together regardless, so that's workable for me. Doing it together keeps me up to speed, we get our discussions done right then and there,  and the kids are more likely to speak up if there is a certain topic they wish to pursue further.