Planning MOH?

[My4arrows]

Any tips on how to plan?  What extras to buy?

[kirstenhill]

I think it depends a little bit on the age of your kids and what kinds of "extras" your kids like.   I have used MOH with younger kids (though my DD is now on her 2nd go-around with volumes 2-3 this year, and she is a middle schooler now).  

 

I fit MOH into my own preference of how to do a history rotation. We do all of Volume 1 and the first Q. of Volume 2 in our rotation "year one" by reading 4 lessons per week for about 32-34 weeks (sometimes slowing down to 3 per week toward the end of the year).   Then in year 2 we do the rest of Vol 2. and about half of Vol 3 -- doing 3 to 4 lessons per week.   Last time around (when DD was in early elementary) we stopped with MOH at that point and switched to exclusively American history for 2 years.   This time around she may do the rest of 3 and all of 4 over the next two years (7th-8th) depending on her preference.

 

My kids are not so much into "assigned" hands on projects or lapbooks or anything like that right now, so my main planning is literature.  I used a variety of sources to pull together my own list that roughly matches up (both last time around when DD was in 1st-2nd grade and this time around with a middle grade list when DD was in 5th-6th).    I used the suggestions given by MOH in the appendices but my own sources as well.  To be honest we don't do the quizes or anything either.  DD often just tells me about what she is reading.  DD has never been a huge fan of writing, and she is being challenged in a good way with her writing curriculum, so we are not doing written narrations or notebooking either.   That's probably not how "most" people do MOH, but it is what works for us. DD loves history and could read history/historical lit books all day if I let her!

 

I included my boys in our MOH reading last year, but decided to try SOTW with them this year.  They are not as into history as DD, so I liked the idea of a bit less reading for them.  The readings seem to get longer and more detailed as you move from Volume 1 into Vol. 2 and 3 of MOH.

[MerryAtHope]

Here's a blog post on how I combined MOH with Sonlight, if you are looking for reader/read-aloud suggestions. Outside of that, I didn't do a lot of planning--it's pretty easy to open and go. Think through how you want to do the timelines (do you want to make the figures, use pre-printed figures etc...). One year we got the review cards, but there are a LOT, and they have a lot of info on them--overkill for younger students. One year we got the coloring extras, which are very detailed--I had 6th & 8th graders then, and they usually didn't have time to finish the intricate drawings. 

 

When they were younger, I did notebooking one year, and sometimes printed out coloring sheets I found online, or black and white drawings they could color etc... and they liked that. 

 

There's a lot you can do with MOH, so it just depends on your interests/needs. Many of the activities for youngers don't take a lot of planning or just a little--I'd mainly have a good variety of craft supplies on hand for the occasional craft you might do (we enjoyed making Egyptian collars and creation booklets, having the ice-holding contest for the ice age, things like that). 

[Momto6inIN]

We do MOH similarly to kirstenhill. We do history 4x/week. We almost never do the activities.

 

Year 1 - Vol I & 1st quarter of Vol II

Year 2 - rest of Vol II and Vol III through Jamestown

Year 3 - rest of Vol III and Vol IV through Civil War - this is the year in our 4 year cycle that election year will hit so we will also do a unit on elections and government for the younger kids as well as some state history while the high schooler does US Government

Year 4 - rest of Vol IV - the youngers will do some US geography and states and capitals stuff while the high schooler does Economics

 

2nd & 6th graders use the MOH coloring pages while we read and discuss the lesson and also the timeline figures from Homeschool in the Woods on a wall timeline.

 

2nd 6th & 8th graders all do the MOH maps.

 

Supplements:

6th & 8th graders read Human Odyssey and History of US.

10th grader uses World History Detective and Critical Thinking in US History as his graded output for high school.

All of them read various literature selections to go along with the lessons.

 

[Holly]

We did MOH 1 last year (and the year before).  

 

I added the Challenge Cards and some extra books/read alouds.  We also watched Drive Through History Holy Land DVDs.  We used the printable timeline from the Yahoo Group.  We glued the timeline figures on a display board.  For activities, I'd say we did one every week or two...I'm not into lots of activities.  My older two DC did the tests.  

 

For planning, we generally did lessons on the first 3 days, maps and timeline on day 4, and quizzes/tests on day 5.  I tried to do the activities on the days of the corresponding readings.  We watched DTH videos on day 4.  Our extra readings and challenge cards were done as time allowed.  I aimed for 1 day of challenge card review and 3-5 days of extra readings per week.  

[My4arrows]

Thanks!  Maybe I'm overthinking all this!  Those all helped me out!