craftymama Posted January 24, 2016 Share Posted January 24, 2016 My oldest never really liked SOTW, but we used it as a backbone with a lot of other books, trips, and activities. In the end it worked out, but now we've outgrown SOTW - even as a backbone. We need something with a bit more meat to it. Can any of you lovely people recommend something that we can use as our backbone? We will still be reading elsewhere and adventuring as much as possible, but I like having a go to place as a wrap up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Tick Posted January 24, 2016 Share Posted January 24, 2016 The two choices I see most often are The World in Ancient Times books by Oxford University Press or the three book series The Human Odyssey by K12. Human Odyssey has a similar scope to SOTW, and would be a good spine. The OUP books don't go beyond medieval times, but they are really nice and perhaps would not require outside books. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ethel Mertz Posted January 24, 2016 Share Posted January 24, 2016 History Odyssey, Level 2 - from Pandia Press Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EKS Posted January 24, 2016 Share Posted January 24, 2016 The Human Odyssey series from K12. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TKDmom Posted January 24, 2016 Share Posted January 24, 2016 I really, really like the World in Ancient times by OUP. My oldest did that and then their Medieval and Early Modern Times. It took her a little over 3 years to get through all of them-they go up to about the colonization of America. I wish they had more... We are starting K12's Human Odyssey--Modern Times now. K12's books are definitely less expensive overall, and they would make a good spine to branch out from (if you're so inclined). I'm terrible at adding extra resources, so I liked the depth of WIAT. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freedom Posted January 24, 2016 Share Posted January 24, 2016 Mystery of History - world history America the Beautiful, Notgrass Truthquest History Beautiful Feet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CelticHaiku Posted January 25, 2016 Share Posted January 25, 2016 Oh my! I am drooling over the Oxford University Press The World in Ancient Times and The Medieval and Early Modern Times books. Be. Still. My. Heart. I must have these books. Never mind that my oldest is years away from using them. The good news is I have 5 years to figure out how I will pay for them. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deerforest Posted January 25, 2016 Share Posted January 25, 2016 We have used the OUP series (we are midway through the middle ages set), K12, and Pandia Press. We completed the entire Ancient series from OUP and the K12 Human Odyssey readings and lots of extra readings and documentaries in a single year. But, we do history daily, and we love history. We love, love, love OUP. I can't say enough good things about it. We occasionally use the available study guides, but I have mixed feelings about them. K12 Human Odyssey is fine. If we didn't have OUP, we would be fine with them. I'm mostly continuing it along with OUP because next year we won't have OUP anymore and will likely just have to settle for Human Odyssey and extra readings and documentaries. This year I also added Pandia Press History Odyssey, but I regret it. Compared to OUP and even K12 Human Odyssey, I hate it. It's the exact type of work we hate to do, and the readings are boring in comparison. I used it for some rough timeline/spine and some historical fiction recommendations. But, I have hardly used it; it was not worth the cost at all. We also did not like SOTW so that might color our perspective and review a bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
My3girls Posted January 25, 2016 Share Posted January 25, 2016 OUP The World in Ancient Times and The Medieval and Early Modern World History Odyssey Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craftymama Posted January 25, 2016 Author Share Posted January 25, 2016 The Oxford series look very nice, but they don't cover more recent events. So we can't use that (we will be studying WWII and other more recent events) so we need something that kind of covers it all. We don't do history in order because we move a lot. We try to take advantage of the area we're in to study what we can visit. So it seems like our best choices are Human Odyssey and History Odyssey. But it feels like flipping a coin. Off to read more about them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craftymama Posted January 25, 2016 Author Share Posted January 25, 2016 We have used the OUP series (we are midway through the middle ages set), K12, and Pandia Press. We completed the entire Ancient series from OUP and the K12 Human Odyssey readings and lots of extra readings and documentaries in a single year. But, we do history daily, and we love history. We love, love, love OUP. I can't say enough good things about it. We occasionally use the available study guides, but I have mixed feelings about them. K12 Human Odyssey is fine. If we didn't have OUP, we would be fine with them. I'm mostly continuing it along with OUP because next year we won't have OUP anymore and will likely just have to settle for Human Odyssey and extra readings and documentaries. This year I also added Pandia Press History Odyssey, but I regret it. Compared to OUP and even K12 Human Odyssey, I hate it. It's the exact type of work we hate to do, and the readings are boring in comparison. I used it for some rough timeline/spine and some historical fiction recommendations. But, I have hardly used it; it was not worth the cost at all. We also did not like SOTW so that might color our perspective and review a bit. Can you tell me more about why you don't like History Odyssey? Is the Human Odyssey really better? We do not love history as you do, but we try. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HomeAgain Posted January 25, 2016 Share Posted January 25, 2016 OUP books, How To Teach What Really Happened (for me), and we went straight for primary sources through Reading Like A Historian, Letters of Note, Jackdaws, and various things picked up at museums and stops we've made over the years. We still used a fiction book to start the ball rolling, and then delved deeper in with what the primary sources said. It made history more of a puzzle to solve, and a lot of fun in middle school. I used cards from Creek Edge Press and the SoTW books just to keep from missing major events as we did history chronologically, but it brought it home to really hear first hand what happened instead of through a third-party textbook. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristie in Florida Posted January 25, 2016 Share Posted January 25, 2016 Human Odyssey is a textbook with a narrative flow, similar to SOTW. History Odyssey Level 2 are plans similar to TWTM logic stage history. You can use Human Odyssey with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deerforest Posted January 25, 2016 Share Posted January 25, 2016 Can you tell me more about why you don't like History Odyssey? Is the Human Odyssey really better? We do not love history as you do, but we try. It's not our style at all. It's mostly focusing on Very Important People and Dates, map work, reading from Kingfisher which we find extraordinarily boring, filling in charts, projects that feel like busy work. It is just completely not our style of history at all. We enjoy learning about common people, reading narratives, learning about connections and similarities amongst cultures. We get wrapped up in the stories; history is definitely not a "get it down" approach in our house, and honestly that's what it feels like Pandia Press (History Odyssey) is trying to provide. Like someone said, you can use Human Odyssey with Pandia Press because it is really just a guideline that you use with other resources. I aligned it with OUP and Human Odyssey but I pretty much ignore about 99% of Pandia Press. I mostly just reference it to make sure I haven't missed anything (because it's a little challenging to align OUP, Human Odyssey, etc.) I also don't always like the literary recommendations from Pandia Press so I end up substituting that a lot, and they don't really go into depth with them at all. I just think, for us, Pandia Press is an expensive history outline. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craftymama Posted January 26, 2016 Author Share Posted January 26, 2016 It's not our style at all. It's mostly focusing on Very Important People and Dates, map work, reading from Kingfisher which we find extraordinarily boring, filling in charts, projects that feel like busy work. It is just completely not our style of history at all. We enjoy learning about common people, reading narratives, learning about connections and similarities amongst cultures. We get wrapped up in the stories; history is definitely not a "get it down" approach in our house, and honestly that's what it feels like Pandia Press (History Odyssey) is trying to provide. Like someone said, you can use Human Odyssey with Pandia Press because it is really just a guideline that you use with other resources. I aligned it with OUP and Human Odyssey but I pretty much ignore about 99% of Pandia Press. I mostly just reference it to make sure I haven't missed anything (because it's a little challenging to align OUP, Human Odyssey, etc.) I also don't always like the literary recommendations from Pandia Press so I end up substituting that a lot, and they don't really go into depth with them at all. I just think, for us, Pandia Press is an expensive history outline. Thank you! This was quite helpful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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