history overview for visual spacial learners

[mamashark]

We are nearing the end of SOTW2 and our eyes are glazing over. What started at the beginning of the year as interesting, has quickly become a timeline that is too long and complicated to keep in our heads as visual spacial learners, and so nothing is sticking. 

 

I would love to be able to do a 1 year overview of history that allows us to get the timeline into our heads in a way that we can see the patterns and retrieve chunks at a time to understand the impact of an event/person.

 

Right now everything seems to be taught as dates/names/places and while we try to connect everything and are putting the events that seem most important into our timeline book, I'm realizing that right now the only benefit we are getting from history is a moral discussion of what is occurring and map reading skills. My daughter loves the coloring pages and can answer the comprehension questions...but there's gotta be a better way to do it. Before I try to invent the wheel all over again I thought I'd see if anyone knows of something that already does this?

[emzhengjiu]

My daughter enjoys the Crash Course youtube videos in history.  We use them as supplements to Mystery of History.  I didn't "choose" them, rather my daughter discovered them on her own.  She retains a surprising amount of information from watching the videos. 

[Bluegoat]

I'm not sure that there is really a simple way to do this all at once.  I don't think that many kids have the timeline in their heads just from going through history once.  But I am not sure it is necessary - they have lots of time to read history, maybe after they have done their timelines, they will keep a book of centuries.  That helps solidify things in a different way, since they choose what to include.

 

Over years, a picture is built up, but I don't know that it is possible to rush it.

[mamashark]

I guess it does kind of sound like I want to rush it, really I guess it just seems the timeline is not sinking in at all, like she's not getting a picture of what happened even just this year in our history studies. For that matter, I can't get the picture either. Maybe just working with a time line is the best and hopefully over the years it will sink in.

 

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[paceofnature]

My son prefers to learn/study history by watching documentaries, making lapbooks, and other hands on projects. A favorite around here are Homeschool in the Woods Time Travelers. 

[mamashark]

OK so I'm still thinking through this, even as I type... Is there a way to get a big picture overview and then study the parts more in depth? Over several years?

 

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[almondbutterandjelly]

We liked Usborne First Encyclopedia of History for a kind of overview.  I would think that any year-long world history book would also work as a nice overview.  I'm not sure the ages of your kids.

 

Oh, and with SOTW 2, our eyes glazed over too, more from all the jumping around.  We moved to unit studies for that portion of history, using books like History Dudes: Vikings and some Usborne stuff on Knights and Castles.  

 

We LOVE Horrible Histories videos.

[Arcadia]

My DS11 picked DK History: From the Dawn of Civilization to the Present Day to use as a spine for the timeline when he was 8.

We went to Barnes & Noble for him to pick a timeline book as he has no interest in making his own and we have no wall space to put a timeline up. He prefer this book over the Smithsonian one.

 

He use it for History and for Art. He studied about the renaissance period in Art and Science and have no problems flipping the book to read about the renaissance period for interest.

http://www.amazon.com/History-From-Dawn-Civilization-Present/dp/0756676096

[HomeAgain]

We did pond ripples for a while.  In the center of the paper goes a dot, the stone.  An event is written on it.  Around that goes a circle, the first ripple.  What did that first event cause to happen?  Then a second, then a third.  We'd usually get up to about 10 circles before quitting.

 

For example, we'd pick an event like
Stone: Spaniards found gold in the Americas.

Ripple 1: The English wanted to find the same fortune.  The Jamestowne Company was founded.

Ripple 2: 3 ships set off for Virginia

Ripple 3: The colonists landed in 1607, eager to find gold.

Ripple 4: They put their efforts into searching and did not spend enough time farming.

Ripple 5: Food became scarce. 

Ripple 6: The governor was accused of hoarding supplies.

Ripple 7: some of the colonists went to live with nearby Native American tribes

 

And so on...until we got a good idea of what happened.  As they get farther in you can do two or three "stones" at once and see how one event may have had many catalysts.

[prairiewindmomma]

She's in 2nd grade? If she has some fun tidbits in her head afterwords (I liked making illuminated books; vikings had ships), I'd count it good. You're just trying to create pegs to hang information on later.  Have fun with the arts and crafts, and enjoy beautiful picture books together.

 

If she were 12, and you're going through SOTW2 again, I'd say that you should add some videos, and do a one page idea map of the major cultures and themes of the thread....but I'm guessing she is 7-8....

[mamashark]

The pond ripples is a neat idea, I've never seen that before! 

 

Yes, she's 8.

 

Thanks for all the ideas, I'm going to check into those books too.

 

 

[Bluegoat]

I have a thought - this is based on a post I read on a CM group.  They suggested that in the old CM classrooms, they did not actually start with an overview of world history.  THey essentially began the younger kids with their national history.  Sometime later, they added a second stream of another nations history, but one that was related somewhat to their own. (So, they started with English history, and then later also added French history.)  Then even later they did ancient history and more of a world history.

 

I think there is some value in narrowing.  Most young kids seem to love ancient history, but I've come to the conclusion that a world history is too all over the place to grasp well, even for an adult.  But, for example for me in that model I would probably choose Canadian history, and then English history (or I could do French or Scottish as second stream) which would tend to slide into European history.  There would be all kinds of intersections within those, and some touching outside of Europe that might come to fruition later.

 

One of the things I found this year with SOTW 3 was that some of the chapters about non-western nations didn't seem to fit in well.  The ones where there were connections worked, but the others seemed to be lacking too much in context to form a real picture.

[mamashark]

that's an interesting thought process, I'll have to ponder that some more...