SOTW - 2-3 times per week?

[Linda (Australia)]

Do you think SOTW could be used if you are only doing 2-3 history lessons per week (and still complete each book in a year)?

 

How would you schedule it - read a chapter & narrate one day, with maps / colouring pages on the 2nd, or, any other suggestions?

 

We've been using the 'Famous Men' series this year - I love them, because we can do history in 2-3 lessons per week, and easily finish one or two books a year. But, I miss SOTW! I'd like to go back to it, but don't want to be overwhelmed by the workload. Last time, we tried to do 'everything', and it proved to be a bit much, having such a large family with lots of work to get through.

 

I'm thinking of using it with students in 1st - 4th grade.

 

Any suggestions welcomed - thankyou!

[sgilli3]

Hi Linda,

 

We are using SOTW approx 3 times a week.

I believe using it the way you suggested ( reading, maps etc), then you should probably finish in a year.

 

We have been doing Vol 1 for 18 months, as we have also read a lot of the suggested reading books, and also extended each chapter by including more activities! ( my elder 2 are 10 + 9), hence why it is taking us longer.

 

It is by far, the best history programe we have used.( and bought from Adnil Press !!...LOL)

[keptwoman]

We are using it for 3 days a week...well kind of. We actually didn't start until the 2nd term as I chose to concentrate on science for the first term. Then for the 2nd and 3rd terms we did 4 days a week and now I'm doing 3 days a week because some of the fun has gone with going so hard.

 

I guess if you plan to have a child narrate every. single. chapter. it might be a bit much, but sometimes we read 2 sub chapters and don't narrate at all, or only narrate one of them. I've just relaxed a bit and I feel less compelled to do absolutely every bit of it than I used to and we are enjoying that relaxation.

 

This week we have read about Japan and China and Korea and the Samurais (I'm mixing things around a bit) and rather than narrating we just had a chat about the chapter and now we are having fun making samurai masks, doing haiku looking at the Japanese version of the Code of Chivalry etc.

 

Was that any help at all? LOL perhaps not.

[Chris in VA]

We enjoyed it so much that we did it more frequently--nearly every day. But we had also set it aside in the rush of things for a few weeks and needed to catch up.

I had dd do a narration or copywork on a notebook page for every chapter, but we just talked about the sub-chapters. Depending on the amount of content of each chapter, we might take a week or we might take less. I would rather go more slowly than speed up to finish.

 

I did not try to rush thru the extra books listed in the AG. If we picked a longer chapter book, we just read it as our read-aloud until we finished, even if we had long since left that chapter in SOTW. Sometimes we'd read several smaller books. Most of the time, we'd only read on a day that we were using a supplemental book. We did activities for almost every chapter, but not every activity.

 

So, I think you could read the first and maybe the second part of a chapter one day (and maybe either ask for an oral narration after it or ask the review questions in the AG), then finish the chapter the next day and do mapwork and perhaps a notebook page if it was copywork or narration based (sometimes my notebook pages contain a photo of our activity or project and a small sentence or two about the pic). The 3rd day, you could summarize everything and do an activity or two. You could add in a 4th or even a 5th day if you wanted to do more activities. It sort of depends how deep you are going from week to week.

[Strawberry Queen]

I think it's possible to do it but you will need to keep it simple. If you're worried that's it's going to overwhelm you then just figure out what your basic level is at the beginning. For instance if your success level is reading a chapter, doing a colouring page and narration, with maps for a gr.3/4 level child, then it should work. If you decide to do anything else then it's just a bonus.

 

I'm doing sotw for the 3rd year in a row and I've simplified things as I've added in my second daughter for school. There is just not enough time to do lots of activities and extra reading with all of our other subjects. There is only so much of me to go around;)

 

Another option is to go through the book and look at the chapters that you think are less important and then skip those, or just read them with no pics and narrations. Make it work for you if you want to take it on.:)

[Linda (Australia)]

Yes, of course - it is OK to skip chapters - yikes! A concept, that after 12 years of homeschooling, I still can't seem to grasp!

 

Thankyou for the ideas - they all do help.

[Kay in Cal]

I've posted a 2 times a week schedule/workbook for SOTW I here...

 

http://www.lulu.com/content/796912

 

We also do history twice a week, and it works just fine. We don't read that many additional books, and pick and choose the projects.

[Jane]

Sure. I'm scheduling an hour of history 4/week right now, but we'll be done w/SOTW IV by the end of January (and move on to something different). During the hour I read one section while my children complete their outline and map work. This takes 15-30 minutes depending on our discussions. I have logic stage students, so afterwards I assign additional reading material on the topic, outlining work, timeline work, and/or research work depending on the day and the type of material we're covering. Admittedly, some of their history work overlaps into our times scheduled for LA, memory work, and assigned reading time but that's because the goals overlap.

 

You could even add in GLP, if you wanted. (I love GLP.)

 

HTH.

Edited October 2, 2008 by Jane
more info

[Jill]

I'm doing SOTW2:MiddleAges with my 6.5 yr old ds. We have it scheduled in for 3 times a week assuming about an hour per session including reading, quizzing/narration and map or an activity. I tried to do complete chapters at first this year but some of the chapters are long (4 subchapters) and that got to be too much for ds (and me!) so I accept that a long chapter will take 2 sessions. Yesterday I eschewed working a new chapter to do some activities related to China and Japan.

Even with 42 chapters in SOTW2, If we average 2 chapters a week, we'll complete it in 21 weeks and that fits with the public school year around here so that'll work for us. We are sticking close to their schedule this year as we're being monitored and that's what we're supposed to do. Depending on how many chapters you're looking at, the suggested 3x's/wk as in WTM seems suitable. - Jill in ND

[dcjlkplus3]

We do SOTW2 3 days/week.

We do one section - not chapter - dd7 reads it out loud usually.

We answer the review questions and narrate.

I also try to do one activity - coloring page, map, game, craft, whatever.

 

In my list, it amounts to 4 things - reading, questions, narration, activity

 

Supplemental reading is just that and my dd7 reads something from the list silently for one or two of her "reading" times.

 

I think I figured out that there are about 100 sections in Year 2 - in theory 3days/week will fit in an 180 day school year.

[yslek]

I'm doing it one day a week this year, though I'm not trying to get through an entire volume. We are finishing v2, and beginning v3 this year. The plan is to finish v3 next year. I could get through a volume in a year this way if I skipped chapters, though.

 

Our history days involve listening to the chapter, stopping between sections and having B & T take turns narrating. Then I have them do the mapwork & coloring page. (I mean to have them color while they listen, but usually forget. :tongue_smilie:) If any of the projects look interesting, we'll do that, too. Last year I gave each boy assigned reading from the AG list; this year I'm letting them pick from other reading lists.

 

I was having them write out narrations last year, but dropped it this year in favor of simplification & killing some of the groans that surrounded history time. They still do written narrations for science & get writing practice with CW, so I think we're fine. :)