Alternative to History Odyssey (Level 2)

[CrunchyGirl]

I'm in a challenging situation and I need a high quality, open-and-go, secular history curriculum for a logic stage kid. I really want to piece together a beautiful WTM style history cycle but I need to accept that I'm not in a position to do so. DH is doing the homeschooling for the next few years and he needs open-and-go.

 

Was just looking at History Odyssey but are there alternatives?

 

ETA: If there aren't good alternatives, any BTDT advice on HO level 2 would be appreciated.

Edited June 6, 2016 by CrunchyGirl

[kagmypts]

I actually really liked K12's Human Odyssey.  There is a great workbook that goes with the text.

[happypamama]

I've used all of the HO Level 2s with my kids except for the Middle Ages one (and we'll use it next year).

 

My advice:

Use the k12 Human Odyssey books rather than Story of Mankind.  I can send you the corresponding chapters that I used for Ancients and Modern, the ones I've planned for Middle Ages, and probably Early Modern too.  My kids have liked the k12 books a lot.

 

Take some time at the beginning of the year to mark what YOU consider a day's worth of work for your student.  By doing this, I made my expectations very clear to my kids, and it makes it very independent.  I could easily hand it to DH and have him supervise, but 90% of the time, my kids work on their own, and I check it when they're done.  (I miss doing history with them, but I just don't have time, and actually, it's kind of cool because they make connections to music and whatnot on their own, without me guiding them.)

 

Pick and choose with the writing.  We skip a lot of the essays because of time.  We do the summaries, timelines, most of the worksheets, some of the extra stuff, all of the maps, and most of the outlines.  HO has a lot of things to fill in, so you may want to allow your student the flexibility to skip some of it if the week is busy.  Also, while I love the analysis and connections that HO encourages, sometimes the worksheets have a lot of things to fill in; I just have them do as much as they can.  Also, we've liked most of the literature (Oliver Twist and Things Fall Apart were duds) and poetry (there's just a tad of that), and I've thought a lot of the literature questions and discussion topics were pretty good.

Edited June 6, 2016 by happypamama

[SilverMoon]

Oak Meadow

[fourisenough]

Depends on whether you want history to be a big part of your child's day/week. After doing a full 4-year cycle with SOTW my DD11 has asked for less history next year. My solution is to just read and discuss K12 Human Odyssey Vol. 1 with zero written output. We'll also do Critical Thinking Company's World History Detective, but will not align it perfectly with HO. I use it more as test-prep/critical thinking rather than as a way to deliver history content.

 

Our literature and writing are fully separate programs. I would just caution you that History Odyssey is very much a history, literature, AND, composition program; don't use it if you have other resources planned for those subjects. Or if you do use it, be prepared to cut things out that overlap with other curriculum.

[MamaSprout]

Wayfarers Middle Ages

[SanDiegoMom]

We love Oxford Univ Press world in medieval and early modern times. Six or seven books and study guides (mostly busy work but I like the questions and occasional essay ideas or project ideas).

[MamaSprout]

I actually really liked K12's Human Odyssey.  There is a great workbook that goes with the text.

 

We just finished it the first and started the second book this year. We used the workbooks by reading one chapter a week and picking one activity from the book. We always do the map activity if there is one, if not, we pick a primary source activity, and if there are neither of those, there is usually a chart activity where the student compares some aspect of a culture or religion, etc. We never do the Reading Guide.