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Best spine for ancient history in logic stage


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Hello,

 

I am starting to think about next year when we start our history cycle over again with a sixth grader and a third grader. We have used SOTW and heavily tweaked our own history programs.

 

I have been deliberating for a while over what to use. I don't want to do SOTW again. I don't feel ancients is meaty enough for a sixth grader. I would also like to incorporate a lot of biblical history in with it. I'd even consider a world history course instead of just ancients. For a long time, I planned to do TOG. I still may, but I am starting to think it may be too much as my plate may get pretty full next year. I like several of the titles such as Journey through the Bible though. I even considered doing Bookshark or Sonlight, but I am not crazy about the spines for this topic. I am not drawn to Hillyer's book at all. I also like some hands on stuff. To me, ancient history is really dull without some fun projects. I am thinking I may end up doing my own thing.

 

So.....

 

What is your favorite spine(s) for ancient history for logic stage?

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I think TOG even uses OUP for Greece.  I'll definitely look into them.  Cost not too big of an issue, esp compared to TOG.  Any feedback on the Guerber's books?  I am also considering Genevieve Foster's books, but she only has one for Rome for ancients.  Maybe still useful.  I see Streams of Civilization used in many unit study programs too.  Any thoughts?

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We use the K12 book, there are three and I spread them out over 4 years.  I supplement with the OUP books. They have two series and they will take you from Ancient history to maybe the beginning of year 3 in the history cycle..? I can't quite remember now. 

 

My library has the OUP books. I mostly use the ones for Greece, Egypt and Rome in 5th grade, but again, just as a supplement.

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  • 2 weeks later...

My older kids enjoyed the Genevieve Foster books for logic stage. Augustus Caesar's World for ancients I think. They're similar to SOTW, but written for an older audience.

 

 

We enjoyed using Augustus Caesar's World (We used this while studying Greeks and Romans).  We referred to the Kingfisher as a spine for Egpyt.  We divided Ancients into three terms: Egypt, Greeks and Romans

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We enjoyed using Augustus Caesar's World (We used this while studying Greeks and Romans). We referred to the Kingfisher as a spine for Egpyt. We divided Ancients into three terms: Egypt, Greeks and Romans

This is what I am thinking of doing as I'm piecing this together. I want to incorporate the Biblical history too with a good atlas and the Journey through the Bible book. Then I'll have three units of Egypt, Greece and Rome. I have Streams of Civilization I can use as a framework too. Then I'm thinking of the OUP Greece book and Augustus Caesar's World for Rome. Then I can tie in SOTW for my youngers.

 

I struggle with ancients because I want to tie in Biblical/Jewish history here, but I have issues with a lot of the big, expensive history packages. I love the look of TOG, but in the end, I feel there are just too many pieces of books pieced together. I don't like jumping around so much. I looked at BF because it's so inexpensive and uses good books, but I didn't like one of their other studies I tried. Thought of MFW too, but nothing is perfect. I don't like Biblioplan. I am back to doing my own thing again. I had hoped to find it ready made since I am weakest in Ancients, but I think the key thing will be choosing a few good spines we can go through.

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Have you considered the Veritas Press history cards? All the spines listed in their "priority 1 resources" are keyed in on the backs, with specific page numbers. So much biblical history is interwoven that there are two sets of ancients. Roughly two cards a week would get you through them in one year.

I usually look away from Veritas bc it is a five year cycle, and they take two years for Ancients. That is a possibility though if I sped them up.

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  • 3 weeks later...

We use Greenleaf Press's Famous Men of Greece/Rome/Middle Ages..... study guides with the recommended books for the logic stage. We use the updated versions of The Famous Men books as our spine, not the originals that use old fashioned language.
http://greenleafpress.com/?s=famous+men+of&post_type=product
Then we use their literature guides for high school with SWB's adult history books. (Those that are published.  My older two are graduated.)
http://greenleafpress.com/?s=literature&post_type=product

Edited by Homeschool Mom in AZ
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Have you heard of Biblioplan? http://www.biblioplan.net/p/welcome-to-biblioplan.html They also have a 4 year cycle and a lesson plan that includes SOTW, MOH, and some others. We are using a combination of Biblioplan Ancients, SOTW Ancients, and All Through the Ages.

I've looked at Biblioplan numerous times, but it just doesn't seem right for me. Thank you though. It does have a lot of things going for it.

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  • 4 weeks later...

We are using the OUP books in conjunction with the K12 Human Odyssey Book 1 and it is going well. I have a schedule if you choose to go this route. Someone else posted it on here and then I put it in a spreadsheet to break it out by weeks.

Edited by Sarawarden
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This is what I am thinking of doing as I'm piecing this together. I want to incorporate the Biblical history too with a good atlas and the Journey through the Bible book. Then I'll have three units of Egypt, Greece and Rome. I have Streams of Civilization I can use as a framework too. Then I'm thinking of the OUP Greece book and Augustus Caesar's World for Rome. Then I can tie in SOTW for my youngers.

 

I struggle with ancients because I want to tie in Biblical/Jewish history here, but I have issues with a lot of the big, expensive history packages. I love the look of TOG, but in the end, I feel there are just too many pieces of books pieced together. I don't like jumping around so much. I looked at BF because it's so inexpensive and uses good books, but I didn't like one of their other studies I tried. Thought of MFW too, but nothing is perfect. I don't like Biblioplan. I am back to doing my own thing again. I had hoped to find it ready made since I am weakest in Ancients, but I think the key thing will be choosing a few good spines we can go through.

 

If you're using SOTW for your youngers, just use it for your 6th grader the way SWB suggests, by beefing it up with other resources. Perhaps it's not enough all by itself, but if you add to it, it's a great spine to follow. Even her ancient history adult book follows the same topics. MFW schedules Streams and Journey through the Bible, as well as the Bible for their history, as well as hands-on activities, and you can include the youngers. It sounds perfect to me for what you're looking for, except that you may want to speed it up, and fit Rome on the end of your year, which you could just do yourself, maybe with ACW and SOTW. I just did MFW CTG, if you have any questions. There were positives and negatives. If you did want to go that route, I lined up SOTW1 with it, and it's on the MFW FB group for CTG. So you could have them all listen to SOTW and Journey, and maybe have the 6th grader read Streams on occasion to herself.

 

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If you're using SOTW for your youngers, just use it for your 6th grader the way SWB suggests, by beefing it up with other resources. Perhaps it's not enough all by itself, but if you add to it, it's a great spine to follow. Even her ancient history adult book follows the same topics. MFW schedules Streams and Journey through the Bible, as well as the Bible for their history, as well as hands-on activities, and you can include the youngers. It sounds perfect to me for what you're looking for, except that you may want to speed it up, and fit Rome on the end of your year, which you could just do yourself, maybe with ACW and SOTW. I just did MFW CTG, if you have any questions. There were positives and negatives. If you did want to go that route, I lined up SOTW1 with it, and it's on the MFW FB group for CTG. So you could have them all listen to SOTW and Journey, and maybe have the 6th grader read Streams on occasion to herself.

 

How easy would it be to speed up parts of MFW to add Rome at the end?  It seems some weeks are straight Bible, which may be a little more Biblical History than I want, but I definitely want to integrate it.  Maybe I could condense those weeks a bit.  I do like the idea of having things laid out for me for once.  That would be nice.  I like the Book Basket idea, which would add a lot more than I think people see is there on the website.  

 

How are the assignments?

 

I hesitate to spend the money because I already have the spines and can piece together myself, but if I find a used copy for a deal, I think it might be a good thing to have to make planning easier.

Edited by AdventuresinHomeschooling
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How easy would it be to speed up parts of MFW to add Rome at the end?  It seems some weeks are straight Bible, which may be a little more Biblical History than I want, but I definitely want to integrate it.  Maybe I could condense those weeks a bit.  I do like the idea of having things laid out for me for once.  That would be nice.  I like the Book Basket idea, which would add a lot more than I think people see is there on the website.  

 

How are the assignments?

 

I hesitate to spend the money because I already have the spines and can piece together myself, but if I find a used copy for a deal, I think it might be a good thing to have to make planning easier.

 

In one sense, it would be very easy to speed up parts and add Rome at the end. Yes, there are some weeks with straight Bible, no Streams or SOTW readings scheduled. In another sense, it wouldn't be easy IF you want to keep your Bible [history] and history timeline learning together. If you speed up to fit in Rome, I think your history would have to get ahead of your Bible.

 

Another option would be to do what MOH does, which is to basically get to Christ, but I don't know if they get to the resurrection, or just His birth. So they stop kind of in the middle of a Rome unit. I felt that TOG rushes their first two years of history, as they get through the American Revolution in the last unit of the second year, and spend the last two years of their curriculum from 1800 on. I didn't like that. It does make sense to me why MFW only goes through Greece, because they're trying to keep it with the Bible. But then I feel their RTR year is really rushed, because they spend 13 weeks on Rome, and then shove all of SOTW2 into about 26 weeks. (SOTW2 is my favorite time in history!)

 

So, I think every history curriculum has to decide where to rush and where to spread out their time. I remember feeling this way when I followed BP's year 1 plan with my oldest in first grade. The Bible was SO rushed, and the SOTW readings were all jumbled up, with several readings on some weeks, and few on others. Eventually, I just did SOTW1 in order, 3 readings per week, and read a children's Bible in order, one reading per day, and I didn't worry about them going together.

 

Personally, I didn't care for Streams or Journey. Other people rave about both. I love SOTW and used that mainly, but I also read Streams and Journey. I didn't have Ancient World. Sometimes I found similar topics and read from Kingfisher Ancient for those readings, and I found the book Ancient Egypt to be a total drag. If you chose to use Science in the Beginning, you could skip the little 3-week unit on science in ancient Egypt, and just go straight through SITB, which MFW's schedule could help for the most part. For the weeks you're supposed to do science in ancient Egypt, you could just not do science and add more history in.

 

You could do that in many places, but then you'd have two tabs in your TM--one for Bible and one for history. And of course, the TM would only cover through Greece. So you'd be paying about $50 for a used manual for 3/4 of your year, and you would be changing a lot. However, the Bible would be very thorough, so thorough that you could "count" it as part of your history, in which case, I think it would be a lot to do all of that history and Bible. Perhaps if you only went through Julius Caesar in SOTW1 and stopped and finished Rome with ACW the following year.

 

I have thought a lot about it, since I was unhappy with the pacing of RTR the following year. In the end, rather than rushing the history and losing the Bible/history integration, I chose to rush my science curriculum during those purely Bible or just light weeks of MFW CTG. That way I could get about 5-6 weeks ahead in science in RTR, which would allow me to not do science on the really full history weeks in RTR. I bought TOG 1-2 really cheap this year--the printed version. So I wonder about the next time around, what I'll do, because I am already pretty sure that I don't want to fly all the way through the American Revolution in the first two years of history. So IF I did TOG, I'd probably want to slow down the pacing so that the first 7 units took the time of 8, and the final 9 were in the space of 7 units. Crazy, right? So many great curricula, and yet, they're still not perfect for ME. :lol: But I did like MFW's Bible, science, vocab!, read-alouds (they help with discussion in The Children's Homer), and music! And I didn't dislike the history; there were just some negatives that I keep thinking about. 

 

So it depends what you want most. If you're going to tweak that much and it'll bother you to be skipping some things in the TM, then maybe you'd better go with your own plan. But if you can be happy just checking off boxes and activities as they get done, not really worrying about whether the Bible and history is integrated, then MFW might be helpful for you. If you would like help planning when to do activities and have some notebook pages all ready for you (although some of them weren't that great-looking, and you still have to find some on your own), it might be helpful. A lot of activities were connected to Bible: plagues, making a Tabernacle, manna, measuring the ark, and most notably, celebrating the Biblical feasts. You could do all of that on your own, but I wouldn't have. However, I also wouldn't spend $50 for, essentially, a really great Bible curriculum for one year. It would have to add enough in other subjects to make it worth it to me. :) I'd be happy to answer more questions if you like.

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  • 1 year later...

Reviving this old but helpful thread.

 

For those who used OUP Ancients, did you try to get through the whole set in one year? 

 

DD is finishing up SOTW 4 this year (she has been through SOTW 1-4). I'm thinking through what next year's Ancients might look like for her. I bought an inexpensive, used copy of K12's History Odyssey (ancients) and had planned to use it as a spine, but after looking through it, it doesn't look terribly exciting, and I think DD is itching to get more into social history and not just linear, narrative, dates-and-facts history. (Don't get me wrong, she loved the SOTW series, but I think she's ready for a change). 

 

DS went through SOTW1 with us.... when he was 4.... so I plan to use that with him next year. I had originally planned K12 for my daughter to use as a spine, with OUP as a supplement, but now I'm thinking of having her re-read SOTW1 as a spine (which will be pretty quick reading for her) and use OUP as her main history resource. Does this seem reasonable? Is it foolish to try to finish the whole OUP set in one year? Should I let her just pick 3-4 of the books that are of greatest interest to her and focus on hers? I'm unsure as to output at this point. I'm thinking of asking her to do one written narration per week and to integrate history into her artwork. I was thinking of a longitudinal history and arts project where she creates a series of art pieces based on / inspired by her history readings. There will also be a timeline for her to keep (which doesn't take long). 

 

We also plan to do US History over 4 years (grades 5-8). I purchased Hakim's History of US and plan to stretch it out over 4 years. I wasn't planning to require major amounts of output from this. Basically a blank notebook where she keeps a timeline and notes about important people or events. But no full blown written essays or major projects (unless she is interested).

 

Appreciate any advice / critique!

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Another vote for the K12 HO books. I am on the first one with my daughter and will probably use the others too. I have a feeling this first one will take us more then a year to get through but that's OK with me. I find it easy to make her some worksheets from just reading ahead of her or I just have her give me an oral explanation of what she read. Her favorite is when I have her make me a Power Point about a certain topic, kills 2 birds with 1 stone because she gets to play around with Power Point and learn how to use that too! She made a pretty good one about how mummies are made and one about the Hanging Gardens.

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We are going to use MP's Classical Studies books and move away from a 4 year cycle.  They cover D'aulaire's Greek Myths and several of the Famous Men books over multiple years.  My 3rd and 6th graders will start with the Greek Myths and my older two (8th and 10th) will start with Mills' Book of Ancient Greece, The Iliad, and The Odyssey. 

 

For regular history, we are using Biblioplan with SOTW.  They have two textbooks available as well.  My high schooler is using their Companion text, and I read aloud a few interesting sections from it to the other kids. 

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  • 1 month later...
On 3/21/2018 at 7:28 PM, JHLWTM said:

Reviving this old but helpful thread.

 

For those who used OUP Ancients, did you try to get through the whole set in one year? 

 

DD is finishing up SOTW 4 this year (she has been through SOTW 1-4). I'm thinking through what next year's Ancients might look like for her. I bought an inexpensive, used copy of K12's History Odyssey (ancients) and had planned to use it as a spine, but after looking through it, it doesn't look terribly exciting, and I think DD is itching to get more into social history and not just linear, narrative, dates-and-facts history. (Don't get me wrong, she loved the SOTW series, but I think she's ready for a change). 

 

DS went through SOTW1 with us.... when he was 4.... so I plan to use that with him next year. I had originally planned K12 for my daughter to use as a spine, with OUP as a supplement, but now I'm thinking of having her re-read SOTW1 as a spine (which will be pretty quick reading for her) and use OUP as her main history resource. Does this seem reasonable? Is it foolish to try to finish the whole OUP set in one year? Should I let her just pick 3-4 of the books that are of greatest interest to her and focus on hers? I'm unsure as to output at this point. I'm thinking of asking her to do one written narration per week and to integrate history into her artwork. I was thinking of a longitudinal history and arts project where she creates a series of art pieces based on / inspired by her history readings. There will also be a timeline for her to keep (which doesn't take long). 

 

We also plan to do US History over 4 years (grades 5-8). I purchased Hakim's History of US and plan to stretch it out over 4 years. I wasn't planning to require major amounts of output from this. Basically a blank notebook where she keeps a timeline and notes about important people or events. But no full blown written essays or major projects (unless she is interested).

 

Appreciate any advice / critique!

For logic stage ancient history, we used K12 HO and all the OUP books (did not read all of America or Asia that year though as they both went beyond our time span), along with many other books with Tapestry of Grace. It's definitely doable, but would depend on your child's reading ability and interest level. My son loved HO and the OUP books. 

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