SOTW 2 or Beautiful Feet?

[KBadd]

We're finishing up SOTW Ancients with my 2nd and 1st graders. My plan was to do SOTW 1-4 in order, then continue the 4-year chronological cycle. But...

 

My mother-in-law is passing down to me the D'Aulaire books, and I'm super excited about reading them with my boys. They both love history, especially my eldest. We've read The Children's Book of America and a few biographies and he continues to be very interested in American history. He and his brother do also enjoy SOTW (I suspect the coloring pages have something to do with this, although they are interested in the book as well.)

 

I'm wondering if I should deviate from my plan and do a BFB Early American study, or supplement SOTW with the D'Aulaire books and others from BF, or continue with SOTW and wait on American history? Or try the audio of SOTW and supplement that? I might invest in this anyway because we like Jim Weiss's recordings. I guess I'm confused which path to take. I like the SOTW book, but I am not crazy about the extra readings. Are they better in SOTW 2? Maybe I'm just bored lol. The books in BF seem so rich and lovely!

 

(We are a family who could spend hours reading good books together and looking at an atlas and globe, and we do this regularly, but with a toddler and an infant now is not the time for projects, if that helps.)

 

Any input appreciated.

[coloradomomof5]

sotw. hands down. Q/A done for you. projects done for you. use lit books from BF if you must but we are switching over.

[ALB]

I prefer the BF books to SOTW, but haven't used their US guide.  We've only done Geography Through Literature, and that was excellent.  I, too, began with the intention of doing SOTW over 4 years, but after the first 2 volumes, we felt too bogged down with it.  I prefer using quality literature and diving in deeper to topics than SOTW allows (since it does jump around a bit week to week).  But since many people love SOTW, we might be in the minority.

[Susie in MS]

Beautiful Feet would be my vote. 

[Tanikit]

I did SOTW1-4 over 4 years with my eldest and we have started again bringing the younger child in (as both are still pretty young). Nonetheless the way I used it changed over the years - like you I also like reading good books so we incorporate them too. My elder now has a good view of how history flows and I can read her any book from any time period and just fit it in with the information she remembers, but my younger one could do with a full read through of SOTW to get the concept of world history. You could always do SOTW2 and then incorporate BF as you start getting to American History - we were emigrating at the time we reached SOTW3 when all the history of all the countries we had been in and were going to started to fit together so many times during SOTW we took a break to look at a particular country's history more in depth. The U.S. history is not separate from world history - it is part and parcel of it as in any country's history. My children have enjoyed knowing what was going on in their own towns/provinces/states/countries while other exciting things were happening in the world.

[fralala]

I'm wondering if I should deviate from my plan and do a BFB Early American study, or supplement SOTW with the D'Aulaire books and others from BF, or continue with SOTW and wait on American history? Or try the audio of SOTW and supplement that? I might invest in this anyway because we like Jim Weiss's recordings. I guess I'm confused which path to take. I like the SOTW book, but I am not crazy about the extra readings. Are they better in SOTW 2? Maybe I'm just bored lol. The books in BF seem so rich and lovely!

 

 

 

I vote for this! We love SOTW (and usually pare it down just to the story and a short discussion) but have also interspersed it with U.S. history units from the beginning (again mostly just stories).