VP Self Paced History

[hands-on-mama]

What do you all think of VP self-paced for elementary? We have tried and failed with both SOTW and HO. We did about half of HO last year. I work from home part time, so I get busy and burned out some weeks. They both enjoyed the sample lessons for VP. What age did you move your child into the next level of VP? I think the next one is Omnibus.

[MDL]

I have two boys finishing up 2nd & 7th, and they’ve been doing Rome/New Testament and Omnibus 1. It’s been much better for the younger one. He has loved it, it’s fun, light work and captivating for him. He is also at that delicious age where he is thirsty for facts and information ? Omnibus has been a bit of a bust for the 7th grader. He is only about 2/3 of the way through. He does the lessons, but doesn’t pay full attention and often fails the quizzes. Omnibus asks for a very high level of theological thinking, and if your values don’t align with theirs, you fail. I hope that is a PC way to put it. This boy knows his bible and knows Jesus, but Omnibus has been very fundamental, and we won’t be continuing. I’ve made it optional for him at this point. He loves the history part, but the theology is too heavy (difficult and rigid). 

We are continuing with the Middle Ages for 3rd, though. HTH

[MDL]

1 hour ago, texasmom33 said:

For your younger, how fast/fluent of a reader do they need to be for the online portion of the history? 

He is fluent, but there isn’t much that would be under a time pressure. Sometimes there are timed activities, but they’re not reading paragraphs.  He does have to write some things down to be able to spell them for the quiz/worksheet, though. 

That triceratops on the ark freaked me out. We skipped ancient/Old Testament because of it, but it becomes a non issue in the CE

[nixpix5]

We have done Ancients Egypt and Greece and Rome. When we did Egypt I had 6 and 7 year olds doing it and this year with Greece and Rome they are 7 and 8. 

I didn't even realize there was a Dino on the ark and that would have just made my kids giggle anyway but it must have been a non issue because I never noticed anything like that. 

Reading well is pretty necessary. They continually quiz the student via multiple choice and these are not super easy questions. One question for example, asks about Myceneans being "militaristic and commercial" 

My kids have all been fluent when starting it but if you don't mind working side by side with a less confident reader then that would work too.

Each time point (there are 32) has 4 lesson days and one test day. We tend to do a lesson m, t, w and then lesson and test on the same day to make history 4 days.

Videos are fun and corny, information is interesting and the games, for kids who don't game, are super fun. My tech deprived kids love it. For kids who game alot they won't be all that appealing. The games are used to quiz for the test. They are practice quizzes essentially. 

There is a timeline song that is reviewed most days. My kids love that part.

You cannot skip videos so that can sometimes be a pain if you want to move past something more quickly. 

 

I have not done Omnibus but have Omnibus l on the shelf. If you have a hard working 7th grader who likes to read alot I could see it working but quite honestly, I look at it and think about my grown boys in 7th grade and I doubt they could have done it and enjoyed it. Now if I look at the text through the lens of about 9th grader it seems like more of a fit. It is pretty rigorous and that is coming from someone who tends to fall more on the side of holding my kids to a higher level of work. It has two different reading lists and some do one or the other. It might work better doing it as a class via VP instead of on your own. 

I will second it is pretty opinionated and rigid in its theology. 

 

[nixpix5]

1 hour ago, texasmom33 said:

Thanks, that is helpful. If it was just the one dino on the ark I can deal. I wasn't sure if it went full out Ken Ham at another point though so wanted to ask since it was a limited sample I could see. I think ds would like it and I could help him out on the quizzes if needed- I'm more concerned with it as a time filler, than a graded subject, while I switch off working one with the other child and he loves history, so it seems like something he could do independently. I'm on the look out now I guess for the next sale! 

We did only self paced history and didn't do self paced bible. I will go back to our Egypt account which hasn't expired yet and check the flood lessons for you to verify. I do feel had it Ken Hammed it up (Ken Ham is now a verb ? )  my DD especially would have been WAY more vocal about those lessons. 

I think that they do a really kick butt job of teaching ancient history. My kids have absorbed a ton. It is pretty darn cool and I find that history timeline song bloody useful even for me! We have enjoyed playing them in the car and trying to recall all we learned about each time point. I also love how the cards are numbered and we were able to blend the stacks together to see what was happening in Egypt at the same time as time points in Greece and Rome etc. 

Each lesson also does really deep learning either by having kids reference their bibles, listen to excerpts from the Iliad and answer questions, decipher hieroglyphics, or my favorite, when they studied Homer they got to listen to the beginning of the Odyssey read in original Greek so they could hear the cadence and how poetic it was. Totally neat and super nerdy. I loved it ?