Literature and History from WTM

[MomN]

I'm starting to plan for 1st grade next year using The Well Trained Mind and SOTW Activity Guide as a guide.  I noticed that the WTM book recommends starting out with The Odyssey by Geraldine McCaughrean and Black Ships Before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff.  But in the SOTW Activity Guide, these books aren't suggested as literature recommendations until somewhere around week 19.  

So my question is, do you plan your year so that your literature and history books go together? Should I wait until we study Greek Myths to start The Odyssey?  Or not worry too much about matching up literature with history.

[Lori D.]

Just me: There are SO many great books for the elementary grades, that I don't tend to get too worried about matching up all the literature with the history. It's more important to me that we enjoy the wonderful children's books geared for those young ages while the children are in that "window of opportunity" for best enjoying those children's books. Sometimes those books also match up with history, and that's great. And yes, in that case, I might shift our reading schedule around by a few weeks or months in the school year to get a match. But otherwise, I go for the great / classic children's books that are going to be a good fit for the child.

Just a side note: The Odyssey (McCaughrean) is geared for grades 5-8, while Black Ships Before Troy (Sutcliff) is geared for grades 6-9 -- for a 1st grader, you might want to look for some versions that are geared for early elementary ages to match up with your student's interest level. Just a thought! A few books at a 1st grade level that you might enjoy to expand your ancient history studies:

Stone Age Europe
Discovery in the Cave (Dubowski)
Ice Mummy: Discovery of a 3,000 year old Man (Dubowski)

Mesopotamia
Gilgamesh the King; Revenge of Ishtar; Last Quest of Gilgamesh (Zeman)
City of Rainbows (Foster)

Egypt
Temple Cat (Clements)
The Egyptian Cinderella (Climo) 
The Shipwrecked Sailor (Bower)
How the Amazon Queen Fought the Prince of Egypt (Bower)
Tut's Mummy: Lost and Found (Donnelly)
Egyptians Gods and Goddesses (Barker)
Pepi and the Secret Names (Walsh)
Mummies (Milton)
Mummies Unwrapped (Weinberger)
Secrets of the Mummies (Griffey)
Magic Treehouse: Mummies in the Morning (Osborne)
Cleopatra (Stanley)
Seeker of Knowledge:  Man Who Deciphered Egyptian Hieroglyphs (Rumford)
The 5000 Year Old Secret (Logan)

Greece
The Trojan Horse: How the Greeks Won the War (Little) 
The Trojan Horse: The World's Greatest Adventure (David Clement Davies)
Greek Myths (Lock)
Gods and Goddesses of Olympus (Aliki)
There's A Monster in the Alphabet (Rumford)
Flying Horse: The Story of Pegasus (Mason)
Snake Hair: The Story of Medusa (Spinner) 
Monster in the Maze (Spinner)
King Midas and the Golden Touch (Craft)
Magic Treehouse: Hour of the Olympics (Osborne)
What's the Angle Pythagoras? (Ellis)
The Librarian Who Measured the Earth (Lasky)
Alexander the Great (Demi)

Rome
Pompeii: Buried Alive (Kunhardt)
Romulus and Remus (Rockwell)
Magic Treehouse: Vacation Under the Volcano (Osborne)
A Triumph for Flavius; Lysis Goes to the Play  (Snedeker)

China
One Grain of Rice (Demi)
The Cloudmakers (Rumford)
The Water Dragon (Li Jian) -- and others by this author
Hidden Army (O'Connor)
Chi'Lin Purse: Collection of Ancient Chinese Stories (Fang)
Growing Up in Ancient China (Teague)
The Great Race: Story of the Chinese Zodiac (Casey)

Edited February 25, 2019 by Lori D.

[HomeAgain]

I reworked history for 1st.  I wanted to spend more time with each of the major civilizations, so I created blocks instead.  We read through the applicable chapters with each block, had a literature book (or 2) for the entire block, and wrapped up the year with a review of all the cultures and the audio version of SoTW in the car. 
I just couldn't see switching so fast for history.  It was easier to do the projects within the blocks, too, and not feel like we were studying China while still mummifying a chicken.

[MomN]

Thank you so much!  

[ExcitedMama]

I use the activity guide for SOTW. I tend to look at WTM as a general overview whereas I use the actual activity guide as my what should I order next. I do match up the recommended reading. From there it depends on what our library has and what will interest the kids. We definitely read biographies and works like the Oyssey and the Iliad for longer than the weeks we were on that topic. It worked for use because there were a lot of weeks that didn’t have a topic with a longer read aloud. Look at the guidebook as a guide and use it how it works for you. I figure we will do shorter reads now that will be fun and hold their interest, like the Mary Pope versions of the Odyssey and the Ilad, and next time around we can do more in depth versions. Since the whole point of the first time through is to help give them a familiarity with the topics I think this works and will leave them more excited to get into it more next time around. It will definitely depend on the child. My oldest has been interested in longer harder read alouds at a much younger age than my youngest can handle. For that reason I often read a longer chapter book for him but get a picture book version for her. She can stay interested on topics that interest her, like she’s riveted by Cleoptara but has no interest in Alexander or Julius, so you might try different versions or get longer ones that are interesting to your child. If your child really enjoys the Egyptians get more books and pause there longer than you do on other time periods they don’t find as interesting. 

I also have separate lit readings that aren’t related to history. I usually read a chapter a day from a bunch of different books. There’s a chapter from a biography or a history time period book like the Iliad or Beowulf and then a chapter from a more literary book for fun, sometimes a classic or modern. Plus lots of picture books and some on our science topic. 

Edited February 26, 2019 by ExcitedMama