SOTW - 2nd Time Through - Ancient Times

[goldenecho]

We are on our second rotation of ancient times.    Last time we did it using Story of the World.   While we'll review some of what was covered I'd like to focus on topics this time that weren't covered in SOTW, and I'd love suggestions.  

Also, if there were topics in SOTW that maybe had aspects that weren't addressed based on it's age range, that could be with a 12 year old (more mature content, etc)., I'd love to suggestions for those too.  


 

[2_girls_mommy]

I am pretty sure our second time through we did WTM suggestions from the time- outlined from the Kingfisher Encyclopedia, created the divided history binder, did the timeline, and picked a topic for further research. My kids read a library book about the topic they wanted to look at further and wrote the narration and filed it in the appropriate place. We added the Geography Coloring Book. Then we followed the blog, Classical House of Learning Literature for literature to go along. But I could have just used the Well Trained Mind lists too. I did for high school. But I liked that the blog and scheduled a fair amount for a year (which took mine longer than a year to get through, but she enjoyed them.) 

[Lori D.]

Reposting my reply from your x-post on the Logic Stage Board:


 

A few alternative "spine" ideas -- copy-pasting from a previous post of mine:

Builders of the Old World (Gertrude Hartman)
Grades 5-7 level. Out of print (Amazon has some used hardback versions starting at about $20). Covers ancients through medieval in 450 pages. With line drawing illustrations. At the end of each chapter there are some built in extensions -- "talking together" (discussion questions, which could lead to a writing assignment); "interesting things to try" (activity ideas); "let's read" (list of related books that might be of interest); "quiz yourself" (matching & fill-in-blank questions); plus usually another option such as watching a history film, or mapping activity, or writing a summary, or making a bibliography... This is a really nice little volume.
 

The World in Ancient Times; Oxford University Press series
Grade 5-9 level. Ancients up into Medieval and Early Modern Times, so no Modern era. Each book is around 170-190 pages and focuses on a specific area of the world. There is also a teacher guide to go with each, so you can add "output" of discussion, writing, or activities. Expensive if you go for all of them + all of the teacher guides... BUT by just picking a few of the books + guides, this might be a way of focusing on other areas from what you did with SOTW -- maybe do one volume every 9 weeks (4 books total), or every 12 weeks (3 books total).

Ancients:
The Early Human World (pre-history)
The Ancient Near Eastern World (Mesopotamia, Sumer, Assyria)
The Ancient South Asian World (India)
The Ancient Chinese World
The Ancient American World
The Ancient Egyptian World
The Ancient Greek World
The Ancient Roman World


As far as major events/key people to cover...

- Kiddle: "Ancient History Facts for Kids" -- nice timeline further down on this webpage which would be a "quick start" to assembling your list of "what to cover"

- Fact Monster: Ancient History timeline and major cultures chart -- and the individual page with "key dates/events" for Ancient China

- Ducksters website could be really useful as a starting point -- I linked the "History For Kids" page, and when you click on each of the major history topics/time eras, a whole new page with links to articles comes up that cover art, society, gods, writing/science/technology, etc.; just by looking at the article topic areas, you could pretty quickly put together a list of things you want to touch on with individual resources by going through the 7 ancients areas on that page (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, Africa, and Maya/Aztec/Inca)

- World Digital Library timeline has just a few events (mostly related to key documents) per century, 8000BC-1949AD, but they are some very nice ones from all around the world, so not just the usual Egypt/Greece/Rome coverage of ancients

Edited August 26, 2020 by Lori D.

[Momto6inIN]

Human Odyssey texts (3 volumes) are engaging and very appropriate for middle school reading.

[EKS]

1 hour ago, Momto6inIN said:

Human Odyssey texts (3 volumes) are engaging and very appropriate for middle school reading.

This.  More appropriate than a series targeted to 6-9 year olds, and much more appropriate for kids who have already done SOTW.

Edited August 27, 2020 by EKS

[caffeineandbooks]

We're also starting a second loop through, although with the oldest kid in 5th.  I'm very comfortable using SOTW as our spine again the second time around - perhaps it would feel different if there weren't younger siblings?  Anyway, I plan to follow the WTM suggestions: my oldest will keep a timeline, begin to add in outlining (though following the wisdom of this forum, using nonfiction books we encounter but NOT the SOTW or Kingfisher texts), encounter primary sources, make lists of facts, choose a topic each week to do extra reading on and produce paragraph-length narrative summaries of his learning. 

I guess in brief, while last time SOTW was the main source of history information, supplemented by picture books and read alouds, this time it is more of a jumping off point.  That's what makes the difference between using it as an elementary text and a middle grade spine.