New history program from Classical Academic Press

[Calizzy]

Has anyone looked at the new history program from CAP? Curious Historian? I just saw it and am trying to browse through...

[caffeineandbooks]

Thanks for posting this link - I was glad to look through it, although I am disappointed by what I can see.  My review has turned out to be very negative, but I know the WTM community is a broad church and am genuinely curious to know what benefits others see in this program that I have been blind to.  So, my thoughts:

It's quite "schooly" (which is to be expected given that CAP's primary market is classical schools, and the homeschool market is just gravy).  You read from a textbook each week, do some school-style workbook pages - fill in the blank, match the answer, take this quiz type of stuff - and memorize a pre-set timeline with a pre-recorded song.  They provide a list of corresponding history, Bible, lit and SOTW chapters but you can't see the lit suggestions in the sample.  There is a single hands-on activity in the sample chapter, rolling an object on pieces of dowel to understand how the wheel revolutionized work, and a vocab list which is quizzed at the end.

The (consumable) textbook has less of a connected narrative feel than SOTW and is more like a regular textbook, with headings and call out boxes and other nonfiction text features.  As is common practice for CAP (eg their Writing and Rhetoric series), they include a sort of apology explaining that they really like SWB's corresponding material and telling why they felt they had to create their own.  In this case, it's hard not to think that even they agree SWB's book is better.  This is from the teacher guide: "We think very highly of Susan Wise Bauer’s The Story of the World series and her engaging, narrative approach to history. While we have chosen to present our study of history in a more standard, chronological progression of important events and figures, we also want to encourage students to enjoy longer narratives that can help them more deeply imagine what it would have been like to live in these long-ago eras. Therefore, throughout TCH1A we have noted where you may choose to supplement by reading sections or chapters from The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child, vol. 1, Ancient Times. We also encourage you to peruse Dr. Bauer’s corresponding activity book if you think your students would enjoy additional hands-on activities and projects." So buy our book, but also buy all SWB's stuff as well because it includes stuff ours won't give you.

Only the first semester is out at the moment, but it's intended to comprise four years of work for grades 3-6: two years of ancient history, one year to cover medieval period to American revolution, and one year from French Revolution to War on Terror (scope and sequence here: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0264/3014/4583/files/TCH_Scope_Sequence.pdf?v=1611587549).  It already feels to me with SOTW that more and more has to be left out as the pace of history picks up and you gallop toward the present.  I can't imagine stretching the content of SOTW 1 over two years but then squashing all of SOTW 2 and more than half of SOTW 3 into a single year.

In our family, history is a curricular spine.  This year, we're reading SOTW 1 and lots of corresponding picture books, junior nonfiction selections, a few historical fiction chapter books and adapted classics (Odyssey, Aeneid, Gilgamesh, myth anthologies).  Art includes picture/artefact study and creating clay and pastel artworks inspired by ancient masterworks (using Artistic Pursuits Ancient Art and Vincent's Starry Night).  Language Arts includes CAP's Writing and Rhetoric: Fable and Narrative 1 (though also unrelated literature selections), and science includes history projects like mummifying a chicken and building a working catapult and ballista, bios of Archimedes and Galen, and selections from Berean Builders Science in the Ancient World.  Only math stands alone, though even that includes Mummy Math, What's Your Angle, Pythagoras?, The Librarian Who Measured the Earth and some early mathematicians in the science book. 

CAP's series as written would be a net loss for us: loss of integration, loss of hands-on work, loss of encouragement to go to the library and read more books and find out for yourself, which is present in a perfunctory way in the CAP teacher guide, but built into the core of the WTM approach.  This might suit a family who wants to tick the world history box but in a fairly perfunctory way - a family who's as deeply into STEM subjects as we are into history and literature, or who has limited time due to extracurriculars or medical or special needs (though even then, please consider the SOTW audiobooks as well, as CAP recommends!).  I can see the appeal for schools, who need quizzes and things to both know and show others that their students are learning, and the workbook questions have plenty of multiple choice or reasonably predictable short-answer stuff to make it easy to mark.  It will be interesting to see whether future levels of the course are aimed at older grades (ie 4-7, 5-8 and 6-9), which might make it more interesting as  a middle school bridge, but the sample course is firmly elementary and I don't see any indication that they plan to stretch beyond that in the current series.

[Calizzy]

Oohh, good input. I did notice that it was more workbooks. I just haven't decided how I feel about that. I have 1 child that I think it would be good for.

[UHP]

21 hours ago, caffeineandbooks said:

Art includes picture/artefact study and creating clay and pastel artworks inspired by ancient masterworks (using Artistic Pursuits Ancient Art and Vincent's Starry Night). 

This sounds lovely, would you tell more?

21 hours ago, caffeineandbooks said:

mummifying a chicken and building a working catapult and ballista

Oh no!

[caffeineandbooks]

@UHP it's simple, rather than grand! ARTistic Pursuits released a K-3 history based program in 2018 (https://artisticpursuits.com/k-1st-2nd-3rd), though I'm using it with kids aged 3-13.  We're spreading their 18 ancient history lessons over the year; each has a photograph of an ancient sculpture/painting/relief/etc and a few questions to prompt close looking, then the kids have a chance to make an "inspired by" artwork.  The lesson itself is art rather than art appreciation, so for instance after looking at cave art they use chalk pastels to draw any animal they like - they're not trying to copy the cave painting.  There are two books that fit with SOTW 2, Art of the Middle Ages and Art of the Renaissance, so we will probably do one or both next year.

Vincent's Starry Night contains full page photo reproductions of famous works, in chronological order, with an imaginative story of how each was created.  Some are better than others.  There are 10 or a dozen that fit with the ancient period, so we will slot those in where they crop up.  Usually we look at the picture, I ask some broad questions like "what do you see" or "what can you tell me about this picture", then we read the story and I go back to the picture and ask what new things they notice now that they've read it.

The chicken mummy is fascinating!  We didn't do it last time around, and even this time the kids were pretty grossed out, but it has given them a thorough understanding of the process and they will never forget it.  They've made amulets and coffins for it, and at some point we will bury it in the backyard in a marked spot.  Then in four years when we come back for a final loop of ancient history, we plan to dig it up the first week, recording our finds like archaeologists would, and see how it has held up.

Basing everything around history means that some weeks (looking at you, pyramids and Homer!) have loads of extras while others (early Assyria...) have virtually none.  Sometimes we simply take more than a week on a chapter, and "catch it up" by doing less than a week on one with fewer resources.  We also slot more Writing and Rhetoric and literature into weeks with less history/art.  And sometimes there are weeks when we let great activities go through to the keeper because doing them would produce more stress than joy. 

Basing everything around history helps me simplify planning, too.  Over the course of a year, I know there is enough science, enough art, enough literature and writing and history and map work, so week by week I just work through the list of resources relating to that topic.  There might be the odd month with no science at all, and the odd month where we have science every day and a long term project on the side.  It all evens out in the end, and it feels fresh and interesting to the kids as well as me.  Win win!

[Foofaraw]

22 hours ago, caffeineandbooks said:

Thanks for posting this link - I was glad to look through it, although I am disappointed by what I can see.  My review has turned out to be very negative, but I know the WTM community is a broad church and am genuinely curious to know what benefits others see in this program that I have been blind to.  So, my thoughts:

It's quite "schooly" (which is to be expected given that CAP's primary market is classical schools, and the homeschool market is just gravy).  You read from a textbook each week, do some school-style workbook pages - fill in the blank, match the answer, take this quiz type of stuff - and memorize a pre-set timeline with a pre-recorded song.  They provide a list of corresponding history, Bible, lit and SOTW chapters but you can't see the lit suggestions in the sample.  There is a single hands-on activity in the sample chapter, rolling an object on pieces of dowel to understand how the wheel revolutionized work, and a vocab list which is quizzed at the end.

I'm a history book list junky. I'm biased towards "living books", but I was optimistically curious about CAP's new history. I thought it might be a more western-civ focused version of SOTW, but I wasn't impressed. I think CAP has some well established, loved programs, and I think starry-eyed classical schools are going to buy up this program.

If you have a kid who prefers workbook style history, you need more independence, I see the appeal, but maybe consider Memoria Press? Their books are a lot more memorable, yet still classical.

[UHP]

@caffeineandbooksIs "simple rather than grand" a catchphrase from art history? But it does sound grand, a terrific way to grow up.

[caffeineandbooks]

8 hours ago, UHP said:

@caffeineandbooksIs "simple rather than grand" a catchphrase from art history? But it does sound grand, a terrific way to grow up.

Not that I know of!  I just meant that if you saw us in action most days you wouldn't say "Wow, that's amazing", you'd say, "Oh is that all it is?  I could totally do that, and better!"

[Emily ZL]

I took a look at the samples. I don't think it's a "con" of the program to say it's not SOTW. I mean, presumably people who have and love SOTW are not looking to replace it. I think it's a nice touch to cross reference the corresponding SOTW chapters for those who want to supplement with SOTW. It does look more schooly, but mostly it just reminds me of the countless library books my son would check out before covid: large text blocks, lots of pictures, timelines, infographics. If that is what your kid likes, it might work well. Personally, in our family, we have SOTW 1 in book form and the cd set, and the kids won't touch them. I have assigned them and read them aloud and they just don't like them, I don't know why. We also have tried an "all in one history/geography/lit" type program with lots of living books and historical fiction tie-ins, which was a disaster for our family, because too many littles spoiled it and I couldn't find time to get it all in. So, if the living books approach isn't for you, and you need more of a textbook, this looks good. It's engaging and colorful. It focuses on the ways ancient peoples lived and problem-solved, and has a lot of architecture and art and maps etc. In the "pros" column, I actually think it does a good job trying to cover a LOT of the world, which is why it takes 2 years. And that makes sense, since it is very hard to do a good job on both Greece and Rome in one year (MP breaks it into 2 years), let alone Greece and Rome AND all the rest of the ancient world. So this program does Greece and Rome in the 2nd year and that gives it time to do a thorough job of Ancients without those 2 civilizations taking all the time. Personally, I find Greece and Rome to be the most interesting part of the ancient world, so I would get bored with year 1, but maybe I'm not giving enough credit to non-western history. They do cover the Bhagavad Gita etc so there's some real depth there.

In the "cons" column, I totally agree that the scope and sequence proposed are unrealistic. If ancients is 2 years, you automatically are talking about at least a 5 or 6 year sequence. All of the early and high middle ages are in one year, AND they are attempting to be worldwide and not just western. And then year 4 is literally everything that happened worldwide from the 1600s to the present. That's crazy. Most people find that doing all of your own country's history in one year (UK, American, etc) is a lot to cram in, let alone everyone else's too. I also think the tone was a little too conversational or dumbed down ("that's a funny-sounding word, but it just means..."). That's odd, because who is that for? Older or curious students won't need that tone, and parents reading aloud to younger kids won't appreciate it. But poor students and younger students that tone is aimed at probably won't actually read the large blocks of text and will stick to skimming and reading the captions. But, it's not a deal breaker and wasn't too obnoxious, IMO. 

Overall, it struck me as a good all-in-one textbook approach for those kids who like this type of colorful nonfiction book with lots of timelines and pictures, and for those moms who don't have time to do a big history-centered living books hands on approach and want to just have a go-to easy resource to hand to a kid with his assignments for the day. It's also good for people who want a fuller worldwide picture with plenty of focus on China, India and other non-western history. Those were my impressions, but it's just a sample of course.

[Calizzy]

I actually went ahead and ordered it for my 5th grade did to do independently. I thought it looked like a good place to start for her to be able to read instructions and material and answer questions on her own. So I’m halfway using it for history, and halfway using it for executive functions. 
also, @Emily ZL I think there is a misunderstanding about the scope and sequence. It follows the same 4 year cycle as sotw. It just has 2 books per year. So there are 2 ancient books, but they are both to be completed in the same year. 
 

I’ll let you all know how it looks when it come in the mail 🙂

[caffeineandbooks]

@Calizzy would love to hear more when you've had a good look through!

Where did you see that the cycle is the same as SOTW?  I'm reading the scope and sequence as follows:

Year 1: Early & Middle Bronze Age, then Late Bronze Age & Iron Age

Year 2: Ancient Greece, then ancient Rome

Year 3: Early Middle Ages, then late Middle Ages

Year 4: Early modern era, then modern era 

(from here: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0264/3014/4583/files/TCH_Scope_Sequence.pdf?v=1611587549)

[Calizzy]

@caffeineandbooks oops, I misunderstood Emily’s comment. I thought she was saying that CAP’s cycle was 6 years. I didn’t mean that the scope and sequence directly followed SOtW, but rather that it followed the same idea of a 4 year cycle. But now I see that she was talking hypothetically about a 6 year cycle. 

[TheLawsmithy]

On 3/5/2021 at 9:34 PM, caffeineandbooks said:

In our family, history is a curricular spine.  This year, we're reading SOTW 1 and lots of corresponding picture books, junior nonfiction selections, a few historical fiction chapter books and adapted classics (Odyssey, Aeneid, Gilgamesh, myth anthologies).  Art includes picture/artefact study and creating clay and pastel artworks inspired by ancient masterworks (using Artistic Pursuits Ancient Art and Vincent's Starry Night).  Language Arts includes CAP's Writing and Rhetoric: Fable and Narrative 1 (though also unrelated literature selections), and science includes history projects like mummifying a chicken and building a working catapult and ballista, bios of Archimedes and Galen, and selections from Berean Builders Science in the Ancient World.  Only math stands alone, though even that includes Mummy Math, What's Your Angle, Pythagoras?, The Librarian Who Measured the Earth and some early mathematicians in the science book. 

Hey @caffeineandbooksI love that idea. Do you follow a particular curricula? Just wondering where you get your list of corresponding/correlating books, nonfiction selections, classics, literature, etc., and how you line them up with SOTW.

[goldenecho]

On 11/1/2021 at 12:54 PM, TheLawsmithy said:

Hey @caffeineandbooksI love that idea. Do you follow a particular curricula? Just wondering where you get your list of corresponding/correlating books, nonfiction selections, classics, literature, etc., and how you line them up with SOTW.

I'm gonna jump in on this.   We also did something similar (made history our a curricular spine).   The main thing I tried to integrate was science, since my son loves that.   I can only tell you how I did that for ancient times and a little bit of middle ages (we went slow on history, and then he went to school for a couple years and nicely they were doing state and US history which lined up nicely right after where we left off in the middle ages, as they started with exploration.)   Then we homeschooled last year through a school program that was doing, guess what, ancient history again, so I have don't mainly ancient history at home.

Anyways...here's how I aligned science, or in a few places how I wish we had (found something cool later).   You can see there's some gaps, but it still worked out pretty well.

All of Ancient Time
Ancient Science by Jay Wile - This is a short book, not to be confused with his longer curriculum, that has  quick experiments that can be done related to different civilizations.   I would have used it if I had gotten it earlier, but we were nearly done with ancient history when I found it.

Pre-history:

 - Paleontology - we just read tons of dinosaur books and went to a museum, and did one of those exacate a dinosaur kit.   We started before we started history, which worked.
 - Archaeology (just google...there is so many free fun activities.   We used pages from Make It Work:Stone Age for briefly covering it.)

Ancient Egypt:  Science of Ancient Egypt (there's lots of science topics in this, which you can buy separately or as a set.   We did a couple of them)
- 1st time through - Mummies (this page shows movies and experiment we did, similar to chicken mummy only with an egg)
- 2nd time through - Kilns and Metals

Greece
-  I made up this chart about how we integrated science with SOTW chapters on ancient Greece.  It also included some literature choices and other things we did. You could use the chapter titles to re-allign to whatever curriculum you were using.
- 2nd time around, we did Science in the Ancient World  by Jay Wile for science aligned to what we were learning about Greece.  Could have gone through Rome and into the middle ages too (the book gets into the middle ages and the series goes all the way to modern times).  It's a Christian book but I think you could use the experiments (maybe skipping sections related to biology) if you were not a Christian.   I used it along with selections from The Story of Science, a secular resource that had less activities/experiements, but got more into the stories of the scientists and how what they did fit into history and changed our world.  The Story of Science had some great math tie-ins for geometry. It also did cover some earlier civilizations.   Wile's book started in Greece.

ROME
- Continued with Science in the Ancient World and Story of Science
- Read  The Planet Gods, a beautifully illustrated book about the planets and the Roman god's they are named after, along with a regular non-fiction book about the planets that had modern pictures of them.  (We did a planet a day while studying Rome).
- Built an aqueduct with tin-foil and blocks. 



MIDDLE AGES
- You could continue in Science in the Ancient World and Story of Science
- Experimenting With the Vikings (really fun free unit study)


MORE
This has science tie ins for all of history.   I didn't use all of this, obviously...

History + Science Resources Master List
 

[caffeineandbooks]

On 11/2/2021 at 5:54 AM, TheLawsmithy said:

Hey @caffeineandbooksI love that idea. Do you follow a particular curricula? Just wondering where you get your list of corresponding/correlating books, nonfiction selections, classics, literature, etc., and how you line them up with SOTW.

The SOTW activity guide is a good starting point for both history and lit suggestions, and then as I look at those on Amazon I also tend to follow the "items other people have looked at" links to find more.  Lists by other publishers - Sonlight/Bookshark, Tapestry of Grace, things like that usually publish a list of recommended titles for each time period.  Blogs by people who use SOTW and share what books they enjoyed.  Also the Well Trained Mind literature lists for 5th-12th grade are aligned to ancient/medieval/etc history.  I stash ideas on four Pinterest boards as I find them, and then the summer before we start that period I decide what to buy/borrow and plug it all into a document according to SOTW chapter so that it becomes open and go: for each week I know which picture books, NF, novels, hands on activities, etc I have, and I sort of "pick from the menu" at the time, deciding what to read aloud, what to assign to each kid and sometimes what to just skip.