I'm sure some of you guys use this series. How do you like it? Is it secular or Christian-based? Is it "pretty" history or does it present the facts in an unvarnished manner? Any input on this you can give me I would appreciate. Trying to find the right history material!
I have heard that it is Christian based. Read the reviews on Amazon.. esp the 1 star ones. For US history (a requirment in the primary grades here in PA) we use The Complete Book of United States History by American Education Publishing. After this is finished.. we have been poking through it for 3 years now.. but we add lots of other books to it about the topic... we will move into The Complete Book of World History.. again we will take our time going though this adding lots of other books, websites etc. Both of these books are by American Education Publishing, and are affordable.
I am using the blue books this year. I think that is second in the series. We are really enjoying it. I has a Christian slant to it but it is not over powering with Bible. I am finding in the blue books that we are studying about how many other religions got started. THis is giving my ds and I a chance to discuss things in depth that we may have glossed over. I know he likes it too , but just remember you need to get the activity books! They bring the lessons to life litterally! They have map work, color pages, and craft ideas, extra reading suggestions, questions and answers... and more! I do recomend it! The way we do it is; We read the 'story book' ( text) chapter by chapter, and follow thruogh with all th emap work, and some of the other activities. We don't always write out the questions and answers but use them for discussion. This is working well with my ds and he is retaining the study so well! I do not do history every day, so we are a week or two shy of where I wanted us to be, but if you keep up with it it is really well done, set up for the teacher who needs to have it already done! SO COOL!
It is secular, but shows respect to the Bible. I read somewhere that the newer addition has cut back on Biblical references, but can't remember where I read it. If you're looking for secular curriculum, it's very good.
ya thats a good way to discribe it. I like it though. We did AOP almost all of thier years that is a totally Christian based curriculium, it has a lot of reading and some kids dont like that but we enjoyed it. We will be returing to that format next year for History up to grade 9 when ds will either do Not Grass World history or go out to high school. I am finding for JR/ Sr high that I like SOS, it makes transcripting easy and grading almost non existant cause it does it for you.
This is our second year using SOTW. We used Vol. 1 last year and my ds really liked most of it. This year he wanted to do modern history so we tried Vol. 4. It wasn't anything like the first volume. Lots of outlining and the activities were mostly memorization and such. We put it on the shelf for now. I will be ordering Vol. 2 after the holidays. It is alot like Vol. 1 in that it contains more hands on activites. It is more secular than other curriculums. There are Biblical stories but more from a historical perspective. If you don't like reading aloud you can also get the text on CD. I am going to try this with Vol. 2 so that we can even do our lesson in the car if needed. SOTW is set up for the Classical student but anyone can use it. We aren't classical. What this means is that you do the rotation every 4 years. Ancient, Middle Ages, Early Modern, and Modern. As the children get older you just go more indepth with the studies. You might get more info from other Classical mothers on the Well-Trained Mind forums. I hope this helps
We use story of the world and as one poster said they did do a revision on the prints of it and there isn't the verbiage of the christian view. My girls like it because it's easy to read, and it's not boring. I supplement with other things for my older dd since she's in 8th and needs a little bit more. But all in all I like the series so far.
hey can I ask a question too , on topic? What level do you think the modern and early modern is set at? waht grade or age level? My ds is doing this for 6th medevil times,
It is not Christian based, but was written by a Christian. It starts history with the Nomads and does not talk about evolution. Evolution would have referred to time before Nomads. This is the biggest complaint I have heard from atheists over it. It does talk about many religions and does not express any view point on any of these religions or preference or otherwise. It even tells about Islam without painting a negative picture. It just refers to the start of Islam and who started it and how and so on. It gave some basics on the beliefs of Islam. That is it. It never said Islam was good or bad or anything else. Same approach pretty much to all the religions that are mentioned.
It's not secular either. It's written with a certain Christian POV and set of assumptions (biblical events are historical events) that exclude it from being secular. It'ssomething in between the usual extremes in homeschooling curriculum. Regardless, it's excellent and people from either POV can supplement it for their own use as it really does leave room for building your own approach.
We use SOTW as the basis of our homeschool co-op. We did book 1 last year and are working through book 2 this year. We meet once a week. The day prior to meeting, each family on their own reads the chapter(s) for that week. Then when we meet (for 2 hours) we do related activities. Some are from the book, but others we find on our own through the internet and/or history magazines. (We end up doing that since some of the kids are older and the activities in the book are a bit "youngish"). For example, today we did some medieval dance and listened to medieval music, did some blackwork (needlepoint), and discussed how each part of English society would have reacted to the Magna Carta, from the king down to the peasants. Then the kids wrote their own Magna Cartas for their room. I think the activities really allow the ideas and facts to "stick" for the kids. Carol
Thanks for all the comments; they are helping me get a picture of what this series is like. I like that all religions are introduced with no bias, since religion is an area in which I want to give Cameron the customs and background on and allow him to make his own decisions about what he believes. I think this could open up that dialogue pretty well. I do think I would want to supplement the curriculum, but it sounds like a lot of you do that, so that's great! Is it better to go in order of the volumes or do any of you jump around?
I started with Medival because we wanted to learn about Castles, found out its a LOT more than that but its good!
We started off with the first book and work our way through it and add stuff to it as it pertains to that time.
We did Ancient, then Modern, just cuz that's how it worked out. We took two years for the Ancient, since there are so many extra things to delve into! Since we are Christians, we also did Bible history with it by using the Old Testament things on www.timelinesetc.com We put a large timeline in the hallway upstairs, and put the "secular" things below the lines, and the things from the Bible above the line. It was sooooo interesting to relate the two---things we knew happened in world history, and things we knew happened in Bible history were now seen in the same areas and we would say things like, "Wow, I didn't know that happened the same time this happened in the Bible!" We had a wonderful time going through those things! Susan Wise Bauer (the author of SOTW) puts it in chronological order for a reason---it just tends to make more sense to the child to learn that way. However, depending on what's happening in your homeschool, and ages of kids, etc., I'm sure using it in an order that best fits you would be fine!
