Ok, so I guess I just think differently than most publishers. It drives me nuts that science books have a little of this and that every year, but history books are JUST american or JUST geography or JUST world cultures. I think it should be the opposite. Science should be per topic (like Apologia), and History/Geography should start at ancient and build to modern, but touch on the entire world every year. Like... the pilgrims settled in the new land, but meanwhile back in china ... blah, blah, blah. Is there anything out there like this?
My Father's World does that. www.mfwbooks.com And so do these people: http://www.knowledgequestmaps.com/Ebook-Sale.html I was just coming in here to post that they are having a sale! 50% off of their e-books. I drool every time I look at them... I'm going to buy the Blackline maps now.. and maybe I can talk my dh into the timeline book, too, even though we aren't quite ready for it...
I had the same problem with history, except I do not mind if it doesn't fall in a chronological order. So I put our history together this year. So far Ems is learning and retaining.
yeah we are doing MOH and have done SOTW they are great and have lots of hands on if you get the activty books!
Ok... so another question... Do you like to go through a time period per year, or go through everything every year? (I haven't looked at all of these suggestions yet, so that might answer the question for me.)
With both MOH and SOTW, there are several volumes. With MOH, Vol. 1 covers the Ancient World, Vol. 2 from the Ressurection to the printing press (Early church and Middle Ages), and Vol. 3 the Renaissance and Reformation. There will be one or two more, but they haven't been written yet.
I'm putting together my own history curriculum from ancient to modern. I wanted to put it together chronologically, but found it too difficult. So I am going with the cultures or areas of the world, but sticking within a time period before going on to the next. I found dates overlapping and disputed too much to really make the chronological method work. I hope that makes sense. We won't get through ancient history this year. We started last year with creation and this year we are covering cave dwelling people, pre-flood legends and tales, the flood, and ancient Mesopotamia. It will probably take us 3 years to get through ancient history. This would be from creation to the time of Jesus.
Embassy, be sure to get Augustus Caesar's World by Genevieve Foster. It's a FANTASTIC overview of the entire world during his time!
You might like Story of the World-We used the tests that are sold separately as worksheets and you can get the activity book too. And then there are time period historical fiction book suggestions to go along with what you are studying. We love Sonlight too!
Story of the World (SOTW) does 4 time periods, one per year. So in 4 years you go from ancient to modern. We added things to the ancient so we could see what things in the world history happened at the same time as Bible history. It was fascinating! We kept a timeline on the wall of a hallway and put the Bible things above the line and the world history things below the timeline for easy comparison. I highly recommend the Activity Guide--we loved doing the activities from it that interested us, and found some of our own to add in as well. That's our favorite year of history in all of our time homeschooling!
A great book that you might like is http://www.amazon.com/While-Tree-Growing-Jane-Bosveld/dp/0761105409 . It's called While a tree Was Growing, and its about all the world events that occured while this tree was growing, thus illustrating how old trees are and teaching reverence for them as well.
(I'm so glad I'm getting started on next year's choices earlier rather than later!! I'm overwhelmed with information these days!)
