Before beginning any homeschooling history program, you must decide what your long term approach will be. Many families who have read and enjoyed The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jesse Wise appreciate the thorough simplicity of the 4 year cycle. While many families are happy with the Story of the World books and activity guide, there's always someone who wants to shake things up a little. Learn about the differences between History Odyssey and Story of the World. Find out the similarities between each homeschool history program. Discover how to use each
curriculum for homeschooling history.
Instructions
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Purchase the Story of the World textbook. It's actually not a traditional text, it's written as a story book that can be read during bedtime. Since its written as a story, it can be read straight through or little bit at a time. Story of the World and History Odyssey are structured so that year 1 is ancient history, year two is medieval-early renaissance, year 3 is late renaissance-early modern and year 4 is modern history. Both programs are meant to be used in three four year cycles from first through twelfth grade.
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If you choose to just use the Story of the World, the Activity Guide is all you need to supplement maps and activities from first through 12h grade. It lists activities for both grammar stage (grades 1-4) and logic stage (grades 5-8) and supplemental writing assignments and primary sources for the 9th-12th graders.
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If you choose to stick with History Odyssey, you'll be using the Story of the World textbook, along with a few other important books, with different activity guides for each level. So that instead of one Activity book for all three levels, there are three activity books. Each time a History Odyssey student studies an era, they're using a different activity book.
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Use the activities in the Activity book as directed. If you discover, as other families have, that there simply aren't enough activities or that your children aren't interested in coloring a map each week, or that the history projects are so much fun that you'd like to do more, then buy History Odyssey.
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Visit the library each week, as directed in the SOTW program, and let the children borrow picture books, biographies and works of historical fiction. Enjoy them together or individually, learning about the time era from several different perspectives.
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Use the History Odyssey required book list as a guide for selecting books. Since the ISBN numbers are listed, you can punch them all into Amazon (see resources) and fill your shopping card with history books, like Sonlight.
