In The House of Higher Learning (our school) we are studying Ancient Civilizations with Story of the World (SOTW) this coming school season. A year ago I would have said we would be using Sonlight Curriculum through high school... I just loved it! It was decided, until a friend gave me the
complete set/series of Story of the World! Everything. What's a girl to do???
I thought I should at least give it a shot, even if only for one year to determine if I/we like it enough to stick with it. The last few months I've been trying to figure out how to make it more like Sonlight in style (literature based) in order to make it a "love it" kind of curricula for our family.
Here is how I made
Story of the World more like Sonlight...
The Plan...
- First, I made a plan that is similar to Sonlight's Core Teacher's Guide. It includes the week, topic, Bible reading/lesson, (memory verses to come), History reading (SOTW), literature read-alouds, poetry, and science.
- My plan is to stick to the plan provided in the SOTW activity book, but to make it more "our style"... Sonlight-ish in organizational format. I made my own weekly plan/outline for possible activities we might enjoy based off of SOTW's suggestions or things I found on Pinterest. This is one of the features of Sonlight and helps me stay sane. I hate prep.
- In addition to the weekly plan, I made a Reading List of the books we'll be using and a PDF of all the resources I found on the Internet for each time or region we will study so that I can just download it to my ipad and click the links when we need them. That will allow me to check off what we actually accomplish for our records.
In our Core Study...
- I have included a list of possible "historical" readings from an encyclopedia type text. My main focus will be on reading/listening to the SOTW text... but I had a few other encyclopedias available that went with each week's topic. I doubt we will get to more than 1 or 2 of them a week, but I like options and so I did the work of pulling page numbers in advance.
- I have included a literature piece that compliments that week's topic (in some cases more than one if the book is shorter) to be used as read-alouds since my readers aren't ready to do it on their own. In some cases the books were on
Librivox (online public domain audio books)... with links to that book directly so I don't have to find it later.
- I have also put in a christian character book about African missions that I doubt most people will be able to find. It is sort of one of those "lost puppies" that found it way to my door kind of books, but if you want to use my plan I HIGHLY recommend
I Heard Good News Today. It is a book that highlights the regional spread of the Gospel throughout time. It is my most favorite book we've read in school and it would be very easy to pick a weekly story for the region you are studying.
In addition to our Ancients Core study we will do...
- A Bible study using the book
Names of God by Sally Michael. This felt like a fitting topic since this is sort of an Old Testament topic and is how God revealed Himself during that period of time.
- A Science Unit on Geology with a bit of Archaeology thrown in. I am also covering the basic rock cycle and theories like Pangaea. I have planned some personally specific field trips/lessons with things in our area and found some fun activities.
- Poetry using
Random House Book of Poetry for Children
Check it out here...
My hope is that I can update weekly on what we found most interesting and what we actually ended up doing... because I know with out a doubt we won't get this all done. Like any good curricula we have WAY more than we need and can then take what we have available and filter it down to what we need to learn and use.
So I leave you with a thought from a great mind of this time... Aristotle said,
“Educating the mind without educating
the heart is no education at all.”
Happy Homeschooling... both minds and hearts.
