Monday, June 22, 2009

History: Past, Present, Future.

I truly believe that out of all the subjects we tackle on a weekly basis, history is the most time consuming and most fun. I'm almost glad that it is too, since it turns out that this is the subject that is typically the most expensive with all the books and extras that we end up getting for it.

The Past
This past year, we used Story of the World (SOTW) 1: Ancient Times. The kids love it and I'm not sure if it's because the book is written in a fun story format, because of the coloring pages, or because of the fun projects we do. I'm pretty sure that it's a combination of all three. History is usually the most welcome subject in our day!

The Present
Presently, we are still trekking through SOTW 1. Mostly due to my morning sickness, I abandoned doing history for a while. The thought of having to sit through 2 hours of reading, narrating, and making projects with the kids while having to suffer through bouts of nausea and vomiting just weren't how I wanted to spend my afternoons (I know, the thought of it makes me sick all over again). So now we having to cut out much of the activities and extra readings just so that we can finish up by August and stay on schedule for our middle ages studies.

The Future
This leads me into the future of history. You got it...this is the subject that I'm currently planning. We are using History Odyssey this year and I'm very excited! Not only do we get to read through SOTW 2, but we get to add in a different perspective with A Child's History of the World. As I take out and thumb through our history activity books, reading lists, and materials; the kids can't help but make their way over to see what I'm doing. Just telling them about it gets them excited and I get all giddy knowing the fun that awaits everyone come September! Studying the ancients was fun, but the middle ages (with it's knights, castles, and vikings) seems to be much more appealing to the kids.

So as I work on my reading list and plan our projects, I'll try to keep myself from ending our study of the ancients prematurely. Being a huge fan of the middle ages myself, I'm figuring that the more I plan it out, the quicker I want to get started on it all!

Keep checking on me, as I'll be posting our history reading list, project list, and history schedule as soon as I am done with them!

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