I'm sharing some of our favourite resources with you and outlining why we like them. I am not affiliated with SOTW at all, I have just used it for years and like it as a resource so am happy to share this one with you too.
STORY OF THE WORLD was a resource recommended to me right before we began homeschooling. I immediately liked that it had a story that I could read aloud to my kiddos as we covered various ages and times of history. I love how much it covers, how much we have all learned and the way that it is written. It suits our family really well.
I also loved that it had an activity book that could be used by the kids as I read aloud to them. I have found it easy to tear out each of the activity pages, photocopy them and then put the originals into a folder with plastic sleeves. This way we have been able to use the originals for all five of our kids.
We love that SOTW activities covers mapping and we often sit our world globe on the table and get the kids to locate where in the world we are talking about. We have been able to cover a lot of the the geography outcomes this way. There's lots of cross over with other KLA's too.
My kids love to get out the watercolours and paint the activity pages while I'm reading aloud to them (creative arts outcomes - tick!) We also have covered things like learning about ancient Mayan counting systems (maths outcomes - tick!) We love a good crossover when it comes to learning!
In the older years, we got the kiddos to summarise the chapter we had read to them and the things that stood out most. There were also revision and comprehension style sheets that the older ones enjoyed doing independently. The younger two are not doing this as yet but really enjoy orally narrating (telling back) to me their favourite part. We have also enjoyed using our BOOK OF CENTURIES all the way through. It is a timeline in a book format. The idea is that you fill in an event where it would fall in the timeline. As you go you can see that happened in the world at different times. For instance in our own Book of Centuries (from our reading over the years) we can see that Ned Kelly and his brothers form the Kelly Gang a few years before Louisa May Alcott's death which was the year before artist George Seurat was born. Although these dates aren't something my kiddos need to memorise, it is great to learn how and where thinkers, artists, famous people and events fit together in the world. We talk about BCE/BCE, CE/AD and how to work out which century something is in (ie 1700's is the 18th century).
I've seen people create massive timelines and attach them to their walls (so cool!) but I will say that because we do a lot of homeschooling out of the home (even just outside in our backyard) I love that we can take our Book of Centuries with us. Yay for portable homeschooling options!
OUR SUNBURNT COUNTRY is another great resource which we have used all the way through. Whilst not comprehensive enough to cover all that we'd like for Australian history, we have used it as our base and built onto it with other resources over time. We certainly have had to dig much deeper into history from our First Nations people (I'll cover more resources we have used but in the meantime, checkout Erin from SEVEN LITTLE AUSTRALIANS AND COUNTING'S booklist for Indigenous Australia).
Recently, we added in EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW TO ACE WORLD HISTORY IN ONE BIG FAT NOTEBOOK into our history mix and love how it compliments lots in Story of the World. Really wish we'd had this when the older 3 were homeschooling too but it's never too late to find a good resource and add it in, right? We love the quirky little illustrations and the little notes on each page.
Of course, we have LOADS of other books that we use (we have 2 full cubes of history books on our bookshelves that we refer to regularly) but these ones are the main staples that we have loved and used frequently.
Hope this helps you too.
Happy learning!
Lusi x
Comments