Year three has covered our first go-around of early modern history, roughly the period of time from Elizabeth the I to 1850. We used The Story of the World, Volume Three, both the text and the workbook, with a bit of overlap from volume two. However, I really dislike the way the chapters are organized, so before we started I re-ordered everything. Mainly I just re-ordered the chapters, but in some places I even split chapters into their separate sections, and there is even a place where I just moved one page. It was a pain, but worth it to have the flow make more logical sense to me. I like to work in geographical areas start to finish, not just chronologically while jumping around the globe, and have related events flow together. If there is someone else out there who also doesn't love Story of the World, but still wants to use it because it's pretty kid and parent-teacher friendly, who can use this info, it will be all the more worth it. We also supplement with the Usborne Internet Linked Encyclopedia of World History (UILE).
Each week we covered an area/topic. We do history work roughly three days a week (it's all flexible), and each day takes us roughly a hour, sometimes more if we find interesting documentaries or books, sometimes less if it's a less full or interesting subject.
Our weekly schedule this year went like this:
Monday - Read chapters of text, answer questions from activity book, complete map-work pages from activity book
Tuesday - Look at any related websites and watch related Youtube videos, read related pages of UILE, write a timeline page of 3-4 most important dates
Thursday - Read related library books, dictate out a "narration page" (a summary of the information learned for the week's topic)
Our week's topics, with chapters from Story of the World, went like this:
Week 1 - Review Middle Ages
Chapter 42 (Story of the World, Volume 2)
Week 2 - Middle East
Chapter 8, 18 (Story of the World, Volume 3)
Week 3 - India
Chapter 11, 19
Week 4 - Japan
Chapter 5, 10 (section - Japan's Isolation: Closed Doors in the East)
Week 5 - China
Chapter 10 (section - The Foreign Conquest of China: The Rise of the Manchu), 20
Week 6 - China (con't)
Chapter 28, 39
Week 7 - Australia and New Zealand
Chapter 24, 41
Week 8 - Africa
Chapter 7, 37
Week 9 - Germany
Chapter 1 (section - The Holy Roman Empire), 9, 14
Week 10 - Russia
Chaper 17, 26
Week 11 - France
Chapter 13
Week 12 - Canada/France
Volume 2, Chapter 41
Volume 3, Chapter 4, 15 (section - War Against the Colonies)
Week 13 - Spain
Volume 2, Chapter 42
Chapter 1 (section - The Riches of Spain)
Week 14 - Dutch
Chapter 2 (section - Dutch Revolt), 6 (section - Dutch in the New World)
Week 15 - Mary/James
Chapter 2 (section - Queen is a Country), 3, 7 (section - Tobacco and Unwilling Colonists)
Week 16 - Cromwell and Enlightenment
Chapter 12, 16
Week 17 - Colonies
Chapter 6 (section - New Colonies in the New World), Chapter 15 (sections - A New World in Conflict, William Penn's Holy Experiment)
Week 18 - Birth of America
Chapter 21, 22 (section - Discontent in the British Colonies)
Week 19 - Birth of America (con't)
Chapter 22 (section - The American Revolution), 23
Week 20 - French Revolution
Chapter 25, 29
Week 21 - Napoleon and Haiti
Chapter 33, 30
Week 22 - Industrial Revolution
Chapter 27, 31
Week 23 - South America
Chapter 34, 35
Week 24 - Westward Expansion
Chapter 32, page 312 (War of 1812), 38 (section - The Trail of Tears)
Week 25 - Slavery
Chapter 36, 38 (section - Nat Turner's Revolt)
Week 26 - Manifest Destiny
Chapter 40, 42
Now that we've powered through that comes the real fun! We haven't done any of the projects in the Activity Book, so we're going to spend the next few weeks reviewing and doing all sorts of projects. We're re-reading the lovely narration and timeline pages we've written over the last 26 weeks (well, it's been longer than that due to breaks of course), looking at the review cards at the back of the Activity Book, and doing whatever projects we like. I'm pretty sure we'll mostly be doing anything involving food. :)
This hasn't been perfect, but has gone much better than history last year, when I used Story of the World, Volume 2, doing just a chapter a week in the order written. Not only was I confused by the way the book was organized, but 40+ weeks was way too long, and I ended up feeling like some topics got too much time and others not enough.
Just one more year, modern history, and we get to start the whole rotation over again!
