History video advice please Help me choose!

[Sharon in MD]

I need some advice please. Ds has never liked history much before this year and we are doing a combination of Notgrass US and using the Teaching Company's The History of the United States. We are only using the history portion of Notgrass because ds is taking AM. Lit at our local homeschool academy.

Ds has really liked having the video component along with the reading. So I am thinking about pursuing the same kind of thing for next year.

We talked about doing a one year world history survey, but we think it would be too fast paced to be enjoyed. We'd rather linger a bit on two periods. So we are thinking about doing two 1/2 credit courses for history next year, each a semester long.

1. Ancient History. I'm not sure about these. I've got too many possible titles and therefore too many lectures, we could easily make this a whole year, but we really want to hit the ren/ref too. We probably would want to watch 3 videos per week. That makes for about 48 max. if we are going to fit it in 2 normal 9 week quarters. Possible video courses from the Teaching Company could be:

- Origins of Great Ancient Civilizations (prof. Harl) 12 lectures
- Ancient Greek Civilization (Prof McInerney) 24 lectures
-The History of Ancient Rome (Prof Fagan) 48! lectures
-Rome and the Barbarians (Prof Harl) 36 lectures

Plus I have David Rohl's Pharohs and Kings, which is 3 slightly under 1 hour segments, since it was made for TV. It is so hard to choose....any ideas would be so appreciated. Do you guys know of other video courses that might work better? I feel like I've got way too much. The reason I'm concerned about the number of videos is that I don't want to spend much more than 1 hour a day on History. Should I consider cutting down on the reading portion to allow for more video so that we could use more of these?I'm sure ds would not complain about less reading!!! ha ha,

2. The Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Rise of Nations from the Teaching Company. (Prof Fix) 48 lectures


Then the next tough question....what the dickens to use as a spine with whatever I cobble together.....whimper...help me please. :confused:

By the way TTCs sale only runs till the 21st on these so I have to decide really soon.

THANKS!!!

[Janice in NJ]

Foundations of Western Civilization I marches along nicely with Spielvogel's College-Level Text. You could check out their table of contents.

Peace,
Janice

Enjoy your little people
Enjoy your journey

Foundations:
http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=370

There are different versions of Spielvogel's Book. Look here:
http://academic.cengage.com/cengage/catalog.do?courseid=HI04&disciplinenumber=21&codeid=5F86&codeFlag=true

We use the 6th edition; see the site here for LOTS of study helps including on-line quizzes, essay questions, etc:
http://www.wadsworth.com/cgi-wadsworth/course_products_wp.pl?fid=M20b&flag=student&product_isbn_issn=9780534646028&disciplinenumber=21

[Sharon in MD]

was concerned that we were really looking to focus more on the
Ancients and then the Ren/Ref rather than going for the broad sweep of western civ. We haven't looked at the Ancients since elementary school and Ren/ref was in I think 6th or 7th grade.

[Sharon in MD]

Surely some of you have tried this before?

[Chris in VA]

Just wanted to say, I recommend Spielvogel also. It is quite detailed in its treatment of your time periods. In fact, I intended to use it to supplement our 20th Century study this year, but found it lacking in both depth and coverage! It really is much better in the earlier periods.
Also, have you considered watching fictional movies about the time periods, just to break it up a little? Even adding in some Shakespeare plays might be fun, or some history channel stuff (get ours on Netflix). Just a suggestion. We found TC to be informative, but boring. But that's just us.

[Kendall]

This isn't one you mentioned, but my sons (10,13,16) have all liked the Middle ages series by Daileader. Early Middle Ages, High Middle Ages, Late Middle Ages(we haven't used the Late one yet)

[Nissi]

nt

[Sharon in MD]

Can anyone compare it to using something like Spielvogel?