For those who have done all 4 levels of SOTW, what did you do next?

[Marie in Oh]

We are finishing the last of SOTW IV and I am trying to decide what to do next year. I know some just start them over and do them in more depth with their older children. Next year I will have 5th, 4th, 2nd, and K. What else is out there? I have considered TOG but it makes my head swim just leafing through it. Would love to know that other options I have. Thanks so much.

[Lolly]

This year we have switched to Sonlight. I must admit that I am loving it. My kids are 10, 13,13, and a 15 (who is doing her own high school thing instead of working with the others).

[RhondaM.]

We started the history cycle over with Truthquest. I like it because it has history spines, non-fiction and literature suggestions for grades K-12. And it makes for a relaxing way to do history...as well as having great commentary to spark discussions. All I have to do is add in map work, which is easy with Knowledge Quest.
I love the idea of TOG (so much that I own TOG years 1-3) but it makes my head spin too and I haven't been able to use it.

[BarbaraL in OK]

I chose History Odyssey after SOTW for the second-time-around grand tour of world history. My kids happen to be four years apart, and it's worked out that the kids were easily synchronized. This year the second grader is doing SOTW2 (with activity guide) while the sixth grader is doing HO Middle Ages.

They also read a bit of assigned stuff every week for American history, British history, and ancient history (Rome & Greece), a la LCC with an Ambleside Online tweak.

[Jenny in Atl]

I have used SL along with SOTW. Now we are using History Odyssey level 2 along with Suzanne Strauss Art's Early Times bks. I also use some of The World in Ancient Times series and their Medieval and Early Modern as well.

[WABeth]

We will finish SOTW 4 this year and I have been really debating what to do next. I will have a 5th grader and a 1st grader next year. I really want to do SOTW over again with my 1st grader as she missed most of it the first time. I know my older will listen in on SOTW, so I wanted her work to correspond as much as possible with the same topics. That caused me to decide against History Odyssey. I thought about Biblioplan and Sonlight Core 6 but I want to read SOTW in order. I think I will be putting together my own plan with my 5th grader. I am looking at A Message of Ancient Days or The First Oxford History as a spine for her and adding in literature from Sonlight, etc. plus History Pockets and a timeline. I will be anxious to hear other responses also.

[Julie in Austin]

I decided to do SOTW again and add things in for my 5th grader; this year, I've added Kingfisher, a primary source book, outside novels, and writing for him. He seems to enjoy repeating SOTW because it is somewhat familiar.

[BarbaraL in OK]

I found weaknesses in my do-it-yourself approach (ouch!), so the next year I switched to History Odyssey, a good choice for us.

Last year's 5th grade history was my own plan. My 5th grader studied the ancient world with a story-like spine (The Story of Mankind), literature, enrichment books from the library, and some timeline work. It went well, but by the end of the year I felt that I needed to add something like the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia and some writing and organization projects. History Odyssey appealed to me, would meet those needs, and most of the literature was in my plans already. Once we started, I decided to shuffle sections of my younger son's history to generally match them up (SOTW2 vs. HO Middle Ages).

So this year my older son is doing History Odyssey Middle Ages, while my younger son does a synchronized SOTW2 with activity guide, and I really like how it's going.

[PixieKris]

This sounds similar to what we are doing - redo SOTW, but this time we are using History Portfolio for our binder. We added some reading from Kingfisher, and LOTS of other reading. DD (11) still loves SOTW.

[Blue Hen]

We are into our 3rd history rotation so during the first rotation SOTW was not around, just WTM first edition. At the start of our second rotation DS #1 was in 5th grade while DS #2 was a first grader. SOTW worked quite well but I remember the dilemma of trying to decide what to do for the next rotation when DS #2 entered 5th grade, after SOTW #4.

I tried History Odyssey and at first loved it, however DS did not care for it. It was way too much writing for him. As time went on I realized how much I enjoyed history in a chronological order and disliked how disjointed HO made history. This year we went back to doing history just like we did it in the first rotation but geared for logic age.

DS outlines Kingfisher History Encylopedia, he keeps a timeline, we copy maps from SOTW AG for DS to work from, he does little reports about topics we've read about in KFHE, (about 2-3 of these a month), and he reads lots of history books related to the men listed in WTM. He's enjoying history again. Oh, and we also re-read SOTW, several chapters at a time when we feel like it.

And I've relaxed TONS and TONS about history. I've decided that it really isn't essential that he learns every little tidbit about the past, but that I help him to connect events in one part of the world with what is going on in another part of the world. And to connect what is happening in one time period to something that is going to happen but we haven't studied yet in this rotation. That is really exciting to me with this age group. They remember the stories they heard 4yrs earlier and now are able to make connections.

[mcconnellboys]

I'm using a couple of Kingfisher and other encyclopedias as "spines", along with living books. I'm letting my son read SOTW himself, next time around, and he may do some outlining from it. All you really need is a topic outline of what things you'll cover for the year. You don't even really need a spine, just loads of good books on topic to read.

Oh, I'm also adding in the tests from SOTW for next year.....

Regena

[Susan in SoCal]

I'm thinking I will start SOTW all over again (after all, I've spent a ton of time coordinating schedules and addt'l reading/viewing items, etc.). I will have my oldest son, of course, do much more reading. I'll probably have him do the Guerber/Miller (ie. Story of the Greeks, Story of the Romans, etc.) history books in addition...

[Nancy in SoCal]

But I REALLY, REALLY didn't want my (now) 2nd grader to miss out on the early years of SOTW. So, I am combining History Odyssey Ancients Level 2 (which my 4th and 5th graders do) with SOTW 1. I did my best to line up the chapters and begin the lesson by reading SOTW. Then the older 2 go work on HO and I do narration/map/coloring page with the 2nd grader. We do all of the HO History Pockets together and have done the Lift the Lid on Mummies and Ancient China Treasure Chest, as well. Periodically, we do a project from SOTW.

It has been working well for us.

[Karie]

Nancy,
I've also been thinking about doing HO with my son who will be in 5th grade and SOTW with my younger son who will be in 3rd grade. Younger son doesn't remember anything about SOTW 1! Anyway, If you have your schedule written in a form that could be emailed, I would be forever grateful to have it. I was thinking I could line them up, also, but I would love to see your schedule. If you aren't able to do so, that's okay, I thought I'd ask.

Karie