Aligning History Sentences with Story of the World
I wrote and compiled our History Sentences to align with each of our Timeline Songs. The subject of each sentence ("Tell me about ______") is one of the events listed in the corresponding Timeline Song. Cycle 1 draws from "Ancient Times," Cycle 2 draws from "Early Church History," and so on and so forth. If each event in the Timeline Song is a proverbial "peg," the History Sentences are the first things hung on each peg.
I've already written a blog post about different history curricula, so I'll try to not repeat myself here. This post is to directly answer to the curriculum committees that have reached out to me asking about how the sentences align with Story of the World, specifically.
I get it. In my opinion, the Story of the World series (shout out to Susan Wise Bauer) has definitely stood the test of time. I used it when my oldest was a kindergartener, and I was still using it when my youngest was in 5th grade. If I were to start homeschooling a grandchild today, it would be the first thing I pull off my shelf. (And yes, I still have all 4 volumes within an arm's reach of me right now!) I've seen the series be engaging in both a homeschool setting and a hybrid-school setting. It is the longest running curricula that the Grammar School we were associated with used! Over 12 years and counting. The appeal of it is in how history is written as a STORY, and each chapter easily works as a family/class read aloud. It's so easy to tie in beautiful picture books and voila... history comes alive!
Another HUGE perk of Story of the World (for my family) was that it was available as an audiobook, so we could listen to the stories together as a family in the car. Our library even carried the CDs! (And if yours doesn't, you should REQUEST them!) At one point, I had them constantly playing... we would just always pick right back up where we had left off and continually listen to the stories. Or my children went through a phase when they were listening to them as they went to sleep at night.
Because of the popularity of Story of the World (and the requests from school administrators), I went ahead and looked at how our sentences overlap with the books in this particular series. I understand how it would feel disjunct to be reading about Queen Victoria in class and learning a History Sentence about Mesopotamia. My goal is always to keep filling up the toolbox for you, the educator, to choose how and when you use any of the tools.
So for those of you who are interested, I created a Google Drive document (linked here and below) to help you choose history songs to correspond with what you are reading in Story of the World. Obviously, not every chapter has a corresponding song... the books have around 40 chapters, and there are only 24 History Songs for each cycle. The memory cycles and books volume may not line up exactly... remember that the history sentences were written to align with the Timeline Songs. However, as I am wrapping up writing songs for all the Cycles, I could see myself going in and adding some "bonus" songs to fill in the gaps, if that is something that you would like! Reach out and let me know!
