The Story of the World - Weeks 1 & 2

Now that I have caught up with our social and family posts from April I want to return the focus to our homeschooling activities of the last month.

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We began "The Story of the World" curriculum the middle of April. The first week began by exploring your personal history as a way to begin understanding the concept of world history. Our favorite book from the suggested reading list for the week was "Me and My Family Tree" by Joan Sweeney (Dragonfly, 2000).  

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One of the suggested activities was interviewing family members (we still need to finish that project to include in our book so you may still be receiving a call from us) to understand our family heritage.

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Another project I thought turned out really well, and is shown in the picture below, was creating a family tree (the paper Grandma and Grandpa gave the kids for Easter worked perfectly for this project - thanks so much!). This was a great art project and also gave the girls a chance to cut, which is an activity we tend to let slide more than we probably should. I don't know that you can tell from the picture but I did write out all the names of the Carlson, LaBar, Lueker and Warner relations beginning with the 8 great grandparents and all their decendants after the girls selected, cut and glued pictures of some of our relations.

 

Each of the girls has started their own binder (Kennedy's is on the top and Reagan's is the bottom) to record the history of the world in their own words.

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In the bottom binder, you can see some examples of what Reagan did during our second week which was a study on Nomads. After we read a section from our text book and related suggested reading I ask the girls to narrate what they found to be most noteworthy. Reagan writes the subject herself but I write the narration for both girls (as they get older they will write their own narrations). Next they draw a picture of what they have narrated. We then place their narrations in their history binders where we can review what we learn as we go forward. At the end of the four year cycle the girls will each have written and illustrated their own world history book.

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The activity guide for our textbook also includes maps and coloring pages which we have been including with our narrations. It also has many activity suggestions. One day we chose to make cave paintings. The activity guide provided paper texture, color, brush and technique ideas for the girls to try out. You can see the cave painting Reagan did of a Nomad riding a donkey in the picture above. One of the techniques that was recommended was to exaggerate an animal's primary feature which is why Reagan painted such enormous ears on her donkey.

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Our favorite book from our second week of study was called "The First Dog" written by Jan Brett (Harcourt Brace, 1998). It was a cute fictional story about a little boy and a wolf which introduced the idea of animal domestication.

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I have some more posts to do to catch up, but we are currently finishing our fourth week of this curriculum and we have really been enjoying "The Story of the World" and all its suggested activities. I would highly recommend this series and the classical education approach to anyone!