2023-2024 Curriculum Picks: Family Style History + Geography
Last year many of you followed along with our Ancient History study. If you missed it, I did a review you can read over at SOTW: Ancient Times Highlights. This year we can’t wait to study the Middle Ages!
Come August, we will start off our school year with our first science unit. Then, we will move into studying history for a few weeks. After nearly four years of homeschooling, I’ve learned it works best for our family if about every 4-6 weeks we swap back and forth between science and history and take a unit study approach.
Getting Started
Since we are really embracing a family style approach to this study, I am going to be pulling from a variety of books and resources this year to help make it engaging for everyone. I am sure I’ll be adding to this list as the year progresses, but for now, this is what I have on hand and ready to go:
Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages and the accompanying PDF Activity Guide from The Well Trained Mind
We’ll be using these mostly for my older children (they’ll be 10). When we’re working on history, my kids will be reading one chapter a day from SOTW and then the activity guide has review and narration exercises for every chapter which will be an extension of our language arts portion for the day. We are using our history notebooks (see below) and I am planning on having them write or type some of their narrations this year and we can stick them in our notebooks. I shared a little bit about this in my post a few days ago: 5th Grade Curriculum Picks.
The activity guide has tons of book and activity suggestions. I will be pulling from their books lists all year plus adding some of my own. We are not planning to do all the hands-on activity that coordinate with every chapter like the activity guide suggests. There are a lot of student pages with maps and coloring pages that can be used to keep little hands busy or for notebooking. I will probably pull from some of these pages, but not all of them.
Just a FYI if you’re looking into purchasing the activity guide, like I mentioned, the student pages are included in the PDF. I prefer the PDF version so I can print multiple copies off of the student pages, but this particular guide is close to 500 pages. 250 of that are the coordinating chapter resources and the other 200+ is part of the student pages. When there are big guides like this, I prefer just to print about 100 pages at a time so they’re a little more manageable to bind and carry around if I am using on a daily basis.
History Timeline Notebook with History Timeline Cards
We used both of these resources last year and loved them! There are a lot of timeline cards, but my older kids loved putting them in and it makes for a fun record to go back and remember when we read about certain people or places. We have one history notebook for our family and I am hoping that as the kids grow it’ll be something they can all continually reference.
History Notebooks (7x10 size)
We have these blank notebooks that the kids record things that they learn during our history studies. We’ve been using our notebooks for 2 years now and this is also where we keep our map work. Below is a good example from our Ancient History study - a map of Ancient Greece and some copy work from a story we read about The Trojan horse.
We used some of these resources last year - specifically the map activities and a few of the info pages. I linked all the resources for The Middle Ages and there is also a Renaissance and Reformation tab you can explore. I think we will use some of these resources again this year, but I won’t purchase anything until I am planning or in a certain unit study.
Draw and Write Through History: The Vikings, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance
Using our notebooks for record keeping provides a nice keepsake, but also a little art practice. So I thought having this on hand would be super helpful. I would say this is more for intermediate drawers. This also has cursive copywork.
Thematic Unit Studies
Many people read straight through SOTW and do 1-2 chapters a week with the coordinating chapter activities. This is probably the easiest way to use the materials so know you can definitely do this. If I was homeschooling just my older girls, I might do this. However, I don’t think my younger boys, ages 6 & 4 will be as interested in listening in on Story of the World - my 6 year old might like some of the chapters? Last year, he lost interest most of the time when we were reading volume 1. So instead I thought it would be fun to just take some of study topics and do mini unit studies with my boys in mind. They will not line up to when the girls are reading SOTW, but they’ll have the book to tie everything in together for them.
I am imagine we’ll spend 1-2 weeks on each topic. We will be using The Usborne Internet-Linked Medieval World as a spine for unit study themes. If you have the Usborne Encyclopedia of the World which was needed to study Story of the World Volume 1, then you don’t need this book because it’s nearly identical to the Middle Ages sections in the Encyclopedia. My neighbor had this particular copy so since it’s a lot thinner I am borrowing it.
I know we will be starting with an introduction to the Middle Ages and world geography - specifically the 7 continents for my 6 year old and a deeper look into Europe for my older girls. This year on Tuesdays we are planning to do Tea Time Tuesdays. During our science units we will be pulling from our science materials, but during our history units I am planning to pull from Shakespeare (at least for the first part of the year.) For Shakespeare, I feel like I have a lot to learn, but I am up for the challenge. Here is what I have on hand so far:
I got How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare to help me learn how to help my kids learn better.
To learn more about Shakespeare and his life, I have Bard of Avon: The Story of William Shakespeare.
I have these versions of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet for my twins.
For our Tea Time, I picked up Poetry for Kids: William Shakespeare.
I think my boys are going to love this - Where’s Will: Find Shakespeare Hidden in His Plays It’s a seek & find of Shakespeare and the characters in his plays.
And then our library has a A Stage Full of Shakespeare Stories so I am going to have this on hand when it’s available.
I will plan our other units as it gets closer, but these are the topics we’re planning to dive deeper into. All I did to plan these was take headings out of the Usborne Medieval World book that I thought would interest my boys. We’ll use these pages to jump off of and read other stories, watch videos, and add in hands-on activities.
Vikings/Norse Fairytales and Mythology
Kings, Nobles, Peasants
Knights, Soliders, & War
Castles
Saints & Cathedrals
Robin Hood & The Crusades
Celts
Samurai’s & China
Explorers and Sailors
Artists of Italy
Ideas & Inventions
Voyages of Discovery
I also have my eye on some of the unit studies from HearthMagic for our studies this year. We used her Narnia study guide for Christmas a few years ago and loved it. I’m thinking we may do a unit study on Saint Nicholas for Christmas school this year. I also think it would be fun to do the Ramadan unit next spring since my older girls will be learning about the rise of Islam and Muslims.
A few of the other books I know I want my older girls to read this year are Beowulf, Viking Quest, and Chronicles of Narnia. We will do this abridged reading of Robin Hood so my boys can listen in. I got my 6 year old The Making of a Knight which I think he is going to LOVE because the story starts out about a little boy named James who is 7. My little boy’s name is James and turning 7 next year so I think it was just meant to be!
Last year, we listened to The Hobbit, but my girls just told me they never finished it, ha! So, I am planning to have them actually read it this year. And I am thinking I may read The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe to my 6 year old - we’ll see! Other than that I am sure we will be using lots and lots of picture books.
If you have any other suggestions for us, please share away!