Please Help ? Susan Wise Bauer's "Story of the world"

Everyone has their own opinion on those SOTW books – for me and my family, they are a little dry.  They might be a “living book style textbook”  but they seem like a textbook nonetheless.  Others may disagree with me.  The activity guides are well matched to the book, and do have well put together fun activities.

CM says something like “study and get to really know an individual and you will get to know their place and time.”  When you get a living book that accomplished this – you and your kids won’t want to settle for anything else.  Little House on the Prairie, Ben and Me, the Holling C. Holling books are a few like this.  We are reading the SCM book “A Boy of the Pyramids” right now – we are loving it!  The kids talk about how much they love the story, they talk about the characters, they incorporate the time, place and characters into their play, writing and drawing. The topical books (Egypt, in this case) we check out of the library mean more, because they have a context.  These are results that don’t come from a textbook!  CM was onto something!

My advice is pick a great living book and just start reading it together!  During the days and weeks that you are reading this book, take the opportunity to get a few more lined up.  Over time get organized using the bookfinder to get your living books laid out in chronological order. But if you are worried about “getting it right” just get started!

Have fun!

Hi, I know this topic is old, but I wanted to chime in because our family absolutely LOVES SOTW. However, we ONLY love it on audio CD, read by Jim Weiss.

I use the audio CDs as a fun and passive way to learn history, along with our regular CM books. I don’t worry at all about whether or not the SOTW CDs correspond exactly chronologically to what we are reading either. I don’t use the activity guide at all, as I think the activities are rather contrived and lame….and not necessary for learning.

I just choose whatever SOTW volume most corresponds to our history unit that year, and we listen to the CDs as we like. Sometimes the kids listen to them during rest time. Sometimes I pop them in on a stormy day and we listen while I work in the kitchen and the kids do handicrafts. We sometimes listen to them in the car. I usually have a couple of kids who will snatch a CD and take it to their room while they fold laundry. I don’t care if they “get ahead” and have to listen to portions more than once with the rest of the family.

Last year, my daughter listened to the Ancient Times volume about 3x in it’s entirety. She would disappear into her room and play on the floor and listen to story after story.

So for us, this has been a great, supplemental resource. And I can’t tell you how many times when we are reading something that my kids say, “Oh! I’ve heard to that guy (or that battle, or that place, or that legend)! It was on Story of the World!”

HTH!