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Maryan
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| Posted: July 27 2007 at 7:41am | IP Logged
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I'm stuck in indecisionville about history plans for my first grader! 
Mater Amabilis suggests using The Story of our Land or Ileen Reninger The Faith comes to the Americas (I may have botched both titles).  And while they looked good, it just didn't hit me as the perfect fit.
I saw this link here, so I checked out RC History to see if it would work with my first grader.
There were definitely things that appealed to me. My boys are all pretty close in age, so at some point I could see us jumping into the same "era" of history all together. RC seems to cater to that with multilevel resources. However, it appears that only two volumes completed with the hopes of doing two more. Has that been a problem for you as you keep going or are they timely with new volumes being published?
And on another note, if you recommened RC history, Would you wait until my oldest is in 3rd grade and then start?
Of course if that's your recommendation, then I'm really back to the drawing board! 
Please help.
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vmalott
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I think one of the greatest values in RC History lies in its multi-level approach. That's what first attracted me to it last year as I was struggling with students in 3 different levels. To make life easier on us all, we started taking a family approach to the study of history and science.
However, considering that your oldest is only in 1st grade, I don't think you would benefit right now with the unique approach RC History takes. You may be better off waiting a bit until your other children are a little older and can be added into the mix. 
My fourth will be in 1st grade, and I'm still unsure about adding him in. I feel he could benefit from some light American studies, though I suppose he could do both. If you don't like the 1st grade recommendations from MA, perhaps you could substitute the book they recommend for Kindergarten history: Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans.
Also, I understand your concern about only two levels being available. Having been on an e-mail list with the author for several years now, I know she has gone through several devastating events through those years (a house fire, health issues, moving), which caused the initial delay in making other volumes available. I think having them available as downloads will make things easier, as they won't need to be published and sent out.
She does have the framework for a Medieval History unit online, which is something to work from, though I have hopes it would be turned into a new multi-level volume before we get to that point in our studies. Then there is also the Catholic Supplemental Guide to Artner's Reader's Guide to American History, which are both tools to aid in a multi-level approach to studying American History. So...the skeleton for future volumes are there, to be sure.
Hope this helps,
Valerie
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CKwasniewski
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I agree with Valerie. RC History is great, but probably not worth it for only one. Your 5 year old might enjoy it too, just listening in.
On the other hand, you can do it very high energy(lots of projects) or just read the core texts. I do think it makes sense to begin at The Beginning!
hth,
Ck
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Erin
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Valerie
Are there sample pages on the RC History site? I must say I always seem to have trouble finding my way around the site. With the cheap pdf file I would be really keen but want to have a 'look' first.
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Maryan
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| Posted: July 28 2007 at 2:22pm | IP Logged
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Thanks for all the suggestions, ladies. I won't cross RC off the list -- just put it on hold!
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Maryan
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vmalott
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Erin wrote:
| Are there sample pages on the RC History site? |
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You know, I wrote out this whole response explaning what's contained in each unit (as there used to not be samples) before actually going to the site to answer your question. YES, there are samples of the pages, so you get an idea of how the units are set up. Essentially there is an overview section to help jumpstart discussion of the time period and interest the children. Then there are notebook ideas. Lastly, there is the break down of readings by age level. There is only one page shown in the example, but there are actually two pages of the break down for each unit. The first page has readings for Beginner Level (K-3) and Grammar Level (3-6) students.
Valerie
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Thank you so much for this Valerie. I find their site difficult to navigate, it is not always clear. I'm off to follow your links.
Thanks for all your hard work writing first. Much appreciated.
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Macmom wrote:
We LOVED RC History's "Connecting With HIstory" (mentioned above). You learn the "big picture" of salvation history along with putting it in context with secular history from the Ancients. It will help the child to understand that God is REAL and acts IN TIME. Unlike the ancient Egyptian or Roman gods whose stories are about "once, long ago Zeus did THIS" your child will be able to state with confidence that Issac lived around the time of Hammurabi, the prophet Elijah lived right after the great Greek poet Homer, or Isaih was preaching around the time of the Greek city-states being founded.
We do history in 4 year cycles (ancients, medieval, renaissance to American Civil War, modern). All of us study the same period, at different levels. It really sticks with the kids as we go through the rotation, they remember not only names and dates and stories, but have a better sense of where we exist in history and how much has come before. They do lots of crafts (making a ziggurat out of boxes, carving an Egyptian amulet) and read lots of good historical fiction and period pieces (like "The Illiad!"), as well as dictate to me to create their own history book. (Often they dictate, I write, then they re-copy in their own handwriting!) We looked at and discussed pictures of ancient art, as well. And tried to copy them or do a similar style. |
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Forgive me for cutting and pasting here but I was intrigued and didn't want to hi-jack over yonder.
The craft activities you mention, are they suggested in the RC program?
All the wonderful connections about God and the Eygptians etc are they made clear in the program or is that something that you have added?
So does the First Volume cover from Creation to when..?
How is the story of Creation handled?
Anything else you want to add please feel free
As you may be able to tell from my previous posts I am really keen but just not too sure. It is so hard sight unseen. Mind you the pdf option makes it all so affordable.
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vmalott
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I'm sure Macmom will add to this. There are some activity/craft suggestions given for each unit, but they are generally just little suggestions and not in-depth, step-by-step instructions. For those sorts of things, activity guides such as Old Testament Days are relied upon. There are no specific instructions as to which craft you should be doing at any given time. That's up to you and your child's interests, I guess.
Instead of waiting for one of those guides to come through our library system or spending money on a variety of guides and coloring books, I went ahead and purchased the original (not revised) version of the Story of the World, Activity Guide 1. The nice thing about this guide is it has the readings lined up for the Usborne IL Encyclopedia of World History, which is the book for basic assignments for the grammar stage. So, it's fairly easy to match activities to what is being read in the RC History unit.
The beauty of the RC History approach is that it continually blends the Biblical history that is familiar to us with the secular history of that time period. The main texts for studying Creation are the various levels of Children's Bibles/Bible Histories. A couple of things are tied in from the Usborne and Oxford books. The first volume goes from Creation to the Maccabean Revolt (c. 63 BC) and Caesar's Gallic War (58 BC).
Valerie
P.S. Our Ziggurat was made out of cake!
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Macmom
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I second what Valerie said! :-)
We used RC History back in '05-'06 when I had an 8th grader, 6th grader, 4th grader, 3rd grader, 1st grader and a 4 year old who wanted to listen to the read-alouds and do the crafts. It was excellent for the grammar stage kidlets, but I had to add some "meat" for the logic stage (primary source documents to compare/ discuss) I used these:
http://www.triviumpursuit.com/xcart/product.php?productid=16 172&cat=258&page=1
It IS more fun, I think, with more than one child. But since you can cycle through it numerous times as the child matures, they will get more out of it each time.
My 1st grader (now a 3rd grader) still remembers A LOT from that year, and enjoys showing off the Egyptian amulet she made out of clay. I've had adults tell me "Wow! She sure knows a lot about Egypt!" And it fixed the sequence of Bible stories firmly in her mind. We also still enjoy eating "Abraham's lentil stew" for dinner. (It's in the "Old Testament Days" book of activities.)
The Creation Story is very Catholic, as is the whole curriculum. Not sure how you want to see it handled. It's not suggested in the curriculum, but I got Hunt's "Book of Angels" and we read it and the flying paper angels from Emmanuel Books, and we talked about how God made the angels first, then man. (Allowing us to bring Lucifer into the discussion a little early!)
Peace,
Macmom
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Erin
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Macmom
I also have an 8th, 6th, 4th grader like yourself and a 2nd and K.
I have decided to buy the book, thank you so much to you and Valerie and Janet also. The three of you have been so enthusiastic.
BTW, I followed your link and it said I was 'denied access'. 
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vmalott
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I hope you enjoy it, Erin.
BTW, our kids are 8th, 6th, 3rd, 1st and very interested 4.5yo and 3yo (when it comes to the fun hands-on stuff).
Valerie
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Well just waiting for them to email me back so I can download 
Having loads of DK books (I used to be a sales rep) could I use them instead of the Usborne books?
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Erin
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vmalott wrote:
I went ahead and purchased the original (not revised) version of the Story of the World, Activity Guide 1. The nice thing about this guide is it has the readings lined up for the Usborne IL Encyclopedia of World History, which is the book for basic assignments for the grammar stage. So, it's fairly easy to match activities to what is being read in the RC History unit.
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Valerie
What is the difference between the unrevised edition and the later ones?
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vmalott
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Erin wrote:
| What is the difference between the unrevised edition and the later ones? |
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I don't really know. I'm guessing that because the SOTW books are in various stages of revision, that the activity guides were revised also. I merely chose it because of the attractive price. Since I don't have the SOTW books, but my library has the older versions, I figured there wouldn't be any harm in purchasing the older edition of the activity guide.
Also, I kind of mixed something up and just remembered it. I stated something to the effect that Connecting With History Volume 1 uses the Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History, which lines up nicely with what is suggested in the SOTW Activity Guide. That is incorrect. CWH actually uses the Usborne Ancient World book. I use the UILE book (since that was one of my very first homeschool purchases ages ago), and did my own figuring out of pages for reading assignments the reading assignments given in CWH. It does line up nicely with SOTW, though.
I hope that wasn't misleading.
Valerie
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Erin wrote:
| Having loads of DK books (I used to be a sales rep) could I use them instead of the Usborne books? |
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I just saw this post after my last response. I'm not really familiar with the DK books, but you could probably make them work for you, especially if there is something similar to the Usborne Encyclopedia.
Fortunately, if you look at the grammar stage basic assignments, there are topic listings next to the pages, so you have a general idea of what is being studied alongside the Old Testament readings. It would be a bit more footwork, but probably doable. For whatever reason, there are no topics listed for the logic stage reading pages (Oxford First Ancient History), at least not in the print edition I purchase a couple of years ago. Perhaps that has changed with the PDF version.
Valerie
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ALmom
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I have substituted a lot of material for the specified books though not specifically DK. With some planning in advance, it really isn't difficult to make significant changes. Of course, some of it depends on the age of your child and whether or not you had access to a Usborne book temporarily so you could basically know which civilization they were looking at. With that information you really could use whatever background info you wanted to use and it wouldn't matter.
Really, it is set up to give the child background reading on the civilizations relevant to what you are studying. We have the Usborne though I generally dislike Usborne. What I have found is that the older ages (I'm using this primarily with my 15 yo)do not give as much background reading assignments as the younger ages in the plans - but what we have done has been to use the younger background reading material to give a quickee overview/intro, then used some of the questions for her age to launch various research projects. Of course she also does the map work and a timeline (she came up with a fan fold, beautiful color coded timeline). Since she is doing research - well everything I have in my house on the time period and then some is game. For more detailed background for the highschooler, I have some histories from Roman Catholic books - one being the history of Ancient Israel and the other being Ancient History. These are dryer than Usborne but meatier and certainly better for a highschooler's research - but she can kind of sort some things out with the easier books first. It really works nicely. A lot of the reading in the upper elementary ages works fine for a highschooler and then we have added in some of the Kolbe reading material - much of it overlaps.
Then my 13 yo who really did not want to do RC history and actually requested Christ the King (a book I dislike but since he requested it, it is our spine) so we are using this as a basic loose guide - but I'm pulling tons of stuff from RC History - I'm also making a booklist and assigning readings to make sure he gets a more balanced presentation of history. I guess, basically,now that my plans are done for the semester, I'd have to say that this child is really doing RC History but with the main text being Christ the King instead of whatever is recommended for his age. However, we are reading some from Usborne, too. I guess we're really doing a version of RC history. I do not plan to get through more than half the Christ the King book - maybe less and I'm not even sure I'm concerned about how far through RC History we make it.
My 10 yo wanted American history so we're using From Sea to Shining Sea from Ignatius Press and planning to only tackle part of the book this year so there is plenty of time to read real books with it. I'd love to have him following the same basic sequence as his brothers but no point in forcing the issue. I also suspect his personality would have more trouble with substitutions and I don't think he is ready for some of the stuff in Usborne (not that it is bad - just history hasn't been his thing, science has so I'd rather stick with more solidly Catholic sources and he plain isn't ready to read Christ the King, isn't interested in ancients, and well From Sea to ... seems a better fit. I suspect there will be a lot of cross sharing so everyone will learn twice as much. However, I must say this really killed my book budget this year!!!
I have a list and some assignments but a lot of choose one of the following aka MODG (not necessarily using the books she recommends). I probably own every book listed in Emmanuel books for the time periods and saints books from this period galore and my own history books, interesting biographies and stories from this early American period --- etc. I ordered some more that were recommended from the Materabilis site and the ones recommended in the teachers manual. We are rolling in books and out of money but - these should last us forever. I really love it when my dc start scrounging through my piles over the summer and read half the books (or more) that were on my plans before we ever get to the year.
Sorry, I didn't mean to deviate. I just meant to assure you that it really isn't hard to substitute rather freely with RC History - but it does take some prior planning. Hope that helps. Certain things like being able to easily find that this civilization was a combination of this group and this group and they moved here - or the essay questions are pretty tough to do. I actually have all the main books from every level - and the better portion of all the other ones too as I initially planned to do it with all of mine. The younger grades are basically simply a Bible History with some activities thrown in relating to Jewish feasts and that kind of thing. The middle two have most of the cultural and historical background material. The highest level has mostly the primary sources and assumes a pretty thourough overview already and goes pretty deeply into theology - we didn't care for their choices of the main theology texts and went to Laux for this information. You can certainly weave material from all the levels together as well. My highschool dd enjoyed reading some of the quickee younger versions of Homer before jumping into Homer - that kind of thing.
Janet
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bramasole
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I am just getting started with RC History, so I don't have anything to add on that, except that I bought it for my 1st grader and his very interested 4 yo sister. We also have a lot of Usborne and DK books (primarily Eyewitness) - I am a book retailer, among other things...
I have to say that I generally love both publishers' books for my younger ones. However, I do agree that they might not be meaty enough for the high school years. Both have fabulous photography! However, I did check out some Eyewitness dvds, based on the DK book series, for my son and found that when they do mention anything Biblical, it isn't always Catholic. Also, there was no reference at all to the Isrealites when discussing Ancient Egypt. I don't think that necessarily makes the series bad. I do intend to still use them as they really are good for information at that age. I don't know if this helps at all, but I thought I'd throw my 2 cents in.
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4Real Forums : Across Time and Place
Topic: RC History question and a little more
