Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources History anyone?

We did such a good job with Science, that I thought I'd pose the same question for history....I'm looking for suggestions for a secular history curriculum.

Not completely secular, but I've enjoyed Story of the World. It isn't perfect, but it's easy (and as I think I've said here before, sometimes "easy" is perfect!)

We're about to finish up the fourth volume, and from here on out my plan is to do topical history rather than a curriculum.

We've also dabbled in The History of US (U.S. history -- more detail than I wanted right now, but filled in some gaps in SOTW) and History Pockets by Evan Moor (definitely crafty, but not half bad for specific topics).

I've just ordered EH Gombrich's "Little History of the World," which I will tell you more about when it arrives! I read a lot of Gombrich's art history back when I was a graduate student, and loved his spacious mind, so I have high hopes for this one.

peace
minnie

Sounds really interesting. Please, do, report back!

Neato

We bought our 9 year old son the Gombrich on history CDs and he loved it.
We have in the UK a series of 'Horrible Historyu' books by Terry Deary. I am niot sure if they might cover any history you may be interested in, being in the USA, but they are worth a look. Thay too are available on CD

Oh yes, DS6 loves the "Horrible History" books - Terry Deary also does the "Murderous Maths" books which DS also adores. I didn't know that they were available on CD, thanks Raddy, these could be perfect for long car trips!

XX

I 2nd these. DS loves them. We also use Story Of The World. They have books or CD's. All of our curriculum is secular, but history is one of those subjects that's pretty much impossible to do secularly. History=religion. And SOTW is very thorough with covering everything.

I'll have to look into the Story of the World. I've heard that mentioned before on this board. We used studies weekly this year, especially since it was our first year. It was very simple and straight forward, but follows the state GLCE's. The story of the world sounds like fun because it actually follows the natural progression of time versus the skip around method used in public schools. Do you use the workbooks?

I hate to say I was never very into history. It would be nice for my kids to enjoy history versus the "memorize it until the test" view that we took in school.

We also use SOTW. We tend to use it more as background and dig in on the internet and at the library. I do like it. It is not totally secular and has a slightly Christian bias. But I do like that it covers africa and asia a bit too. We use the workbook somewhat, but that would totally not be necessary. Especially if you do some map work on what parts of the world you're talking about. Even my 4 year old likes the stories and talks about them for a long time afterward. We're absolutely crawling on this curriculum - we'll have to push through to the end of the book! But DS is in the process of putting together a many many page visual report on ancient eygpt, so he's getting something out of it.

We also use current events and historical events locally to look at different pieces of social studies and (American/state) history.

I was also going to say, as a reference we have the Usborne encyclopedia of world history. This goes back to evolution and has a format my son really likes. Which is more in the DK book style - labeled diagrams, highly visual.

To be honest, history is my least favorite subject. DS seems to be board with it too. But it's important to me that he has a knowledge of history. I like that SOTW starts at the beginning and goes chronologically. We started out with the book and workbook. I think they are awesome, and the workbook has fantastic extra reading recommendations, and lots of other hands on projects. But because we are "just not that into history" it was a chore for us. For a family of history buffs, it would be great. I switched to the CD's because we can just pop them in during car rides.