We have made it to volume 4! Yeah! We should celebrate somehow, but we are too excited about history to stop, even for a celebration. We have built momentum and we want to keep on going.
“The sun never sets on the British Empire.”
My plan is to finish volume 4 before we start school again in August, because I would like to start the whole four-year history cycle all-over again. My son will be in fifth grade next year, so he gets to experience it on a different level than my daughter. But I think this time it will be clearer for her and I want her to start again with the Ancients so that things will make more sense.
I know she gets a lot out of it, for her level. The advice for multi-level teaching has always been that we should teach for the oldest child and let the chips of understanding fall where they may for the younger siblings.
My daughter knows to ask questions if she does not understand a word or a sequence of events. She likes to color when my son likes to just listen and not color. They do their thing and the caravan of history moves along. It works!
About volume 4: there are less coloring pages, more maps, and a new feature called “Outline.” The children are supposed to narrate the story and, also, write down an outline.
British Empire craft – the sun never sets
Since this is our first time going through this volume, I have decided we will not get bogged down with writing down an outline. For the sake of my younger child, we will skip this exercise until we come back around to it, three years from now. She will be older and writing fast will not be an issue, so we will be able to move better.
We will not be reading the extra books recommended, either. We will simply read the stories, do the map work, and create one craft. That’s it. It’s a good initial introduction to modern history. The next time we go through it, we will be older and wiser and we will be able to tackle extra reading and outlines.
Now, if they really become fascinated with a particular topic, I may get them an extra book about it or open up the reference books we have on history (Usborne etc). But I will not be focusing on extra reading of my own free will.
The first chapter was about Queen Victoria and the kids loved the expression, “The sun never sets on the British Empire.” It was neat to find out that the British Empire was represented with color pink on old maps. I did not know that. We made the craft and they loved shining the flash light on the “globe” we created.
