Anyone use History Odyssey?

[MissRubyandKen]

I'm considering buying History Odyssey Ancients Level 1. Can anyone who's used it give me their review any of the History Odyssey guides? Love them, not so much? What were they like? Easy to follow, collected dust? We tried Story of the World before and the kids weren't crazy about it, but I'm wondering if I get the CDs and they have the activities and things from History Odyssey they might like it better. I had big plans to make my own History curriculum this year, but I've only gotten so far and time is just not there for me to do so. I'd really like something all laid out for me at this point. I prefer secular, but not sure that's gonna happen. I'm not looking to spend more than $100, and I plan to reuse it for my youngest when she's older. I think most of the books could be borrowed from the library to go with.

[OTMomma]

Did you try doing all the activities in the Story of the World activity book- not just the student pages, but the activities? My dd enjoyed that better than the History Odyssey program- HO had a lot of good ideas, but somehow it just didn't click for us, it used the SOTW book as a read aloud anyway, but had us read it out of order, which felt strange.

I know many people love HO so it could just be us.

ETA- we were doing this for level 1- I would reconsider it for level 2.

[Momma Aimee]

subbing

always looking to learn as much as i can before i have to make these choices

[jessicaSAR]

We have used HO Level 1, Middle Ages and Early Modern (not Ancients, so I can't speak specifically to that). Most of the folks who really seem to love HO, seem to love Level 2. And, that makes sense to me. The instructions are clearly laid out - "read this," "do this map," "do this activity," etc. So, it is great for the 4th grade and up crowd to do independently.

Level One we use much more loosely. It uses Story of the World, and Child's History of the World and the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History as its main sources. It is arranged topically and chronologically (the chronology is a bit different than SOTW - SOTW jumps around the world through each time period and HO covers one geographical area for longer, then goes back in time and covers another geographical area).

The pros: I love that it is secular and does the work of avoiding the Christian mythology as historical fact biases of SOTW. I like that it offers lots of good activities, maps and additional resource lists. And, I like that it is comprehensive, so you can really cover a lot.

The cons: It is very comprehensive and really too much for the early grades. That is also a positive because you can choose your focus, but we could never do all that is listed. Otherwise, I don't see much wrong with it. We don't follow it exactly. And, if you don't like the crafty things like History Pockets, then you might not like it, but it is working well for us.

[tankgirl73]

I love it, but take it into account our specific situation before making your own decision.

I started using it with DS when he was 10, we tried level 2 Ancients. We liked it a lot. BUT, since he is a 'weak' writer, and there is sooo much writing at that level... plus he was pretty much new to formal history study in general... we ended up feeling it was just too much too soon. We loved the format of it and the way it approached things, it was just too much.

So we decided to try level 1, around the time he was turning 11. He understood that it didn't mean he was 'going backwards' and only doing 'grade 1' history. He understood that it just meant starting with more basic stuff before doing more complex things, and also more hands-on and less writing.

This has worked quite well for us. The level of stuff being studied is appropriate for him, and it's easier (IMO) to add enrichment activities to make it more suitable for his age, than it is to remove or severely modify assignments in order to simplify them, like we would have had to do if we stuck with level 1.

For instance, we skip many of the suggested historical fiction books and substitute ones that are more advanced, at his reading level (which is in fact quite high). Those are not part of the core of the program, there's no quizzes on them or anything lol... so it's easy to substitute. And when the assignment is "choose one of the following 4 activities", we might do 2, 3, or all 4!

So far we've ended up spending a LOT more time on each lesson than you normally would with a younger child using it, because we're adding so much. In other words, we're basically using it as a jumping off point. It's providing guidance and structure and a progression that makes sense, and we take it from there.

It's all stuff that we COULD do on our own if I had the time and the werewithal. In fact, before we tried HO, I did indeed try to develop my own based on some Charlotte Mason websites and suggestions. I kind of liked what I came up with, but still wasn't entirely satisfied. Then I discovered HO, and found it to be precisely what I had been TRYING to do by myself... so why reinvent the wheel lol...

SOTW is only one small part of the program. Well, a pretty big part, but still only part. I wouldn't outright dismiss it just because you didn't enjoy SOTW before. But it still MAY be just the thing that turns you guys off the program so...

So, it's great that they have a 'try before you buy'. You get like the first dozen lessons, enough for at least a couple months, totally free. If you like it, then you can buy the whole thing. That's how come we were able to try level 2, then realize we prefered level 1.

Right now we're actually taking a break from it... we had too much on our plate and I decided to move to a unit study approach. We will come back to it at some point as a main study for a month or so, when we might finally get out of Sumer and into Egypt lol...

But he has loved all the physical activities. He really likes the History Pockets. We had a great time making a ziggurat, we painted it with gold paint and it's displayed proudly in his room. When going through one book where we were supposed to choose one sumerian-based craft, he himself declared he wanted to do nearly all of them. It's perfect for us.

[CariOfOz]

We love it here too We use ancients lvl 1 right now actually (getting ready to move to medieval times in a month) and we enjoy it. I like how it's laid out by the week with an easy checklist to follow. I also like that I find enough of the supplemental reading at the library to keep it affordable The kids enjoy the cool craft & projects and oddly enough LOVE the map work involved

Do you know that pandia has a try before you buy thing where you can download a large (and I mean like 11 lessons large!) sample of the level 1 program to test it out before you $$ for it?