‘Story of the World’ History Curriculum Plus MORE!

Why I Still Love ‘Story of the World’, but just needed something …. more.

 

If you’ve been in the homeschool world for any length of time, chances are you’ve heard of—or already own—a copy of ‘The Story of the World’ by Susan Wise Bauer. This series has been a staple on homeschool bookshelves for decades. It has a great conversational tone, reads like a story,  and the chronological order makes it enjoyable for the kids, while still offering a good strong foundation in world history.

As someone who LOVES learning about history, when I first started using ‘The Story of the World’ with my three children, I had really high hopes— and for the most part, these books delivered.   It was the kind of history book that wasn’t a TEXTBOOK which we don’t prefer, but a book we could get cozy on the couch with, and enjoy reading and learning together.   This is a big part of my homeschooling philosophy 😀 There was A LOT of history, thousands of years worth, and therefore A LOT of details.  I couldn’t keep track and organize it in my brain, and worried my kids might be having the same difficulty.
The stories did bring the ancient world to life, but even after buying the activity book, something just felt FLAT about using it as our entire history curriculum.

It just needed something… more!

Yes, we were reading history told as one great story— but the connections to things like people and places in the Bible, current archaeological finds, and visuals like YouTube videos, charts, and colorful maps were lacking. Maybe this was because we loved our days of UNIT STUDIES so much. We were missing the games, the exciting historical fiction books we read together, etc… So, I found myself spending hours piecing together supplemental materials: hands-on activities, timelines, living books lists that were related, coloring pages, and so on.

Can you relate?
Do you love ‘The Story of the World’ too?  Are you wishing it came with a little more connection and a little more SPARK?
If you’re nodding along, there’s good news below!
And even if you love ‘Story of the World’ just like it is, I still think you’ll enjoy the following ideas just for FUN!
Read on…

Before you read on, I just want to emphasize that this is how I made ‘Story of the World’ work for us.
Take what resonates with you and give it a try for your family!
You can see the entire, more detailed overview of the *FREE* History Curriculum that I created here–> FREE Ancient World History Curriculum.

+Chronological History Bites

By organizing Ancient History into bite-sized sections, with ‘The Story of the World’ still as the spine, keeping the WORLD history emphasis, it created pieces of a puzzle that all fit together.
It felt like we started with a 5,000 piece puzzle, and this one tweak made our study into a 5 piece puzzle! 

Here’s how I organized the sections-

+Ancient Civilizations and the Old Testament
(I began at the very beginning- So cool to see who the People Become Places!)
+Ancient Egypt & Ancient China
(Mostly this is Ancient Egypt, and someday I will dedicate a section to Ancient China)
+Ancient Greece
+Ancient Rome
+The Middle Ages
+I also have completed Early American History and Modern American History sections as well!

 

+Clear Learning Objectives

One of the other issues I was having, was that I wasn’t really sure which parts of ‘The Story of the World’ I wanted to emphasize and be sure were mastered by my children.  There is A LOT of information to be synthesized for THOUSANDS of years of history!!  But I wanted to be clear on which parts would serve as the best FOUNDATION for all the details they would be adding in later years.
Organizing the reading into sections helped, but I set out to write down some BASIC objectives I had for each section.
I share those in the each of the Ancient History Curriculum sections I wrote, but you could definitely write down your own learning objectives based on the ages and experience of your kiddos!

Here is an example from the Ancient Egypt section-
This is NOT the full outline, but it will give you an idea!

+ Be able to sequence the People, Places, and Events 
Sequence the Ancient Egypt History Cards and the Ancient Civilizations/OT Cards you made!
If you haven’t grabbed the Ancient Civilizations Cards, they’re FREE!
+ Be able to tell at least 3 facts about each card

+ Be able to describe the geography of Egypt including terms we’ve studied  (delta, desert, etc )
+ Be able to locate Egypt on a map.
+ Be able to find the Nile River, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Red Sea

+Be able to describe what the government was like and name some of the well known pharoahs.
+Be able to describe what a day in the life of a child living in ancient Egypt would be like
+Be able to retell the stories of Joseph and Moses and why they were important to the history of Egypt
+Be able to recognize art from this period
+Add at least one page per event to your binder

Below you will find a list of suggested Vocabulary, Important People, Places, and Events that will be covered in this unit.   They are all just to be used as a starting point, so feel free to make entirely new lists, or add to these if you’d like.  The people, places, and events are great to refer back to especially during Week 7 when we work on the History Binders/Notebooks.
These are also helpful if you are making a timeline to go with this section.

*Vocabulary- add to this list as you go!
(See the explanation in the notes above)
+pharaoh          +pyramid             +mummy        +sphinx                +embalm
+mythical         +hieroglyphics    +papyrus         +sarcophagus     +dynasty
+obelisk            +scribe                  +nomes           +canopic jars      +delta
+cartouche       +valley                  +fertile             +chariot               +afterlife
+deity                +irrigation           +vizier              +scarab

 

*People- just a few suggestions, but you can add to this list as you go !
+Menes              +Khufu (Cheops)        +Pharaoh Djoser             +Joseph/Jacob/Israel
+Hatshepsut     +Akhenaten                 +Moses                              +Israelites
+Hyksos             +Nefertiti                     +The Hittites                    +Tutankhamen
+Ramses II        +Thutmose III            +Amenhotep                     +Joshua

 

*Places-  just a few suggestions, but add as you read!
+Giza               +Memphis             +The Nile        +The Sphinx of Giza
+Thebes          +Mount Sinai        +Luxor            +The Valley of the Kings
+Canaan         +Goshen                +Alexandria   +Saqqara
+Cairo             +Sinai Desert

*Events-  just a few suggestions to get you started!
+The Old Kingdom            +The Great Pyramids Built           +Abraham & Sarah In Egypt
+The Middle Kingdom      +Egypt Unified                                +Israel Enslaved In Egypt
+Moses Born                       +The 10 Plagues In Egypt              +The Exodus
+The Battle of Kadesh       +Reign of Hatshepsut                    +Reign of Ramses the Great
+Conquest of Egypt            +Reign of Cleopatra VII                +The New Kingdom

 

+Making Connections

One of my personal goals in teaching history is to make sure there are CONNECTIONS between the people, places, and events throughout history AND into our present daily lives!   One pitfall in using STORY of the World is that it can seem just like that… A STORY!  Something abstract and completely unrelated to our present day lives in the minds of your students.  Helping to point out the building blocks of history and how they fit together into a house isn’t always easy, but I think it is VITAL!
I have tried to accomplish this throughout the creation of all of the Ancient World History and American History Curriculum that I have written.
Recently I have added some “History At A Glance” pages so that there is a visual of these connections as well as the discussions you’ll find in each section of the curriculum.

Here is an example-

 

 

+Teaching To ALL Learning Types

As someone who loves to read, I felt lucky to have kids who enjoyed being read to.  Because, not every child does!
We spent many hours reading together, which was invaluable.  HOWEVER, I also had 2 children that needed to DO something with what they heard or it wouldn’t stick.  The information was there one minute, and gone the next!  They were NOT auditory learners, and thrived when they could be creative!  One of them loved any kind of hands-on project I could offer, and the other was very visual and wanted to check out every movie and coffee table book with glossy photos on a subject from the library.  So… for us, ‘Story of the World’ needed more.
This was super TIME CONSUMING!

I’m a dinosaur, so back in the day when I was homeschooling the Littles, we didn’t have access to so many wonderful resources on the internet as we do today.
No Instagram, TikTok, or Pinterest  (GASP!)!!!!
But I did piece things together.   And once I started publishing all of my outlines years ago on Fields of Daisies, I couldn’t help but continue to add so many of the good resources I was finding!  I knew that somewhere out in Cyber-Land there were other moms trying to do the same thing that maybe I could help out.

For my tactile learner kids-

-We kept 3 ring History Binders
You can read about HOW we did this –  How To Make Your Own History Timeline Binder  (and WHY you should!)
Or you can watch the YouTube video that I made showing ours and how we made them!

-I made Printable History Cards  so that they could physically put the people, places, and events we were studying in order, all while playing games!  #MakeHistoryFunAgain

For my visual learners-
I am making (still working to complete all sections) Printable POWER Packs!
I have to say as a visual/tactile learner myself, I am super excited about these companion packs.  There are History Scavenger Hunts, History Escape Rooms, Crossword and Cryptogram Puzzles, Who Was/What Was Graphic Organizers, Themed Timeline Printables, Creative Writing Activities, and so much more!
If you want a sneak peak to see what’s inside, I just made this YouTube video (‘The Story of the World’ – Ancient Greece Printable POWER Pack) yesterday to show you!

 

For the auditory learners in the bunch-
Recently, I’ve been working on creating some TOP 10 posts which highlight my favorite history resources.
One of those posts is a Top 10 History Songs  (way more than 10 in the list of course lol).
Seriously, if you sing it as a kid (or hear it over and over when you have kids), music and lyrics can lock information into your memory FOREVER!  Barney songs… cough cough.
Also-
+Top 10 History PODCASTS
+Top 10 History AUDIOBOOKS
+Top 10 History MOVIES

For all the types of learners-
*I made BOOK LISTS  (ex. Ancient Egypt Book List) for each section that include wonderful living historical fiction books, non-fiction books, activity guides, movie suggestions, craft kits and more!
+Top 10 History BOOKS  (This is the ULTIMATE History Book List!)
+Top 10 History TIMELINES
+Top 10 History GAMES

*And I wrote the Daily Lessons the History Curriculum on my site to include suggestions for related books (including ‘Story of the World’), online reading, related YouTube videos, Explore It More! sections with games and other activities, coloring pages to add to timelines, etc…
I also include an entire week devoted to READING for enjoyment, and HANDS-ON activities.  Sometimes I’d feel like we were taking too much time with projects, so I gave MYSELF and now YOU an organized way to still feel like you’re learning but ENJOY all the FUN parts of learning too!

Here’s an example of a Daily Lesson-

 

 

+MAKE ‘The Story of the World’ work for YOUR family!

I hope you’ve found some of the “more”, some of the SPARK you were looking for to make you and your family LOVE learning HISTORY again! 
You can either use the entire FREE Ancient and American History Curriculums complete with daily lesson plans, printables, Book Lists, and more from Fields of Daisies…
OR you can just come and pick and choose what you want to add without having to spend HOURS looking online for ideas!
Whether your child is a visual, auditory, or tactile learner, this curriculum has something for everyone. I think you and your kids will love learning this way together. You’ll save tons of time because it’s all been done for you!

 

Questions?  Comments?  Other ideas to add?
I’d love to hear from you!

+Leave a comment below!
+Email me!   ch*****@*************es.com
+Message me on Fields of Daisies Facebook Page
+Find me on Instagram!
+Check out my new YouTube Channel  and then leave a message and say hello !
(I have big plans for new videos ahead- but first I have to finish the Printable POWER Packs lol!)