When I first started homeschooling, I feel enormous pressure to use The Story of The World by Susan Wise Bauer as our history curriculum. Vast numbers of homeschoolers used it, both secular and Christian. It seemed so solid and impressive.
I bought a copy of Volume I and began reading it to 6-year-old Bee. He liked some of the stories but disliked it overall. He has an aversion to what he deems "educational books." He likes many nonfiction books, and many books that were written in order to "educate" children, but something about The Story of the World got on his nerves. Honestly, I had trouble retaining a lot of what I read to him myself. We never finished reading it.
Still, I couldn't shake the idea that we should be reading it and that we should be doing the activity book. My children deserved the opportunity of mummifying a chicken while we studied ancient Egypt. This idea that we should be doing a book that none of us wanted to do for history actually got in the way of us doing more history and enjoying more history.
Bee did get history that year, mainly because his father let him watch the documentary America: The Story of US. He was mesmerized by it, and he watched it (all 12 hours) several times. I don't recommend this for a first grader necessarily; I thought it was a little too violent, probably better for middle school or at least upper elementary. I'm also not sure it's the best historical documentary ever made and has some misinformation regarding whale oil on the Hubble telescope. However, I think Bee learned more US History that year from that documentary than I possibly learned in my entire elementary education.
I continued to regret not continuing The Story of the World, and over the years it has come up frequently in conversations with other homeschoolers. It seems that people either love it or hate it. Many parents seem to use it successfully and swear by it. Other parents hate it. One person (a grandparent who assisted in homeschooling his grandchildren) suggested it would be cruel of him to loan me the audio CD's of the series, as he and his grandchildren had disliked the books so much, both the print and the audio versions.
I put way too much thought into the big decision of whether I should try the books again. I performed an obscene number of Internet searches to read what other homeschool parents had to say. I liked the idea of giving my children such a broad view of history, but it seemed too broad to me. I think that to do The Story of the World successfully, you really need to base your homeschool around history, and that is not something I felt I had the passion to do. I also think that the history of the entire world is too massive and global for my brain, even on a 4-year cycle.
Some children become highly interested in smaller histories, like the Civil War or ancient Egypt or Greece. I would prefer to let my child go in depth on one of those topics if they so chose. Taking a year to study art and/or music history is another option. Focusing on the history of war or weapons or just technology might be another option that might appeal to a child or family.
I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Bauer speak a year ago at the VaHomeschoolers conference. I enjoyed her keynote session so much that I skipped two other sessions I was signed up for that day in order to hear hers instead. I found her to be brilliant, insightful, inspiring, and, to my surprise, very real and funny. If you ever get the chance to hear her speak, I highly recommend that you take advantage of it.
I now consider myself to be a huge fan of Dr. Bauer, but I have given up the idea of using her books and now feel free to find our own way. For first grader Bug, our "social studies" this year has consisted of map activities, Little Passports, and we are now snuggling up in the afternoons to read the "If You Lived..." series. For fifth grader Bee, in addition to field trips he has taken and books he has read on his own, he has really enjoyed John Green's Crash Course videos on Youtube over the past months. This semester, we are also doing a study of bias in history, by reading selections from two very biased and contrasting books. I have bought Bee graphic novels and interactive novels on historical topics, and he happily devours them.
It works for us. The boys are learning, and we are enjoying it. I feel good about what they are learning.
I think Dr. Bauer is amazing, and I think every homeschooler should at least check out one of her history books from the library, to see if it would be a good fit. If not, it is really okay; there are plenty of other great options out there for learning history.
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