Organizing a History Club using Story of the World

I'm late blogging about this.  SURPRISE.

But towards the beginning of the year, I started a new "history club" at our home based on Story of the World Vol 2.  Do you know it took us 18 months to do Vol 1?  But I don't feel bad.   I was pregnant with no. 4 and had a newborn during that time.

The club is small this time.  Just my 4 kids and 5 other girls that are the ages of my oldest two.  Is nine kids still small?  (Some time I'll tell you about the fun club we ran a couple years back based on Kaya from the American Girls Series).

Anyway, I made it extra low-key this time, because the last time I ran a club for the girls it was too big, too much work, and I got burned out really fast.

Here's how it's set up:

Each family is supposed to study 1 chapter per week at home.  We do this for 3 weeks in a row.   Every 4th Tuesday, we get together at my house to do related activities and projects from the book.  I don't do any of the coloring or map work or narratives during group. That all happens at home with the family.  During club, we get right to the hands-on portion of the units.  I try to pick one project from each chapter but it doesn't always work out that way. I try to schedule 30 mins. for each activity with a total of 3-4 activities per meeting.  We meet for 90 minutes.  Two hours would probably be better because I often run out of time, but then it starts to cramp lunch and naps.

So far it works really well for us.  It's not over-taxing for me.  But it's enough variety and social interaction to keep the course interesting for the kids.  And the once-a-month meetings are spaced far enough apart that I don't mind putting my best effort and a little time into making it super fun for the kids.

Here's a picture from our first meeting when we dressed up like Monks.  Each girl chose one of the different Monk professions to act out (teacher, writer, carpenter, doctor).  I don't think this particular activity was in the book. Turned out fun!

Here's the teacher being portrayed in our living room.  We had one of the girls being director and another being camera person.

Here's another day when we dressed like Celtic warriors and then acted out our attack on the Romans.  This was before the face paint. Too bad I don't have a pic WITH face paint.  It was pretty intense.

During the weeks when it's just us studying at home, I pick one activity to do with the kids.  Of course, I make sure it's not one that I've got planned for the club.

Here's an activity we did on our own at home.  We made an oasis from a variety of mediums including pipe cleaners, legos, playmobiles, gram crackers, counting cubes, and clay.

We all very much enjoy this curriculum. It's our favorite class of the week.  I'll try harder to blog about our fun club meetings as well as our family history activities.

And when I get my other pics downloaded, I'll have to show you the Viking Funeral that we had in our turtle pool, complete with wild and crazy flames!!  Too fun.