Schedule for The World's Story by Elizabeth O'Neill

A very brief post that might help some of the Catholic users of Ambleside Online.

We LOVE the Synge and Hillyer books, but both have some issues that need explaining. In fact, I have a great sadness over the Synge books in particular, which our family LOVED until we got to the reformation portions.... then we knew we had to stop using them. That being said, I'm sure many families could simply read them and discuss, but in our family, it wasn't an option.

My husband feels strongly that especially in the young, formative years  I should use Catholic history books, because they tend to be more honest on BOTH sides of the main issues (Schism, Reformation, etc.) and to have a more Christ- centered (Vs people-centered) view of History. As we know, though, quality Catholic history texts are hard to come by. For the first two years this was a real conundrum for me.

However, I recently participated in editing a new edition of the book The World's Story by Elizabeth O'Neill. It's excellent, beautifully bound, very well-written and perfectly Catholic--- fair and balanced. I highly recommend it for world history and it is in fact scheduled for around fifth grade on Mater Amabilis. (Can't find my camera charger or I'd take some pictures to go with this post.)

Anyways, I scheduled it into the first five years of AO to replace the other history books (Synge or Hillyer's histories) as best as I could. My Year 1 this year has missed his chance to hear it and my Year 2 has missed a lot of it, since it just came out, but I will be using it for our family from next year onwards and wish I would have known about it before!

The reading is heavy in Y1 (two sections per week) but AO says on the website that it purposely left the schedule light to add in some history, so that should be fine.  The sections are also very short so two sections could make up one reading time.

Because The World's Story is set up both like a world history AND a bit like a world geography in some places, the readings don't always correlate perfectly, and in some years hardly at all, but I am quite sure that Charlotte Mason would have approved nevertheless, as it gives a complete, fair, and balanced survey of world history and the child will be able to make his/ her own connections as they read the rest of the scheduled books on AO.

So, without further ado, here is a schedule for using it with years 1-5. As with AO's schedules, one asterisk denotes Term 1, two for Term 2, and three for Term 3. In Year one, there are 23 readings per term (about 2 each week), but as I said, the readings are short and could be done in one sitting. The reading level is advanced--- this is a middle school text-- but that should be no problem for children who are using Ambleside as is.

YEAR ONE
*Chapter I-VI
** Chapter VII-XII
*** Chapter XIII-XX

(after Year One the readings go down to just one every other week or so, approximately 7 per term.)

YEAR TWO
*Chapter XXI- Chapter XXIII The Great St Bernard
**Chapter XXIII - Chapter XXV
***Chapter XXV- The Great Poet Dante to XXVII Joan of Arc

YEAR THREE
*Chapter XVIII - Chapter XXXI The Great Kings
** Chapter XXXI The Reformation in England - Chapter XXXIV
*** Chapter XXXIV The Great Civil War in England - Chapter  XXXVII Peter the Great

YEAR FOUR
* Chapter XXXVIII- Chapter XL
** Chapter XL The First Colonist in Canada- Chapter XLI The End of Slavery
*** Chapter XLII - XLIII the Execution of the King

YEAR FIVE
* Chapter XLIV- Chapter XLV Florence Nightingale
** Chapter XLV The Making of Italy- Chapter XLVI The Explorers
*** Chapter XLVI Mungo Park- Chapter XLVIII Our World Today