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History

The story of mankind, history, integrates the entire curriculum. Our text is Susan Wise Bauer's The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child. The unifying themes for grades 1-4 are the Ancient World, the Middle Ages, Early Modern and Late Modern Times, respectively. In grades 5-8, the students cycle through these time periods again. Reading, writing, science, art and music are integrated and organized around the outline provided by history.

For instance, when studying the Ancients, a first grade student may hear stories from Ancient Assyria and India; read, listen to and write sentences from tales taken from Ancient Greek mythologies and literature; play act, draw and sculpt from stories taken from the Ancient Rome and China; and build architectural models based on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

As the students progress into the upper elementary grades, the study of history shifts from learning the facts about a set of stories to understanding the story of the world as one long, sequential and interconnected account of cause and effect.