Story of the World  4.6/5 (11)

Comment: The best world history we've used on our 6 years of schooling! Highly recommend!

Comment: We do not use vol 1, prefer MOH for that era. But have used vol 2 and 3 and plan to use 4 next year. Love the activity books, recommend digital file over book to copy for multiple children. LOVE LOVE LOVE Jim Weiss audio

Comment: We have so far used the first volume and the beginning of the second. We use the audio books with the text. We had the activity book for the first volume and although we liked it we found it wasn't needed for my science intensive kid. We like that the stories are interesting and it included all parts of the world; all continents and cultures in a well balanced way. We will continue to use the series as our world history spine.

Comment: We have been using this program for many years. We sometimes read the book but usually listen to the audio c.d's. They have increased my son's knowledge and now he loves history. He listens to them for fun and always listens to a few stories before bedtime!

Comment: Wonderful curriculum. Lessons laid out for you. Reading too dry for child's interest. Loved the workbook activities.

Comment: I chose this history series because we could start any of four different places (my son has an interest in Rome, Richard the Lion Hearted and Robin Hood) so we started with Volume 2, and it has the cds. My son learns better through auditory than reading, and we listen to these in the car. He is in Gr 4, 10 yrs old, and will actually ask to stay in the car to continue hearing a chapter.

We got the cds from the library, and the textbook second hand, so it was economical. I only bought the test booklet. We listen to the cds over and over in the car, then I read aloud one book chapter and he does the test, which is a combo of fill in the answer, multiple choice, and true or false, as well as write a paragraph at the end. This works very well for us, and he has succeeded so well it has given him a lot of confidence.

It is incredible how much retention he has, after listening to the cds multiple times.

I also appreciate that it integrates literature (Beowolf, Shakespeare, myths) and touches every continent.

Comment: We used this as one of the main spines in the History Odyssey Program. It is a pretty good read aloud. Would definitely add other books (living books as another reviewer mentioned).

Comment: My kids really enjoyed volumes 2 and 3, but by the time we reached volume 4, I was pretty frustrated by how much the book bounced around the world and didn't give enough dates for us to keep everything straight. The writing is engaging, the material important, but I felt it could have been organized differently. Also, my kids did not like filling in the outlines used in the volume 4 activity book. They enjoyed the maps though!

Comment: We have been using Story of the World Volume 1 this year. I love the style of the writing (very engaging, and not textbook like), the suggested activities, the inclusions of fictional stories and myths, and the way it shows the interactions between various cultures.

However, I do wish it had more illustrations. I have a kinestetic, visual learner with a short attention span for listening to text. They do have coloring pages with each chapter, but just one, and my son isn't a colorer, so, to keep his attention I've had to get pictures from other sources (library books, internet) to show him during the reading, intersperse the reading with a lot of questions, break it up into smaller sections, or give him an activity to do while I read.

My other problem with Story of the World is there are historical errors...after I caught a few I went searching, and while it's often small things, there's enough that you might want to do a search yourself and take a pencil to your book to fix them.