But before you think otherwise, the only reason we were able to cover this span of history in a single summer was because of the Western Civilization Calendar Quest Study (better known in our home just as Calendar Quest) by Brimwood Press.
And lest you think we were buried in books all summer long, this program is supposed to take about 4 weeks. Overachievers that we’ve been, it took us about 16 weeks. That averages out to about one lesson per week. And that’s okay because you can space the 16 lessons out however you’d like!
I wrote a previous review of this program back in May after we first started, so I will mention just a few tidbits from that review here. If you’d like to know more, please visit History through the Summer… and Beyond.
What is the Calendar Quest Western Civilization Study?
It’s a ancient-to-modern world history curriculum that includes a study of the following historical periods…
- Sumer rules Mesopotamia
- Old Kingdom Egypt
- Babylon rules Mesopotamia
- Ancient Israel
- Classical Greece
- Ptolemaic Dynasty
- Roman Republic
- Roman Empire
- Roman Decline & Rise of the Byzantine Empire
- Early Medieval
- Carolingian Renaissance
- Late Medieval
- Italian Renaissance
- Northern European Renaissance
- Reformation
- Reason & Revolution
- Early America
- Nineteenth Century America, and
- The Twentieth Century…
…using the following resources:
- a combined open-and-go Student/Teacher Manual called What Every Child Needs to Know about Western Civilization,
- a huge 11″x17″ coloring book called Color the Western World (which includes history summaries for each civilization that made contributions to western civilization as it exists today),
- maps for each of those civilizations,
- timeline cards (with a person of interest from each civilization),
- the literature companion Calendar Quest,
- and history stickers.
I loved the variety of activities in this program – the timeline cards, the stickers, the book, the maps! It made for a great overview of the past 5,000 years. I’ll never look at a calendar the same way again!
This study helped me (a person whose natural academic strengths do not include history and geography) to connect our history memory work chronologically while gaining an understanding of how Western Civilization came to exist as it is today. Although our oldest son (a person whose natural academic strengths DO include history and geography) and I engaged in some enlightening “dialectic discussions” as we made many connections to things we’ve memorized in the past, the other two simply enjoyed coloring maps and pictures, sticking stickers on the cards, and reciting memory work as certain people and places came up in our reading. The emphasis on memory work and review made it an engaging program for them as well!
If you are looking for a concise history program – one that will help connect ancient history to the middle ages to modern America – or if you are looking for a broad overview of world history before delving into more involved history studies, this program is a great one to consider! Visit Brimwood Press for more details on each of these products, to download free samples, or to purchase the Western Civilization Study set. For more details about our experience with this study, click here.
Free Download Samples:
Sample Lesson of Hats and History and the History stickers.
Sample Additional Activities
Sample Maps for each lesson