The Story of The World, Volume I

When my children were little and we had just started homeschooling, we discovered The Story of the World, History for the Classical Child, Volume I: Ancient Times, From the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor by Susan Wise Bauer. This is the first in a series of four books, and is published by Peace Hill Press, a publishing company run by the author. There are 42 chapters beginning with the first nomads and ending with the last Roman Emperor and the book is 334 pages long with appendices. That may seem like a long book for a grammar school aged child but if you use it as your history book for the year, you will find that you can finish it with little trouble. There are maps and illustrations throughout and while the book was written with the grammar school student in mind, I must say that it's pretty educational to read as an adult, as well!
We read it aloud to all three children beginning in kindergarten and, because we were following the trivium method of schooling, they heard or read the stories three times each. I learned things from this book that were definitely not taught in my public grade school back in the day! While this is not a religiously based history book, the birth and death of Jesus Christ is covered in a chapter and, since that event changed the history of the world, even if you are homeschooling from a purely secular standpoint, I don't think you will find it an unnecessary addition. In fact, when I taught this class in a co-op, the children, and their parents, who were not exposed to that particular story were pleased with Bauer's handling of it.
Accompanying these books are activity books which serve as curriculum guides and are filled with activities to accompany each chapter. Included in the activities are maps, review cards, paper dolls, timelines, family trees, ideas for feasts and festivals, clothing and crafts, and a coloring page. Each chapter is given a list of resources for additional reading in both literature and history.
For example: Chapter 21 is on the Medes and the Persians. After reading the chapter in the text book, entitled A New Empire, you would move to the activity book and go over the corresponding review questions with your student, (there are four questions), decide if any of the additional history reading is desired, (there are two suggestions for this chapter; The Persian Empire by Karen Zinert and The Persian Empire: World History Series by Don Nardo) pick a corresponding piece of literature such as The Legend of the Persian Carpet by Tomie de Paola and Claire Ewart, complete the map of the Persian Gulf and answer the questions about it, color the picture of Cyrus the Great and do the craft project of making Peraian Shoe Strings or the Persian ruler's silver plate or Persian puppets. You could then decide if you wanted to also play the Conquer Mesopotamia Game, found in the Student Pages at the back of the book. Listen, you could an entire week to study nothing but the Persian empire!
The materials and resources in these books really feel like you can cover all of the historical and literary ground you need for the topic you are studying and one of the books can fulfill your history requirements for the academic year.







Disclaimer: SheilaAnn Books and Music is an Amazon Affiliated business. Thank you for your business!