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!

Homeschool Curriculum

Our family has homeschooled for over fifteen years and, during that time, we've (who am I kidding *I've*) perused an Amazon warehouse sized amount of materials in search of the perfect curriculum. Teaching several children of different ages proved to be both the challenge and the joy of my life and now that we are in the midst of homeschooling our youngest child through high-school, I can say the joys have outweighed the challenges, one hundred fold. Still, the challenges did exist and one of the major hurdles when we began homeschooling was figuring out how to do it! We understood, mostly, the "why" but, living in a highly regulated state, we wanted to be sure that we did the "what" properly and according to our family's values so that we and the educational authorities that be, were satisfied.
During the process of exploring all of the different methodologies and ideologies of homeschooling, visiting homeschooling conventions, joining co-ops, leaving co-ops, forming and helping to run co-ops and making lifelong friends along the way, one thing has remained constant. The book, The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer. This wonderful book became the dog-eared, page-turned-down, post-it note filled bible that determined the trajectory of our academic years, which, as every homeschooler knows, is twelve months long. From kindergarten to senior year I would run to it as my go-to resource. Have a question about first grade math? Fourth grade science? Why Latin should be in the curriculum? How to teach logic at all stages? What rhetoric consists of? How to conduct science labs in your kitchen? Can we really, no kidding, count field trips?  It is all there. Literally. All there. And if she doesn't tell you *how* to do it, she tells you where to find *out* how to do it.
In case you haven't heard of her, Susan Wise Bauer was homeschooled through to college and her mother, Jesse Wise Bauer, was a public and private school teacher who decided that teaching her own children was the best option for her family. In the bad old 1970's, no less. Jesse is a co-author on this book and has written several other books on grammar and homeschooling as well. Susan Wise Bauer has her PhD in American Studies from William and Mary College. She also has two Master's degrees and has written nine books in the adult history genre, volumes 1-4 of the children's history series The Story of The World and their accompanying activity books, delivered dozens of lectures and speeches at various homeschooling conferences around the country, taught at William and Mary College, runs a publishing press from her house and, oh, runs a farm and B&B. During this illustrious writing career she also homeschooled four children through to college. Her experience and knowledge is vast and her generosity in sharing all of it with the homeschooling community is very much appreciated. We highly recommend this book for homeschoolers at any stage of the experience. We began with it and I know we'll end with it.




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

Not Dead Yet...

For the past couple of years I've been tentatively following the resurgence of the jam band tour life that had its beginnings centered around one of the iconic bands of American musical history. This phenomenon has nebulous beginnings, as does most aspects of hippie culture, (like when, exactly, did Owsley Stanley build that Wall of Sound?) but it seems to have really taken off in the late 1970s and 80s. Fans began following the Grateful Dead around the country, and sometimes the world - Egypt, I'm looking at you - and a culture of Life On Tour gathered steam. Then...catastrophe and death. The death of Jerry Garcia on August 9, 1995, the lead guitarist of the Grateful Dead, brought an entire culture to a collective knee as they grappled with the idea of what life *not* on the road might look like. It wasn't pretty. Tens of thousands of fans contemplated their fate; no more would the smell of grilled cheese and veggie burritos mingle with the sweet smell of pre-gmo weed in the parking lots across America, while the children danced and shook their bones in a local venue for close to four hours to the signature sounds of Garcia's guitar. Shake-down, the village and market that supplied this writer with a t-shirt or two, cold beers, steal your face stickers and rain sticks would fade into a memory of smiling faces and dreadlocked, barefoot dancers looking for that miracle. Within a year or so, Further Fests and RatDog concerts notwithstanding, the Dead culture seemed to fade. The stealies were not in sight on the highways, the waving vans full of grimy twenty-somethings heading to the next show were gone and life in the twentieth century rattled depressingly forward. Never really into the not-sure-where-our-next-meal-is-coming-from kind of touring life, I moved on as well. Finally finished that college degree I'd been whining about, got married and had a few kids, bought a house and settled into full-on momhood, thinking my Dead concerts were behind me forever. And, of course, they were. The Grateful Dead is not a thing anymore. Jerry's death closed that door and none of us would say that anyone who presumes to fill those shoes could really do the job properly. And yet...
Unbeknownst to me, and mores the pity, bands sprang up all over the country to fill the void. Fans *would* have their Grateful Dead music even if it meant that they couldn't have the band itself. Or those particular grilled cheeses for $1, offered up by smiling strangers.  Entire subcultures of bands, and fans who faithfully follow them, morphed into being and spread the music where and when ever they could. For over twenty years one of them has stood at the forefront of that movement. I had the distinct pleasure of hearing them on Saturday night in Albany, New York at The Palace Theater and I was so impressed that it also made me sad, and incredibly angry(!), that I hadn't known about them before now. 
Dark Star Orchestra, comprised of Jeff Matson, Rob Eaton, Skip Vangelas, Lisa Mackey, Rob Barraco, Rob Koritz and Dino English is a band that formed in 1997 to fill in the sad, empty, jam band tour space that the Dead once dominated and has played over 2500 shows in that time period. Yes, Virginia. 2500. Do the math...these are tour-heads who are doing nothing most of the time but...touring. Members come and go, with the exception of Lisa Mackey who has been a constant since 1997. Special guests show up unannounced, including Phil Lesh and Bobby Weir, a continent wide network for fans exists in the digital ether and a party for 3,000 is held where pretty much everyone is thrilled to be able to dance to the music in the company of friends once again. Why had I never heard of this? How could it have been such a secret? The answer lies in fact that *I* had given up on the Dead but the tour-head fans refused to give it up. No way. *They* weren't dead yet and come hell or high-water they were going to boogie to the Dead. 
This is my typically long-winded manner of saying what could have been said with so many fewer words: the Grateful Dead cover band, Dark Star Orchestra gave a stellar performance at The Palace Theater in Albany, NY on Saturday, November 11! I'm sure that their incredible acumen was buoyed by the fact that this was their twentieth anniversary performance and it also helped that they played what could only be thought of as a Grateful Dead greatest hits show, (China Cat Sunflower flowing into I Know You Rider?!? Hello Paris '72!!) but neither of those possibilities change the fact that this is a really, really good band. Each of the members is clearly pulling their weight, loves the music and has serious musician chops. If you closed your eyes you might even think...well, maybe not.  The weed was too skunky. But that doesn't really matter because the concert fulfilled my best expectations and reminded me that it is indeed the repertoire that makes this scene. This is music that will be played for decades to come and DSO is part of the warp and woof of the fabric that Jerry and the boys started weaving in 1965. I'm happy to say that my time off the bus was only temporary.  Here's a link to their tour schedule. I highly encourage you to go. 

www.darkstarorchestra.net