Product Description

This comprehensive activity book and curriculum guide contains all you need to make history come alive for your child!
Don't just read about history—experience it! Color a picture of a Minoan bull-jumper, make a model of the Nile River, create Roman armor and Celtic jewelry and more. Designed to turn the accompanying book The Story of the World, Volume 1: Ancient Times into a complete history program, this Activity Book provides you with comprehension questions and answers, coloring pages, lists of additional readings in history and literature, and plenty of simple, hands-on activities—all designed for grades 1-4.
.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55405 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781933339054
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
As a craft challenged mom, I appreciate the thorough directions, the variety offered, and the lists of literature suggestions. -- Diane Wheeler, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine

No matter what your child's interests, these activities will help them experience and retain parts of ancient history. -- Cafi Cohen, author of Homeschooling the Teen Years

This is a basic history resource from which you can build a complete study for the early grades. -- Cathy Duffy, author of The Christian Home Educator's Manual; The Elementary Grades

About the Author
Susan Wise Bauer is the best-selling author of the Story of the World series for elementary students, author of The Well-Educated Mind, The History of the Ancient World and The History of the Medieval World, and the co-author of The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home. She is a faculty member in English at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, where she teaches writing and literature.

Customer Reviews

Worth its weight in gold.
The Story of the World: Activity Book One: Ancient Times is an amazing resource. Perfectly matched with The Story of the World text, it is an invaluable resource. This book should be required for every elementary school child.
The book starts with a handy pronunciation guide, which is a great help with the many ancient names encountered. It ends with a huge section of student pages, which include maps of the ancient world, coloring pages (many taken from ancient art/architecture), and review cards. Found in between these 2 sections is the comprehensive teaching guide.

The teaching guide has a wealth of information, for every section. The reading is cross-referenced with Usborne and Kingfisher history encyclopedias. Review questions and sample narrations are provided. Lists of optional, supplemental, age-appropriate reading materials are included, as well. In many sections, there are recipes appropriate to the geographical area and/or time period being studied.

Even with all of the above, Ms. Bauer did not stop. Every chapter has a wealth of hands-on activities and projects, correlated to the subject matter. These activities are designed to be done with materials that most people already have in their homes. There are always several activies included, ranging from the simple to the complex. For example, the chapter on The Old Kingdom in Egypt includes a project to make a Lego step pyramid, and instructions on how to mummify a chicken.

This is by far the most comprehensive and well-written history activity guide that I have ever used. Everything that I needed was included. After using this in kindergarten, my son has a deeper understanding of ancient history than many of the adults that I know. I used several of the projects with my teenage daughter as well, and she thoroughly enjoyed them. I would highly recommend this book for every family with children.

Great Resource for Grammar Stage History!
This activity guide has many resources which make it a worthwhile purchase. The book lists for each chapter of Story of the World made it easy for me to go online with my library and reserve books ahead of time which would enrich our lessons. The blackline maps for each chapter helped my kids to identify the geographical regions where the historical events took place. The guide includes numerous suggestions for hands-on projects that help to bring history alive for young children. If one project didn't appeal to me or fit with my schedule, another one would. My 5 year old and 7 year old boys enjoyed making a model of the Nile River and flooding its banks, causing the grass seed we planted to sprout: a fun simulation of the real yearly event. The Roman aqueduct model we made recently was a hit! I appreciated not having to come up with project ideas on my own. My boys began to come up with some project ideas of their own after doing several of the guide projects.

The guide offers a coloring page for each chapter, some of which we used. Others we skipped because my kids preferred to draw their own pictures. Some I skipped, because as a Christian, I didn't particularly want to dwell on depictions of other gods. Some of the coloring pages were well-drawn; others seemed amateurish. I did like having the option of a coloring page.

This activity guide greatly ehanced our enjoyment of the book The Story of the World and our study of the ancients this past year. I highly recommend it!

Good resources, bad activities
I am disappointed to see many people posting negative reviews simply because the curriculum is not in line with their religious beliefs. The Well-Trained Mind specifically states it is the parent's job to insert religious history where appropriate, which is what I did with religious coloring book pages and activities inserted into where the Prophets would have fallen chronologically. However, I agree with some of the reviewers who have stated that the book suffers from other drawbacks:

1) The book is far too heavy on coloring pages, many of which are sloppily drawn. Some of them look like a child traced a photograph of a particular artifact in pencil, then drew over the pencil tracing sloppily in felt marker and that was given to us as a coloring page. I purchased some Bellerophon coloring books for better and more interesting examples and found that at least one of the coloring pages looked like it had been traced out of the coloring book! Aside from the quality of the coloring pages, my children got bored with coloring all the time. It was interesting in the beginning, but it quickly became tedious and un-interesting. My children prefer more involved and intellectual activities than just coloring something. Because of this reason alone I will probably not buy the second volume. I suspect this has something to do with the authors' belief that children in the "grammar stage" are only in need/want of rote memorization and imitation and need/want/are capable of little if any creative or analytical activity. I personally found this to be completely untrue and my children's dissatisfaction with the activity book is a case in point.

2) The activities are mostly "art projects" of one kind or another and often wasteful "busy-work" as others have mentioned. Not all of them are well-explained or well-thought-out. For example, building a pyramid out of sand bricks sounds great until you discover that the structure collapses as it dries. I'm also not a big fan of activites that involve buying supplies just to waste them or to turn them into "toys" or "props" that will be in the garbage can at the end of the day or week.

Good point:

The high point of this book is that there are extensive further reading and activity suggestions for each period in time that are not included in the sections in the Well-Trained Mind. The WTM book does list a small number of books and activities in the end of each chapter but this book lists a LOT more and this is the most valuable aspect of the book.