Customer Reviews

The Greenleaf Guide to Ancient Egypt (Greenleaf Guides)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is a hoot. I read a review not long ago by a reader who bought it thinking it was a history text. What it's really meant to do is help you organize your children's study of Egypt utilizing other resources. And this it does very effectively.

The Greenleaf Guide to Ancient Egypt makes use of four primary texts (Elizabeth Payne's The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt, Tony Allan's Time Traveller Book of Pharoahs and Pyramids, Angela Wilkes' Deserts, and David Macaulay's classic book, Pyramid). The Guide helps the parent/teacher assign and coordinate the children's reading, suggests additional resources and describes various hands-on projects. My kids' favorite activity came during Lesson One-The Geography of Egypt, when each of them made a colored salt map of Egypt. The instructions were clear and flexible (trust me--a boon to busy homeschool parents!). The children also enjoyed making a giant backyard shaduf (you'll have to read the book to know what that is).

Last night, as I was re-acquainting myself with these materials, my 12-year-old daughter said, "Dad, can you find any more fun stuff like that for our history?"

What more can a teacher and parent wish for?

As a history teacher and homeschooling mom, I always look for ideas to give my students to enhance thier study of the era or place. This is a wonderful supplement to any study of Egypt for all students. The Christian emphasis provides an added dimension and allows the students to incorporate the study of the Biblical accounts of Egypt into the study. This is highly recommended for a well-rounded approach. The guide also includes wonderful supplemental readings.

We enjoyed using this guide in our home school. There are a few Bible references included, as well as mentions of Bible stories. The "extras" alone would be worth the price of the book: projects, such as a model of a shaduf, the game of Senet; timelines and extensive vocabulary lists, and the bibliography .

I love the approch of this book. My daughter is 10 and we have enjoyed learning about the ancient egypt history. There are lots of activies suggested in the book that truly make the history come alive and sink in.. I would recomend this book very highly.

I started using this for a homeschool study of Egypt for my K and 1st graders, but after a month have put it aside. I love the Christian perspective and how it is incorporated into the discussion, and I think this guide is great to help put together a unit study, but it does require a lot of teacher time for preparation. The guide has suggestions for vocabularly, activities, discussion questions, and other resources. My biggest difficulty is that a main supplemental book, Pharoahs of Ancient Egypt by Payne, is too advanced for my young students. I would read it (I like it!) and paraphrase, but my kids were not interested. And as a read aloud, no way - it's above them. Many of the other suggested resources are very good, but too much of this study relies on Pharoahs.

In short, I would recommend this for a homeschooler of students anywhere grade 4 or up, provided you have time for preparation and time for projects. If you're willing to put in that effort, I'm sure this guide would be great.

The book is very text-like in its approach and presentation. The material seems to be written as a supplement for bible study. It also has a decidedly fundamentalist Christian slant which the authors are not shy about sharing, so be prepared for that. We found the most useful part of the book to be the bibliography - to suggest other books that might be closer to what we're looking for.

The book is very text-like in its approach and presentation. The material seems to be written as a supplement for bible study. It also has a decidedly fundamentalist Christian slant which the authors are not shy about sharing, so be prepared for that. We found the most useful part of the book to be the bibliography - to suggest other books that might be closer to what we're looking for.