Customer Reviews

The Story of the World Activity Book Four: The Modern Age: From Victoria's Empire to the End of the USSR

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

 

 

The prior three activity books have been a great addition to our homeschooling, but this activity book vol 4 was a huge dissapointment. It contains mostly maps. We get plenty of maps in the reading book. This looks to be more appropriate for older grades. It is not as useful for the younger grades which was the benefit of her other books, they were great for all levels. Not this one.

I have never written a review before, but felt compelled to for this book. We are in our 4th year of using Story of the World and have always loved it. The activity book to volume 4 is a huge disappointment to me because of the lack of reading list suggestions for the lower grades. My favorite thing about Story of the World is that I have been able to easily present it to a variety of grade levels (I currently teach 6th, 4th and 2nd and K). The past activity books have allowed me to get books at each child's level (without having to go search them out myself). They have also provided pictures and coloring activities for the younger students, all of which allowed me to easily tailor the chapter's work to each child. This activity book will be very nice for my older children, but will leave me doing extra work for my younger ones (a prospect I am not looking forward to). My expectations were that this activity book would provide the same type of materials and activities as the first three. This book falls far of meeting my expectations. I am dissappointed that the authors decided to make what I see as a fundamental change in this last book of the series.

This activity book looks to be exactly right for my son who will be in fourth grade and nine -years-old. He is excited about switching from summaries to the outlines and we all love the maps. You just can't have too many maps in a book, at least in this house you can't.

I can see that if you have not been following the Well Trained Mind suggestions in having your child write detailed 6-10 sentence summaries, then the writing might be overwhelming, but I think it is the perfect next step for those of us who have. Compared to the suggested summaries for the third volume of the series, I was pleased that the emphasis for Volume Four seems to be on organization of writing rather than volume.

OK the students are older so they need a little more writing, but that is all this work book is! Boring. Bauer simply has the students write outlines of the chapters. I can make outlines to be written from, which is all you get in this hefty book... and maps- lots of maps. The creative factor is what I want in a work book; it's what I pay for and it isn't there in this one.

It is the fourth in Bauer's history series and I think she ran out of steam. It's too bad; her earlier work books are creative. My kids with the previous work books said, "Yay! History!" Now they say, "Is it another outline?" You could save the money and just make your students outline the entire history book.

I didn't think I'd be as happy with this book as I was with Vols. 2&3, but even though the reading lists aren't as extensive, I'm thrilled with the timeline cards & PRONUNCIATION GUIDE! If they were in the other volumes, I missed them. It's such a great idea to have the pronunciation guide when you read aloud! My DD9 will learn how to relate historical events so much better using the timeline cards as well. Can't WAIT to get going!

This book has been very helpful in planning a history curriculum. Other reviewers are correct the ditto portion you can copy is mainly maps. It is also a bit weaker than the other books in this group. However, despite those two complaints, this is a very useful book when planning curriculum for a homeschool student. There are discussion topics, craft ideas and more.

History is our favorite subject, thanks to Story of the World Volumes 1-3. The activities were pitched just right for our 1-4 graders, and we are planning to do the entire series again after finishing Book 4. However, unlike the first three volumes, the activity book for Vol. 4 was pitched for students somewhere in 8th to 10th grade. It was not an incremental step up from the other three levels, but a huge leap forward, maybe 6 grade levels or so. It was not at all accessible, fun, or even adaptable for lower grades, and we were so frustrated we quit the book in Chapter 14. I'd strongly encourage the editors and authors to remake this book to be accessible - as are the other three - for younger students.

To everyone who is whining that this book is not geared for younger children: IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FOR YOUNGER KIDS! Ms. Bauer clearly spells out her philosophy that history should be taught in the order that events occur. This book offers lots of literature suggestions for the slightly older student as well as the opportunity to begin practicing outlining as a study technique. As with all the previous activity guides this includes guided response questions for comprehension assessment. For those who want a "unit studies" approach that they can use for multiple grade levels at once, please look elswewhere. This subject matter does not work well with that approach.

It is a bit different from Vol.I-III, but we like the way Susan Wise-Bauer narrates history. It is a great way to learn and enrich ones curriculum.

These are short stories that can be read to younger children or read by older ones with interesting facts about history. Seems to be well researched.