The Story of the World, Activity book two, The Middle Ages: From the fall of Rome to the rise of the Renaissance [Paperback]

Susan Wise Bauer (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 9 and up

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! Colro a picture of a Viking warrior, make an edible oasis, create a Moorish ruler's turban and Aztec jewelry and more. Designed to turn the accompanying book The Story of the World: Volume 2: The Middle Ages into a complete history program, this Activity Book provides you with comprehension questions and answers, sample narrations, maps and geography activities, coloring pages, lists of additional readings in history and literature, and plenty of simple, hands-on activities&151;all designed for grades 1-4.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Susan Wise Bauer is a novelist and educator. With her mother, Hessie Wise, she co-authored The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home, a book which has rapidly become an educational standard. Susan teaches at The College of William and Mary. She lives in Virginia.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Peace Hill Press (July 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971412944
• ISBN-13: 978-0971412941
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #606,485 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We love SOTW!, October 16, 2004

By 

Gowie "gowie" (CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Story of the World, Activity book two, The Middle Ages: From the fall of Rome to the rise of the Renaissance (Paperback)

This is our second year using Story of the World as our history spine for my K and 4th grader. The activity guide is similar to Vol. 1, although the difficulty level of work has increased slightly. This guide is written for 2-5th graders.

As in SOTW 1, this activity guide has review questions, sample narrations, additional reading suggestions, map work and hands on activities, with review cards every four chapters. What I love best about SOTW is that I can read the main story to my children and use this activity guide to pick and choose what *we* want to do with our history lesson. They provide the base, yet I have the flexibility to do what works best within our school. If we are interested in a subject, we can do more activities, or we can skip most and move on. I take the suggested reading lists to the library, where I can either choose from what's on hand, or I can find additional books on the same subject. I appreciate Susan Wise Bauer's notations on grade level appropriateness for the books, so I can know ahead of time if it's something my 10 yo can read on her own, or if it's something I'll be reading from to both of my kids.

I generally ask review questions of both my children, then my 10 yo does the written narration and map work. Both kids do the coloring pages, and my younger child listens to some of our additional reading. Permission is given in the book to make copies of pages for a second child within your own family.

This book is taking us longer than a year to complete, but that's because we are having a lot of fun with it. I am enjoying history as much as the kids. The activity guide is a marvelous addition to the base book, and I wouldn't want to do history in any other way.

As commented in reviews of the Vol. 1 activity book, there are more typographical errors than one would expect. This is unfortunate, but I appreciate the effort made to get these books out as quickly as possible.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Like the copy pages, January 9, 2007

By 

Deborah L. Mcnary "kid reader" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Story of the World, Activity book two, The Middle Ages: From the fall of Rome to the rise of the Renaissance (Paperback)

I love the copy pages and maps in this book. Also, the suggested reading lists are very helpful as are the chapter questions and review. However, I find about 70% of the activities are too complicated for a child to complete, maybe even for an adult to complete. Even if you want to do the activities you need much planning time to gather supplies. Otherwise it's an excellent buy.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great resource, July 21, 2006

By 

apoem "apoem" (Bosque Farms, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: The Story of the World, Activity book two, The Middle Ages: From the fall of Rome to the rise of the Renaissance (Paperback)

First the positive
Each book in this series is a complete introduction to history within a certain time frame, for example this one is about the Middle Ages. You will have to add your own history book to go along with this, this is just the lesson plan/idea book. (Usorne History of the World would be one example of the type of history book you might buy).

This book has a lot of ideas and activities in it all relating to the Middle Ages. There is cooking recipes, craft ideas, coloring pages, and so on. It is very comprehensive.

The one Negative Comment. It is very big and very thick. A large part of this is because it gets into the very basic ideas that most people do not need help remembering. That is, it provides a list of questions for each subject and page read. The questions are very basic and many of them you could think of yourself. However, this would be helpful for a first time home school mother who is not sure where to start.

Well worth the money. Enjoy.