Customer Reviews

The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child, Activity Book 2: The Middle Ages: From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of the Renaissance

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

We now love this series! I came across it in the library, but just reading it to my kids - they hated it! Then we got the supplemental activity book and it now is our favorite subject! Both books together really bring history alive. We have mumified a chicken, recreated a dinosaur dig, made a Greek vase, and so much more! My kids are now learning not only about history - but how to love history as well!!!

I've been reading this book for a couple of months to my 3rd grader for our homeschool and if you ask him today what his favorite subject is, he'll quickly say history! I also recommend using the activity book and doing the extra recommended reading at least one day a week. A lot of the recommended reading books can easily be found at your public library. My other children used different books and text for history and they thought it was boring. This books blows them all away. Even my high schoolers will read a few sections to supplement their study of the same time period on occasion.

My kids love the stories in this book. They ask me to read it to them, and sometimes even ask me to re-read stories from previous chapters. I like that my kids are enthusiastic about learning about history. And i love the activity book for this too. Together it is the perfect way for my kids to learn about history.

I bought this book to use as part of our homeschool curriculum, and it is perhaps the best money I've ever spent on any curriculum product. I used to hate history when I was in elementary school, so I wanted our study of the subject to be dynamic and really bring the stories and lives of those long-ago people to life, and this series makes that goal particularly easy. The text is written for children, and it is so much better than those dry textbooks that we grew up having to slog through! In addition, I am using the correlated Activity Book, which has review questions, some book titles for further reading, coloring pages, mapwork, and all sorts of creative activities that can help reinforce concepts and add richness to your program of study. Even though the text is written for children, I've been learning a lot of things that I didn't know as we read through the book. It makes me want to get on the internet or go to the library and find out more. Now we save History for the end of the day, and it's a treat to begin and often doesn't end until dinner time. That being said, we could easily cover the subject in about 30 minutes, 3 times a week using this text. Most of our time is spent on extra reading, activities, projects, and games. This program might be a bit difficult for a very young learner to understand (say K or 1st grade) but for my 8-year-old bookworm, it's just right.

The first book in the series covers Sumeria through I think the birth of Christ or about there. Lots and lots of this empire conquering that empire with objective narration of warfare, slavery and massacres etc. This book was the same until mohammed. Two chapters (at least) devoted to him and hardly any conquering or slave taking or killing. His tale of "visions and visitations" are treated as fact. However most of the actual facts are left out or glossed over in a way that no other conquest in the series is. I have done a lot of research on Islam and was able to fill in the blanks appropriate to a 7 year old's understanding but it made me wonder what else they got wrong that I don't know about. I am however continuing with the third book and am happy so far. I love that it is chronological, giving the overall march of civilization and helping to keep American history in context and on a timeline with other events. I will be supplementing a lot on American history as it gets short shrift. I am not Catholic so I don't have the sensibilities that might pick out "blatant anti-catholicism" that another reviewer found, but I have been racking my brain to remember to what he might be referring and can come up with nothing.

The Story of the World books have been some of the best we've come across! My boys can not wait for history (me too!). I love how well written and engaging the stories are. The kids learn geography as well with the map work. Highly recommend! We enjoy it so much that we have even read together in the evening just because its so interesting.

My son has begged for me to read Story of the World to him almost every day for the past 2 years. We are just beginning Book 3. We have read through the first and second volumes twice and completed both activity books. My son is not homeschooled, but schools don't teach history like they used to. SOTW fills in those gaps that school leaves out. The stories are absolutely fascinating! It has been a great education for both me and my son, and gives us something that we both love to do together (since I'm not into lego or cars!). We also cook food from the country and era that we are reading about, which adds another dimension to "our" education.

I found this series at the local library and my 2 boys (10 and 7) love this one. I like that it flows chronologically and history is making more sense for me even. The activities are very fun that go along with this and it works great for kids in different grades as it is designed to be gone through 2x in their first 8 grades. The audio is great as I frequently lose my voice and the narrator has a nice voice. This series is meant to take a chapter a week and really explore that time period with other books to read. I don't know how book 1 handles the beginning but this set remains very neutral on religion and covers the rise of Islam and other religions.

This is a great series suggested by the WTM. I home school my children ages 7 and 8 and they work on this together. They love the stories and act them out as well as tell friends about them.
I bought this for the classical education recommendation but keep using it because the kids love it!

This workbook offers a huge selection of ideas for each chapter and provides color pages/maps/games. I love this book.