I also didn’t care for Voskamp’s Child’s Geography of the Holy Land and I dropped it after a few weeks. The kids never complained or anything but I didn’t like it. It didn’t “take me there” as a living book does. But I am not sure that is the only reason I didn’t like it.
We made our way through Module 2 and 3 but it they just didn’t seem to have the same “excitment” as Module 1 or Module 4 that we are in this year. Last year with Mod. 3 I also added in the study of other ancient cultures such as China, Japan, and South America. I didn’t want to spend a whole year on Rome. This year however, we are in Module 4 and I love it! We are going through the free kindle version of Famous Men of the Middle Ages and all my kids are liking it. So far anyway. We look forward to history/bible/geography every day. Of course one of my most favorite time periods is of the vikings and knights.
We are going to be starting Module 2 soon, so I am going to keep this thread in mind. I’m now wondering if I should use the books recommended in the module or try others as mentioned here. I have purchased everything I need from the module, so we will probably try it and be prepared to change some of our resources if need be.
I have also seen the Therus book in Queens hs. There is one in Rome by the same author. For youngers we read The Magic Treehouse Research Guide to Ancient Greece and the Olympics. We do not read the fiction books due to the magic. We had a coloring book on Ancient Greece too. We really liked the Trojan Horse beginning reader too.
I’m surprised at the response to the Explore the Holy Land book! My girls, 7 and 8, love it! I just make sure I am excited about it, and they seem to be too. I read it out loud to them, and I sum up a few paragraphs when it gets too long. They don’t always like the reading part, but they listen, and then they love the activities! I had them make their own travel log, where they put drawings of the flags, pictures, narrations, and map work in them. They decorated the front with stickers and drawings. We take two weeks for one chapter. One day a week. I make sure we always do some activity after reading; if we only did reading they would not like it nearly as much.
I was also going to say that we read a lot of the books on the Heritage History site for this time period. Very good books in the public domain and free to read online!
We’ve had the same probles with this unit (though I’ve taught Greece history before and don’t really like it). I also use Truthquest Guides with The Story of the Greeks. I wasn’t thrilled with that either. My favorite study of Ancient Greece has been Learning Adventures A World of Adventures (www.learning-adventures.org). She compared/contrasted the false Gods to the One True God. That was fantastic! That made it tolerable to me. The gods were a small part of the whole unit – though definately something needed to be touched on. Most of the unit focused on Greek history and different aspects of their art. All that said, that’s what we’ve gone back to. I hope to pick up SCM in Mod. 3
We’re enjoying Module 2, but we’ve tweaked it so that we did Mod 1 history Q1, are in Mod 2 history Q2, and will do Mod 3 history in Q3 & Q4. My children LOVED ancient Egypt and now they’re totally into ancient Greece, especially my 8 1/2 year old. Maybe it’s because we study it more than once/week? We do Bible everyday using our church’s Children Desiring God materials and Fighter verses. To line the Bible up with ancient history we listen to The Mystery of History Volume 1 in the minivan.
For geography, we do that once/week, and I chose to do Voskamp’s book. I can’t say that I love it, but we have learned quite a bit about Turkey & Israel so far.
I don’t have any additional alternatives to add (except for those below though they are mostly myths)–just that we have had a successful year so far tweaking the schedule this way. Next year we will do Mod 4 as written since it goes to history 4 days/week.
As far as learning about ancient Greece, I will say that I really enjoyed listening to the following on Librivox in my own time:
Heroes, or Greek Fairy Tales for My Children by Charles Kingsley
Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Also, in iTunes University, you can listen/watch a professor from Yale lecture on Ancient Greek History. I find it fascinating, but it could just be me.
Just wondering about those revisions?? Will they be made any time soon?? No rush, of course…we will be in Mod. 2’s time period next year, so I was just wondering.
Just wanted to say we are thoroughly enjoying Mod. 2. We have only done the geography book a little, just because of time and five kids, but when we have done it they really have enjoyed it and learned a lot.
I highly recommend adding in the book God King to this study. We just finished it and it was so perfect for the time of Hezikiah. Really made things come alive for my kiddos.
We also loved the books God King and Hittite Warrior — definitely recommend. I also wanted to add that we’re using the Famous Men of the Middle Ages book and really enjoying it. I wasn’t too excited about the Greek one either, but I hope that people won’t skip all of the Famous Men books because of that one.
I read the book “The Story of Greece” and loved it. It is great (easy to read!) conprehensive history of Ancient Greece. I am now using that as my spine, and just went through the Famous Men of Greece and tacked those onto the appropriate part of The Story of Greece. I like both books and didn’t want to skip them.
Honestly, my biggest problem with the Famous Men was that I didn’t know how they tied into each other, and so I felt like I was missing something. After I started The Story of Greece, I was like “oh, that’s who he was – I get it now!”
We are now loving this study! I am planning to write a blog post this weekend to share our plans. I’ll post the link when I do!