8/20/2015

Vikings: Take 1

Since we're spending most of August looking at the Vikings, as referenced in my last post, we picked up a few books at our library to aid our study.   Here they are in no particular order.



   

First Facts About the Vikings

I really like the way this one is lad out.  Each spread starts with a stated fact at the top and then goes on to "prove" the veracity.  The illustrations are decent.  They do not shy away from some of the more violent tendencies, and blood and death are depicted. I like that it has a glossary in the back.

  
Viking Times (If You Were There)
We glanced at this one, and the kids enjoyed paging through it.  It was good, but not nearly as fun as the others. The one we borrowed from our library had a timeline and a fold out game board in it too. It has a lot of information laid out by topic.  It was an easy one to read a few pages at a time.


  
 Your Life as an Explorer on a Viking Ship

This was a really fun story. It's told as if you were the kid in the book, portraying a viking in a school play. It's full of facts presented in an engaging way.  I think this was my favorite of all of them.

   
The Real Vikings : Craftsmen, Traders, and Fearsome Raiders

We really didn't do too much with this one.  I think we all fell into the "judging a book by it's cover" trap.  It just wasn't as fun looking as the others. I really think we would have learned a lot by reading it. It is more of a book to read than the others.  Lots more words in paragraphs, and fewer illustrations and photos.

   
Viking (DK Eyewitness Books)

This one has a clipart CD that came with it. That's a fun little extra, but I'll be honest and tell you I didn't look at it.  Very informative, the kids loved to look at all the pictures in this one. It has lots of pictures of artifacts. It feels more like a Viking encyclopedia than anything else.



 
 This was our other favorite.  It's such a fun book. It's not quite a story, but not quite straight facts. Each two page spread is full of one aspect or another of Viking life.  Definitely kid-friendly, but also doesn't shy away from some of the less pretty aspects of the culture.  We'll look for more books in this series as we move forward! 


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8/17/2015

Leif the Lucky

We're back in the swing of things school-wise here. We've got two weeks under our belts and I thought I'd share a little bit of what we're reading.  This year for history we're studying American History. I decided to use a "living books" approach and settled on Beautiful Feet Books "Early American History" as a spine.

We're spending just about the whole month of August looking at the Vikings. We're slowly making our way through Leif The Lucky by Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire.  We're really enjoying it.  It's not a short book, we're breaking it up into chunks and reading a few pages at a time, but it is well written, and the pictures are phenomenal.  We love to look at them.
   
Picture is a link

This is a book I think we'll come back to again and again. 



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