Home School Product Reviews

We have loved The Story of the World history books. I love the idea of studying history chronologically around the world. It makes so much more sense doing it this way. While the material is not presented as HISstory, I don’t have any problem adding this myself. In the early years, we loved the activities, especially the recipes and feast ideas. We also love the recommended reading lists, especially for the living books. We are now in the 4th book in the series, The Modern Age. Actually, Volume 4 packs so much history into it that we split it up into two years. In this book, outlines and writing from outlines are introduced. Sometimes, instead of writing from the outlines, we give ’speeches’ from them. My children have loved the mapwork in all the books. As a military family, we have had lots of opportunities to see the places we have learned about. My children LOVE history, and I think The Story of the World has had a lot to do with their love of history.

The Mystery of History Volume III

We have used this series from Mystery of History Vol 1 through Mystery of HistoryVol 3 and love the content. I love being able to teach my girls history, not only with a godly perspective, but also chronologically. I love the author’s efforts to show us how each item studied was part of God’s plan and how each person was prepared and used by God. I also love that she has laid out all the plans for extra activities, extra reading, and also has maps and timelines to make history even more tangible. I do like the format of Vol 1 and 2 better than 3, though. The 3-ring binder was much easier for me to use in the earlier volumes. The newer hardcover book isn’t as easy for us as we move about our church and community or even as we write summaries at the computer. (Timberdoodle doesn’t have anything to do with that, though, that was the publisher’s choice.) Overall, I really love it and can’t wait to see Vol 4!

Theresa

Irvine, CA

Browse the entire Bright Ideas Press line.

Stories From History - Set of 11 Graphic Novels

We had the opportunity to review a set of 11 historical graphic novels from Timberdoodle over the last couple weeks.  When I opened the box, both boys (ages 7 & 9) were eager to check them out. Colin (9yo) immediately sat down with “The Discovery of T. Rex” and devoured the book.  Nate (7yo) has been interested in Leonardo DaVinci for a long time, so that was the first one he grabbed.

These graphic novels are well-drawn and full of interesting information. My boys enjoy graphic novels, but I often struggle finding ones that are appropriate. I like that these can be incorporated into our lessons, as well as provide them with reading material that interests them.  Nate prefers reading non-fiction, so these are even more up his alley!

Colin has been learning about early colonial times, so the book about Christopher Columbus dovetailed nicely into our lessons.  While these books sit on our homeschooling shelves, I know they will be pulled down and read outside of lessons as well.

The books are geared for 8 – 14 year olds (3rd – 8th grade), and Colin found that he had no trouble reading them.  Nate needed some help with some of the words, but they weren’t overly difficult for him to read either.

Each book is 48 pages long, and I liked the fact that each book included a timeline, extra facts, glossary and an index.  The glossary is a wonderful supplement for both spelling and vocabulary units. These are great addition to our other learning materials.  The set of 11 we reviewed is available for the amazing price of only $16.95 — making each book cost only $1.54!

This set includes the following 11 titles:
Pizarro and the Incas
The Life of Anne Frank
The Building of the Great Pyramid
The Life of Julius Caesar
The Life of Christopher Columbus
The Race to the South Pole
Gladiators and the Story of the Colosseum
The Life of Alexander the Great
Elizabeth I and the Spanish Armada
The Life of Leonardo Da Vinci
The Discovery of T. Rex

Timberdoodle is one of the first homeschooling companies I purchased products from years ago when we started our homeschooling journey.  I have always appreciated the wide variety of products, good prices and great customer service.

Peace Hill Press

The year that we used Story of the World 1 and the corresponding Activity Guide was our best out of our ten years of homeschooling (so far!).  The children learned more about world history than I had learned in all of my own public school years, and, due to the activities and resources in the Activity Guide, found it to be great fun.  Four years later, my upper elementary and middle school children want to go back and do the maps, coloring sheets, and projects from The Story Of The World 1 again, as they’d enjoyed it so much the first time.  I was very impressed by how much we all learned from The Story Of The World1 and by what a pleasure it was to teach.  However, using The Story Of The World 1 takes more work on the part of the teacher than workbook based or pre-packaged curricula.  The Activity Guide makes recommendations of resource books to be purchased or checked out from the library and art projects to be done.  Planning ahead to acquire the supplemental books and project materials is necessary for success with this program.  Interacting with the students in narration and discussion is also necessary, so this is not a good program for a hands-off parent/teacher.  This program should work well for a family of any size. Older students can read about related topics in more depth from other resources while the younger ones read the The Story Of The World text, then the whole family can enjoy the hands-on activities together.  The Activity Guide gives resource ideas for a variety of levels and abilities, which makes this easier.  I’d gladly use this program again!

Learn more about The Story of the World series from Peace Hill Press.

Chronicles Of The Ancient Church

Our son really enjoyed the novel-style format of Chronicles Of The Ancient Church.  They held his interest, and he learned a lot about the history of the church in a short time.  He also enjoyed the “Mr. Pipes” series by Douglas Bond.

Do you want more church history? Try 50 People Every Christian Should Know.

Audio Book - Mystery of History Vol 1

I LOVE the Mystery of History program, but I am very disappointed in the quality of the Mystery of History Audio CD. I purchased the CD to save money over the book version and for the convenience of printing worksheets, but the paper label is starting to peel off after only several uses and it is cumbersome to use with a non-Adobe pdf reader. The pdf files include nuisance blank pages between every map. I’d recommend the program highly, but I wish I’d bought the book instead!

We recently completed Mystery of History Volume 1 and loved its simple method of teaching the entire family world history right alongside Biblical history.  We have found The Mystery of History Volume 2 to be even better than Volume 1: the lessons go into greater detail, there are more activity ideas so something can be found for any age child to do, and I especially enjoy the index so I can easily find a person or event mentioned in a previous lesson.

Read about all three volume of The Mystery of History.

All American History Volume I

The All American History, Volumes 1 and 2, are the best history program I have used for middle school and high school.  The text is so interesting that I like to read it to my children, even though they are old enough to read it themselves.  The workbook reinforces the text in a fun way.  We also do a time line where we use the pictures and short articles the children write about the time period.  I would recommend this history curriculum to anyone.

All American History Volume II Student Reader

All American History Volume II is so thorough– detailed, accurate, and interesting.  I like the reader plus workbook format.  My daughter loves to read and the workbook is just enough hands-on reinforcement without containing too much busy-work.  The reader is challenging, yet not overwhelming.  I only need to help by assigning page numbers and off she goes.  Love it!