The Story of the World: Activity Book Two: The Middle Ages

Rating:
Summary: We love SOTW!
Review: 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.