The Story of the World: Activity Book One: Ancient Times

The Story of the World

by Susan Wise Bauer

This comprehensive activity book and curriculum guide contains all you need to make history come alive for your child! Don't just read about history--experience it! Color a picture of a Minoan bull-jumper, make a model of the Nile River, create Roman armor and Celtic jewelry and more. Designed to turn the accompanying book The Story of the World: Volume 1: Ancient Times into a complete history program, this Activity Book provides you with comprehension questions and answers, sample narrations, maps and geography activities, coloring pages, lists of additional readings in history and literature, and plenty of simple, hands-on activities--all designed for grades 1-4.

Genres: History, Education, School, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Homeschool, Childrens

322 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2003

About the author

Susan Wise Bauer is an American author, English instructor of writing and American literature at The College of William and Mary, and founder of Well-Trained Mind Press (formerly Peace Hill Press).

Reviews

[Orçun · Rating 5 out of 5]

öncelikli olarak kitabın sunuluş şekli "herkes için tarih" olmakla birlikte, amacına fazlasıyla hizmet ediyor. daha öncesinde aynı yazarın antik dünya tarihi hakkında kitabına başlamıştım ancak ağır geldiğinden, sıkıldığımdan dolayı yarıda bırakmıştım. daha sonrasında bu seriyi almadan önce çok düşündüm, yine aynı şekilde mi yazılmıştır acaba diye ancak yapılan yorumları görünce bir şans vermek istedim. iyi ki de vermişim o şansı..

bol bol boş zamanınız varsa 1 günde bile bitirilebilecek bir kitap çünkü çok akıcı.

yalnız şöyle bir şey var ki dünya tarihini ciddi bir şekilde okumak istiyorsanız ve bunu tek bir kitap serisi ile halletmeyi bekliyorsanız, beklentilerinizi karşılamaz. bazı konuların üzerinde çok durmaz, çabuk atlar ve sinirleriniz bile bozulabilir. ancak bütün dünya tarihini 1500 sayfada anlatmak imkansız olduğundan dolayı bu tip durumlar da oldukça normal.

benim bu seriye başlamaktaki amacım ; öncelikle dünya tarihini kabaca öğrendikten sonra uygarlıkların derinine inmek. dolayısı ile şu an hangi uygarlıkların derinlerine ineceğime karar veriyorum. (roma imparatorluğunu ayrıca kesinlikle inceleyeceğim mesela)

seriye devam edeceğim ancak biraz ara vermek istiyorum hafızamda yer etmesi adına..

[Alise · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was actually interesting!!! Thank you Susan.

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book so much. It's written towards children. I listened to it on audio. A few times in the car my kids listened with me and really liked it. It's gives an account of human history, not only with facts but story. I learned things. I especially liked how the Bible was treated, as a historical narrative for the Jewish people through Abraham, and later on Jesus Christ. I loved the narrative of Roman history the most.

The only thing I did to like is the use of the term BCE/CE over the use of BC/AD instead.

[Dkovlak · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am always amazed by History writers. I don’t understand how they get historically accurate information about events that happened decades ago, hundreds of years ago, and in this case, thousands of years ago.

I learned a lot about ancient civilization from this book. It is something that I wish I had read when I was a lot younger.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the activity book and guide for the STOW: Vol. 1 Chapter book. I've included a full review of the entire Volume 1 curricula on that book, instead of writing one for the guide and one for the chapter book.

[McKenzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't judge me. I borrowed it from a friend who home-schools her children. This book is clearly not meant for adults. However, I love history and was fascinated by how the book was written. It's a really simple, yet wonderful overview of history from the earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Any reservations I may have about the history book do not really apply to the Activity Book, which is a great resource for teaching History to small children - coloring pages, activity pages, maps, and all kids of fun and useful stuff! This was a great book to have for supplementing the lessons!

[AJ · Rating 1 out of 5]

It’s disgusting that these are used in student curriculums. The author has zero formal training and the books are filled with falsehoods easily corrected by using any other history book written by actual historians. For your kids own good get rid of this nonsense

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

We listened to the audio books. This was fascinating for both the children and adults

[Eser Saygın · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great summary of ancient history. The book contains short stories and myths.

[Mimi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnificent read...even for adults :)

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book. The quick articles tell you about history without getting bogged down in the details. Perfect for kids.

[Juey · Rating 1 out of 5]

the best of all four books i guess...

[Amy Meyers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is truly such an amazing, helpful resource to help you accomplish your elementary history course in a wonder-inspiring, classical education.

[Sagan · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Review from Mom): My son is a 4YO who is interested in ancient history (and currently addicted to Percy Jackson books), so this review may not apply to you. He comes from a family of educators so his favorite game is "school", and older children might enjoy directed hands-on projects more.

He LOVES the main SOTW book! He loves taking the tests from the test book. This rating for the activity book is his choice and I agree with it. For his personality.

If your child is a hands-on learner who is inspired by big art projects, costumes, coloring and/or cooking, it's worth it to get this supplement. It will absolutely make your lesson planning easier and you'll have enough activities to spend a week per chapter.

If you have a hands-off child who views tests as post-reading trivia games s/he wants to "win", just get the test book and some related reading. The test book covers the same things as the review parts in the activity book.

There are a lot of coloring pages, but he hates coloring so we only use them for illustration while reading. He likes alternate alphabets so writing in cuneiform and hieroglyphs appealed to him, I expect it will be the same when we get to the Greek letters. He liked making Anansi/Ananse. He's made a few pyramids out of Lego. We sprouted some beans but I can't remember if we came up with that or it was one of the book's projects.

The other hands-on projects didn't interest him. He said they took too long and he wanted to read more of the stories instead. (Part of it might be he didn't like having to clean up.) In a few cases I think he wanted to be left alone with the art supplies without being told what to do. Some of the recipes we did, some we just read. He was more interested in pointing things out in the produce aisle and telling me who ate them. (Yay! Cheaper for me!)

The maps help a little and I can get him to put stickers where things take place, but I'm replacing them with a world scratch map so we can mark where we've "been" and see it in context.

The literature suggestions are outstanding and the most fun, at least for us, especially if you have a library with online ordering, but now I'm so adept at using the online ordering system I've kind of slacked off and just searched by keyword. I may take it out and suggest the occasional creative thing if he's interested, but I'm probably not going to buy the activity book for the next in the series.

Disclosure: I marked it "read" but I did not read it cover to cover. I read it about halfway so I could prepare things in advance and looked at all the worksheets, but his boredom kicked in at about Chapter 14, so we'll probably stick to reading related books instead of hands-on projects-- unless something comes up that requires Lego.

[LeeAnn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This activity guide goes with the textbook that accompanies it. It is tops for the activities and supplemental literature suggestions. The textbook is a valuable accompaniment for this activity guide because it is difficult to find literature for many of the ancient civilizations, let alone for children!

If your children enjoy hands-on activities, this guide is a must! It is designed as a year-long curriculum although it took us longer because we inserted some other works into the middle of it. I think this is created with 2nd or 3rd graders to 5th in mind although it can be expanded for older students. I expanded it.

There is cost associated with this curriculum because of the materials needed for the activities as well as for copies. Half the book is full of worksheets, etc. for using/copying. The author gives permission to make a copy for your family's use. The publisher now offers booklets with all the worksheets in it, probably saving you money in the long run (and would be more convenient than running to your local copy center.)

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

11/09/09: Note to my Catholic buddies. The author is Protestant. In my opinion, she does an excellent job presenting a balanced, respectful look at history. I do not think she purposefully ignores or slants Catholic contributions to history, but we are not exactly on her radar either. For example, you'll learn about Attila attacking the Romans and the emperor's goofy sister, Honoria's "proposal" to Attila. You'll learn about Attila's providential, fatal nosebleed. You will NOT see mention of Pope Leo the Great anywhere. No mention of Leo meeting with Attila and pursuading him to leave Rome. Nothing. Erased from this historical account.

[Aja · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great resource complete with book lists, narration helps, crafts, projects and maps, and many, many more supplements. This book is used with the Story of the World Volume 1 book which contains stories and histories of ancient civilizations.

[Julianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great activities to make history come alive for children.

[Rochelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

probably more valuable than the text. It really does have great activity ideas, along with questions and coloring pages, etc.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've really enjoyed reading this to my younger children. An enjoyable overview of Ancient Civilization.

[Belle Meade School]

909

[Christabelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was worth it to us. I still have many coloring-age kids so the printables were perfect for us. The crafts/activities also seemed to go over well. Even though we didn’t do all, I felt we got more out of the lesson through the ones we did use.