Hoagie's Gifted History Page

 Hoagie's Gifted website is a must stop for parents with gifted children. And it is full of resources for the rest of us as well! Take a look at Hoagie's Hot Topics: Reading List of History whenever you need a new idea for a living history book. There is enough there to keep any student of history busy for quite some time! Scroll down to find Philosophy, Political Science and Geography as well.

World History for Us All

An interesting and ambitious website that is geared towards schools but which may be a useful resource to homeschools. The History of the World in Seven Minutes presents and interesting overview of world history from an evolutionary perspective.From the site:

World History for Us All is a powerful, innovative model curriculum for teaching world history in middle and high schools. This site:

History of the World in Seven Minutes Requires Flash Player Video Playback Play Download

• offers a treasury of teaching units, lesson plans, and resources.
• presents the human past as a single story rather than unconnected stories of many civilizations.
• helps teachers meet state and national standards.
• enables teachers to survey world history without excluding major peoples, regions, or time periods.
• helps students understand the past by connecting specific subject matter to larger historical patterns.
• draws on up-to-date historical research.
• may be readily adapted to a variety of world history programs.

The first two segments of the curriculum seem to be complete. The third is a work in progress. The activities and wording are rather schoolish, but the ideas are interesting. Certainly more suited to a secular or evolutionary approach to history; however, the idea of looking at events around the world in concert with one another is something that can be applied to any perspective. [We have used both secular and religious history materials in our home school which seems to me to provide a greater depth of understanding than either alone.]

Ride with Paul Revere!

Paul Revere for all levels! Interesting information and activities for children at The Paul Revere House. The activities include an interactive map of Paul Revere's history making ride. The virtual ride also shows the journeys of Willam Dawes and Dr. Samuel Prescott.

If you want something a little more in depth, try this first hand account of the ride by Paul Revere.

Here is a whole lesson plan (high school level) entitled: Midnight Ride of Paul Revere—Fact, Fiction, and Artistic License  from EdSitement.

I love the History in Historical Romances!

My favorite fiction genres is the Historical Romance. I especially love the ones by authors who do their research and provide historically accurate details of time, place, people and clothes. I have almost every book written by Georgette Heyer, who created the Regency romance. She also wrote mysteries and historical fiction, unfortunately all in the past tense as she passed away in 1974.

One of my favorite living, and still writing - hallelujah, authors in this genre is Loretta Chase. Although she only produces about a book a year, they are certainly worth waiting for. A more recent find is Lauren Willig who is writing a whole series of books about the Pink Carnation that have both modern and historical threads cleverly tied together. So I was quite amused when I came across this post on Loretta's blog:

http://lorettachase.blogspot.com/2010/03/mr-impossible-goes-to-yale.html

Lauren Willig, along with Cara Elliott, is teaching a course at Yale called Reading the Historical Romance and Loretta's Mr. Impossible is on the required reading list! Those students are in for a treat!

Wish I could be there...

Free Geography Books

Free geography books to download.

An offer that came through:

As part of a nonprofit venture, my husband and I are donating ebook versions of “All Across Canada" (Chipmunkapublishing, 2008) and “All Across China” (Chipmunkapublishing, 2009) to homeschoolers.

"All Across Canada" and "All Across China" can each be downloaded on their website display pages using the following link to our authors' website:

www.weisberg-yoffe.org

(To change orientation of the pdf from sideways to right side up, just go under “view” and “rotate clockwise.” I presently have a pdf of "All Across Canada" that is upright, which I could send to you as an e-mail attachment-I'm hoping to have this uploaded onto our authors' website soon).

Alternatively, you can try to download the ebooks using this link:

http://www.chipmunkapublishing.com/All.zip

"All Across Canada" was submitted to Kirkus Discoveries as a representative of our geography series, and it received a favorable review (published online). "All Across China" is presently being translated into Chinese for distribution in China by an Asian professor at Beijing University, who is in assocation with Five College Center for East Asian Studies. Professor JuFei Wang will be included as a co-author for the translated version.

Our third book in this series, "Friends and Mates in Fifty States,” features original cartoons and poems about the United States, with each state capital represented by a cartoon character named for the city (such as Denver, a boy who lives in Colorado). The book is designed to help familiarize children from ages 6-11 with U.S. geography in a fun and self-motivating way.

"Friends and Mates in Fifty States" has thus far received considerable interest from libraries and schools, including Montessori schools. Kenneth J. Relihan (Social Studies & World Languages, New Hampshire Department of Education) has favorably reviewed Friends and Mates in Fifty States, describing it as “unique and original.” We are hoping to eventually have a link for a complimentary pdf version of this book, as well.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions at ellenweis1966 @yahoo.com.

Best wishes,
Ellen