Egypt's Middle Kingdom (SOTW ch. 12)

Returning to ancient Egypt, we've now added the invasion of Nubia to our timeline, and the invasion by the Hyksos. Otherwise the Middle Kingdom is kind of a wash, and so were the recommended extra books. All of them dealt with Egypt in general, no specific information from the Middle Kingdom. Of course we loved the coloring book, and Calvin also greatly enjoyed Green's Tales of Ancient Egypt.

Life in Ancient Egypt: A Coloring Book (Dover, 1989). We are very fond of the Dover coloring books, which pair detailed line drawings with short but informative paragraphs about the subject.

Rimonah of the Flashing Sword: A North African Tale (Eric Kimmel, 1995). A retelling of the Snow White fairy tale with middle eastern characters and a hint of middle eastern legends sprinkled in. I love what Kimmel has done with the heroin, making her a stronger character, but I don't find it to have a strong link to ancient Egypt at all.

Temple Cat (Andrew Clements, 2001). A cat is worshipped locally in a village and treated as a pharaoh, but that's no life for a cat. Always doted upon and never allowed to do "cat" things, he eventually runs away to find happiness with a family somewhere else. The beautiful illustrations really make this book, otherwise the story is kind of bland.

Egyptian Gods and Goddesses (Henry Barker, 1999). A very simple listing and description of the gods and goddesses of Ancient Egypt. Great for early readers.

Tales of Ancient Egpt (Roger Lancelyn Green, 2011). This is an enjoyable collection of myths and legends based on the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt. Not all of the stories included are traditionally Egyptian, though.

Weekly book shelf, 9/14/12

Behind as usual, so I'll just throw this list up here. Just a few of the books we've been reading this week. The first three Calvin selected from the library himself, The Jungle Book was a suggestion of mine, and of course we've been working on The Fellowship of the Ring for a while now.

Animal Poems, by Valerie Worth, illustrations by Steve Jenkins (2007). Adorable Jenkins work, as always. The poems are wonderful, too, not simply fluffy rhyme, but interesting work that makes the reader think. We loved this one, especially as we've been reading about the animal kingdom so much the past few weeks.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, by William Kamkwamba (2012). An oversimplification of this young man's impressive and inspiring story. Interesting illustrations help tell the story, but I think it was a bit young for Calvin.

Realms of Tolkien, by Ted Nasmith (1996). A beautiful find for the Tolkien lover. Full page illustrations, collected from a variety of artists, face paragraph long excerpts from the book. Some of the artwork is from previous book editions, but some of it comes from other sources, making this a unique collection. It's out of print, but we were lucky enough to find one at our library.

The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling (2009). Classic, of course.

The Fellowship of the Ring, by J. R. R. Tolkien (1954). We've been reading this one out loud for a few weeks now, and Calvin is still loving it.

Weekly book shelf 9/7/12

I'm not sure how I'll run the resources section this year. There are plenty of resources we'll go through in a single week in science and history, and I plan to list those not only for my own edification in years to come, but also in case they can help someone else who goes or is going down the same road. In addition to those books, however, there is plenty of other reading going on in our house and I might try to list those books separately, because I know how much I love reading about books on other people's blogs. That's just the way I am.

So for the week of 9/1-9/7:

Monsters: The Grim Reeper (Rachel Lynette, 2010) and Monsters: Frankenstein (Adam Woog, 2006). Calvin is somewhat obsessed with monsters right now. It was dragons, and then goblins and ogres, and now (since we're reading Lord of the Rings) it's the Ring Wraiths. He picked these books up at the library and devoured them at home over last weekend. Whatever floats his boat, I guess.

Calvin is reading Through the Looking Glass (Lewis Carroll). He read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland last week, and found both books hilarious. I love the play on words in both books. I had not ever read them myself, but now having listened to Calvin read them, I think I can see where Norton Juster (Phantom Tollbooth) may have found some of his inspiration. Calvin read our 1960s boxed set of the two books with original illustrations.

He also read Dragon Country, written by Kevin Dangoor, a father in our homeschooling group. The book is not available to the public yet, but Calvin read the first book from the series, Chasing the Gnome, several weeks ago and loved it so much that the author brought him his proof copy from the publisher to read over the weekend. Calvin devoured it in one afternoon. These are light and enjoyable fantasy books for young readers who are reading chapter books on their own. They have a great story line, with two good friends going on a quest in magical lands, meeting challenges and magical beings. The books are full of richly imagined lands, but not with the pop-culture drivel or social apathy that usually mark books for this age group.

As a family we are reading Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring aloud right now. We read The Hobbit over the summer, and Calvin loved it so much he begged and begged to read The Lord of the Rings immediately after. It is kind of slow as a read aloud, but so far he's had absolutely no problem with understanding or attention span on this one, like I thought might be a problem.

BFSU B5: Food Chains, and D4: Biomes

One of my favorite topics! This is not anything new to Calvin, really, but we had a good time really talking about food chains, and getting more specific about biomes than we have in the past. In addition to reading, hiking, and watching some videos, I found great maps on this site: I printed this one to color in, and brought this up on the screen for copying.

Who Eats What? Food Chains and Foods Webs. Patricia Lauber (1995). A Let's Read and Find Out About Science, book. Honest, forthcoming, and unflinching with simple illustrations, some crayon drawings that will encourage a child to get in on the action themselves.

What is a Biome? Bobbie Kalman (1997). Very informative but without being too dense. Photographs and illustrations are realistic and make great aids. My only complaint is that it can feel a little scattered, with too many tidbits added outside of paragraph text, but it's no DK nightmare book, and I found it completely usable.

Staying Alive: A Story of a Food Chain. Jacqui Bailey (2006). Another unflinching look at life, this book looks specifically at the food webs of the African Savanna, which makes it a good book to connect the topics. Comedic illustrations and interjections keep things funny, but can be distractions from the important text. Again, not on the level of a DK book, just minor distractions.

Pass the Energy, Please! Barbara Shaw McKinney (1999). Rich illustrations and rhyming text set this food chain story apart from the rest. I've reviewed this one before. It's a beautiful look at the significance of food chains. The rhyming can be stilted in some areas, but the book is well worth reading.

Life On Earth: The Story of Evolution. Steve Jenkins (2002). A wonderful explanation of the process of evolution and overview of the ongoing nature of time with Steve Jenkins's fantastic illustrations of pieced paper. This is another book to which we have returned many times. We have it in our personal collection, purchased used because, unfortunately, it's already out of print. What were they thinking???

We also watched all the Schlessinger Biomes in Action videos, which were available on DVD from our library. Their science videos (like all their vidoes) are cheesy, but they lack the flashing lights, quick changes, and gimics of other, more recent children's videos that are so distracting while providing good information. Each video shows kids (middle school age maybe?) visiting world biomes, and also running some (albeit questionable) experiments in a school or home lab setting. Calvin enjoyed them all.

Story of the World, ch. 11: Ancient Africa

I was disappointed by the lack of resources available for this chapter. Even the books recommended in SOW itself were limited in their information. We ended up with a number of oral tradition story books, and one Schelssinger video.

African Beginnings. James Haskins and Kathleen Benson (1998). Beautiful, full page illustrations coupled with good historical information makes this volume great additional reading for any study of ancient Africa.

Anansi the Spider: A Tale from the Ashanti. Gerald McDermott (1982). Fun, bright illustrations created from paper complement the traditional trickster tale of mischevious Anansi. McDermott's trickster tale books make really fun reading. We also read his Zomo the Rabbit: A Trickster from West Africa( 1996).

The Pot of Wisdom: Ananse Stories. Adwoa Badoe (2001). A nice collection of Anansi trickster tales.

The Talking Vegetables. Won-Ldy Paye and Margaret Lippert (2006). One of Calvin's favorite Anansi stories.

Anansi and the Talking Melon. Eric Kimmel (1994). Kimmel's versions of the Anansi tales, illustrated by Janet Stevens, are highly enjoyable. We read this one, and his version of Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock (1988) and I think they were Calvin's favorites. These are also available read aloud on video, old-fashioned like, with the book illustrations showing, no animation. Great for younger kids.

We also watched the Schlessinger Ancient Africa video from their Ancient Civilizations series. It was fine, but not stellar.