Weekly book shelf, 2/21/14

We're still hanging out with the Celts this week (SOTW2 ch. 2), focusing more this week on the birth of the legend of King Arthur, which came from much, much earlier than I had ever imagined.

King Arthur: The Evolution of a Legend, is one of the only kids books I found that traced the Arthurian legend to its real beginning in the century following the fall of Rome. Like all the other books in the "Life and Times" series, this one not only presents factual information as we know it, but prevailing theories as well. And it sets the stage well, describing the way of life, traditions, and beliefs that were customary at the time. We only focused on the first part of the book. We'll check it out again when we revisit the evolving legend again in the high middle ages.

And we looked at some other early Celtic legends, too. They are simply told in this compendium, and some of the phrasing is weird. It's hard for me to tell if that's the book, or the legends themselves. We only read a few of them before moving on, but that was enough to give us an idea.

We also watched another episode from the series we started last week: "The Celts". Episode 4 of the series, From Camelot to Christ, covers some of the beginnings of the King Arthur story. I shared my thoughts on this video series last week, and this episode was equally as pretty and momentous, and just as evasive with regards to real information. But it corroborated information from the other video we watched and loved...

Back to our favorite history video guy, Michael Wood. His "In Search of Myths and Heroes" series has an episode about King Arthur that, of course, we loved. Unsurprisingly we never find King Arthur, but it's a great video.

In science this week we covered more of the body systems, focusing on the digestive and endocrine systems (still BFSU1 lesson B9). I'll say it again, but only briefly, this series is really comprehensive without being long-winded, and it's neatly presented, without too many distractions.

In literature study this week, Calvin read and took notes on The House at Pooh Corner. He read it first a few years ago, but wanted to reread it, and I thought an easy and heartwarming read would be good since we've been busy, and battling illnesses. These books are so sweet, they're like comfort food.

And in his free time this week, Calvin picked up 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He's been wanting to read it for a while and this week he utterly devoured it. Un-put-downable.

Weekly book shelf, 2/14/14

In our second week of Story of the World volume 2 we meet the post-Roman Celts and the incoming Angles and Saxons (SOTW2 ch. 2)

Raiders of the North is a large book with big, vivid pictures. It has good information and is well presented. Very engaging.

But my favorite supplemental book from this chapter was The Celts (See Through History). Maps and diagrams are just some of the beautiful illustrations in this book that presents the history and mythology of the Celts of yore. Lots of information presented clearly and invitingly.

And in science we are on our second week of studying the body systems (BFSU1 lesson B9), focusing on the Respiratory and Circulatory Systems. The books from the "Our Body" series are full of facts but avoid being overwhelming with clean and careful presentation.

This week in literature, Calvin read and took notes on Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. I have never read the book, but "The Rats of NIMH" was one of my favorite movies when I was little. Calvin loved the book, but he find movies a little too intense so it will be a while before we watch it together.

And he also read Winnie the Pooh for his notebook. It's a book that he read several years ago, but I think revisiting books is a good way for him to get used to our new literature study method. Plus Calvin loves revisiting books, and the Pooh series is adorable while still making use of creative sentence structure and good vocabulary.

And for free reading, he finished the NIMH series (Racso and the Rats of NIMH, and R-T, Margaret, and the Rats of NIMH), none of which were as good as the first one, of course, and he also read the entire "Plant that Ate Dirty Socks" series. Two brothers end up with a pair of junk eating plants in their room, and the misadventures ensue. Pretty much junk-food fiction.