Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Ancient History: Persia

I love covering things in history that I know little about. I get to learn right along with The Kid! Ancient Persia definitely falls into that category and I was excited to learn along with her.

We started out by reading:
  • Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History, pages 152-153
  • Story of the World, Chapter 21
And then added in the following picture books:
  • Forty Fortunes: A Tale of Iran by Aaron Shepard
  • The Legend of the Persian Carpet by Tomie DePaola
  • Ali and the Magic Stew by Shulamith Levey Oppenheim
And a magazine:
  • Kids Discover: Ancient Persia
 If you are following along with us in World History, go back to the main page.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

The Fairy Tale Project: Little Red Riding Hood

August's fairy tale project was Little Red Riding Hood.

We read four versions of the story:
  • Little Red Riding Hood retold by by Trina Schart Hyman
  • Little Red Riding Hood retold by Anthea Bell
  • Little Roja Riding Hood by Susan Middleton Elya
  • Lon Po Po by Ed Young
The first two versions listed are both pretty faithful translations of the Brothers Grimm tale, each with very different, very lavish illustrations. The third is a simplified and modernized retelling with Spanish words sprinkled in. The fourth is a wonderful version of a "big bad wolf" tale originating in China.

We kept it simple this month with our focus for the writing and illustrating of the story after last month's extremely detailed retelling of Puss in Boots. We kept our discussion to talking about choosing between doing a retelling of the Brothers Grimm version, the modernized version, or the Chinese tale - how each story is different, what the similarities were, and how she could choose parts of any or all of them to weave together. In the end, she chose to do a pretty straightforward retelling of the Grimm version.

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Ancient History: Phoenicians

After spending so much time in Mesopotamia, I was amazed to find almost no resources in the picture book section regarding the Phoenicians. The Kid and I decided to do this as a bare bones unit and move on to Persia.

We read:
  • Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History, pages 140-145
  • Story of the World, Chapter 15

If you are following along with us in World History, go back to the main page.