In our house, we LOVE Laura Ingalls Wilder. We have the set of all eight of her books, and Cuddle Bug wants me to read them to her every night for her bedtime story. The kids like watching the Little House on the Prairie reruns on television.
So, when we were given the opportunity to review a book by YWAM Publishing, we chose the Heroes of History book, Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Storybook Life. We also received the Unit Study Curriculum Guide CD. They are phasing out of the study guide on CD, however, and moving to digital download.
About YWAM Publishing
YWAM Publishing, a non-profit company, has many, many titles available. Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Storybook Life is part of the Heroes of History selection. There are 26 titles in the Heroes of History series. Another popular selection is the Christian Heroes: Then and Now series that include 42 titles including biographies of many greats like C.S. Lewis, Corrie ten Boom, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and many others.
Even better, a portion of every YWAM book that you purchase goes toward helping people in China, India, Brazil, and a number of other countries.
How We Used the Materials
The book we received had 15 chapters and was 193 pages long, so Bookworm and I read a chapter aloud every day during the week days. We finished the book in three weeks on this schedule.
Then, we delved into the unit study curriculum guide, and boy was I impressed! There were so many activities to choose from. In the end, I choose two in-depth projects for Bookworm based on his interests.
The first was to make a timeline of Laura’s life and how the events in her life paralleled with other U.S. history events. Bookworm worked on this for several days and when he was done, he had a much better understanding of the events that happened throughout Laura’s life as well as when they happened in Laura’s life.
The second project was to have him write a researched paper about the grasshopper plagues that affected Minnesota in the 1870s. Bookworm really enjoyed this and included gross facts like the state of Minnesota required all able-bodied men to squish the grasshopper eggs one out of five days a week for five weeks. Blech! Bookworm really enjoyed this assignment and wrote a 3 page handwritten paper about it.
What We Liked about the Materials
Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Storybook Life was the second YWAM book Bookworm has read. The first one was Adoniram Judson: Bound for Burma. He enjoyed both of them and thought they were both well-researched and written. I agree.
While the books are excellent, the true strength of the program is in the corresponding unit study guides. I loved that there were so many activities and assignments to choose from. The unit study curriculum guide included:
- key quotes,
- display corner suggestions,
- chapter questions (typically one question related to understanding a vocabulary word in the chapter, several comprehension questions, and then a question or to that required deeper analysis)
- essay questions,
- creative writing prompts,
- hands on projects,
- audio visual projects,
- arts and crafts projects,
- field trip suggestions, and
- related books, movies, documentaries, and National Geographic articles who would like to explore the topic in more detail.
There is A LOT of material here!
What We Disliked
There was nothing that I disliked about this curriculum. In fact, I plan to buy a few more titles for Bookworm to supplement his history. These books, combined with the unit study curriculum, are powerful education tools.
I was one of 100 reviewers to choose between 40 different titles! To read more reviews on other titles, click on the icon below:
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