For Sarah/Sadie and anyone else who wants a great review of the first two lessons of SOTW.

I am LOVING Story of the World.  I adore history, and she just did such an amazing job compiling all of these ideas and dates.  I love the way they have books to suggest, and art projects and ideas about ways to get the kids to remember.  The timeline was way more than I portrayed... just because I didn't have time that night to really go into it.  But the first lesson in SOTW is about historians and archaeologists and what they do.  But it is ohsomuch more than that.  She talks about (of course, I got the audio book, which is read by one of my very favorite readers, Jim Weiss) how historians do there job.  "What if" (this is not a direct quote) "you found a letter from your great grandmother, to her sister living far away.  And you got to hear about your grandmother as a little girl.  That would give you a piece of her 'history'."  And other bits like "What day were you born?  Do you remember that day?  Could it have been the day before?  Or the day after?  How do you know?  This is another way historians find out information.  They find information that is kept on record about the people who live in the culture."  And then it goes on to archaeology.  "Imagine that a man went to a river bank.  And saw an old piece of wood sticking out of the bank.  He started digging because he was curious, and then realized that he was digging up an old building!  He calls someone called an archaeologist to come with little tiny tools (so he or she doesn't hurt anything) to dig out that area, and they find a toy of an ox and cart.  That shows us that these people who lived in this area had that type of technology."  Etc... REALLY well written. 

So last week, we studied what it is to do history.  I asked the kids what the first thing they remembered was.  Then we wrote it down and found a picture of that time (thank god for digital pictures!)  Then after that, I had them remember things by looking at pictures. "I was a ninja for Halloween three years in a row???"  or "Oh, I have to write down Baby Cake!  She was my very favorite doll until her arm fell off."  Then after we got down near everything they remembered, I started bringing out the baby books and we wrote down their first step, the day they were born, their first birthday, the first word they said, etc.  Stuff they didn't remember, but that I did.  And that was the lesson in history. 

The lesson in Archaeology will be just as much fun.  I am taking their sand box and turning it into a dig.  OMG... So much fun!  They have to figure out what time period (in their lives) that they are looking at by what I put in the sand box.  (I am wetting it down today for Thursday so it will be nice and hard to dig.)  I have had fun just planning it out.  lol!  I also got one of these because I thought they would just love that.... :)  I will let you guys know the verdict this weekend.