Jun. 18, 2008 - Wednesday Book Pile

Today's book pile is short, very short. 

My preschoolers were spending the day with Grandma so I read to the boys from an old book I probably picked up at my grandma's attic several years ago. 

It is called The Beginnings of the American People and Nation by Mary Kelty.

It was copyrighted in 1937 and was written as an elementary, history primer.  We have been reading in Unit one and learning about Marco Polo. 

The first part of this book addresses the teacher, me.  The author gives several principles that this book was written on.  One that I like in particular is that "History in the intermediate grades should be read rather than studied." She goes on to say that "Texts which are skeleton summaries are not suitable. Materials chosen should be full of romance, adventure, and colorful detail.  It should provide an atmosphere of reality, awaken interest, and aid in building up concepts."  (see page iv for more details)

I find it interesting that 80+ years ago she knew that kids didn't want to hear all those dates and strange long names, as accurate as they might be, kids tend to lose their focus.  This book leaves the dates out, horrors I know :), but really is my 7 year old really going to be able to put it into perspective that Marco Polo was alive in the 1200s. No. It keeps the story line true and yet uncomplicated.  For instance we learned that Marco Polo spent 17 years in China as a messenger of sorts for the King of China.  There is no mention of this Kings name and for that I am grateful, because it means my kids can read the passage with confidence and not stumble over archaic and foreign words. 

So for now we read on and fall in love with his adventures and live his life in these words and later when my kids are older, we will study him again and put Marco Polo on a timeline and see who his contemporaries were and such. 

On a side note this text belonged once to a young girl who sketched profiles of herself and penned her name over and over again on these pages.  I actually googled her name because her name is so distinct I was curious to see who she was.  The only name to come up was the author of Harriet the Spy by Louise Perkins Fitzhugh.  How neat is that!  I may have a book that some famous author studied in as a child.  Now decades later my homeschooled kids will learn from the same book. 

I love old books!