I am very pleased with this book. It is my favorite part of our homeschooling routine as well as my children's. My children, ages 7 and 8, ask for this everyday and are disappointed if we have to skip a day. Sometimes we even read it at bedtime-they love it! I read it to them section by section, then we do the correspondng activities in the activity book. Every Friday, we take a test from the test booklet. I am amazed at how much information they obtain. The material is written in a way that makes history extremely interesting to them. The author explains things very well. It seems like when they have a question about the reading, it is answered in the next paragragh. It is thoroughly written. It is something the entire family can enjoy. I would reccommend this book to non-homeschooling families too. It is a great conversation topic at supper and it really sparks our interest leaving us thirsty for even more information on the topics that are covered. They have learned so much. I have learned so much too!

After using Bauer's complete set of "Story of the World", Ancient through Modern, with 3 of my children starting in the 1st grade and ending the 4th I felt I could give a brief review.

Susan Wise Bauer uses an easier to read writing style with Vol. 1, but by Vol. 4 the reader is exposed to more information and more intense themes. For this reason, I believe a 1st or 2nd grader would enjoy Vol. #1 but an older child may find it a bit childish. Respectively, 4th graders would enjoy the 4th volume as it is written at a higher grade level and provides a greater amount of information.

I highly recommend purchasing the activity books as well. They are a must as they not only provide questions and answers for each chapter, corresponding pages in Kingfisher and Usborne Encyclopedias (I believe he newer publications no longer use the Kingfisher as it is no longer published), and a list of books for further reading; but maps and other hands on activities are included as well. There are numerous activities to pick and a parent can find those to fit the personality and learning style of the student. The activity books for the first Volumes are geared toward younger students (coloring pages, etc.) but the 4th Volume has the student learning how to outline, completing a timeline and doing more map work (2 maps per chapter instead of the one).

The test books are not necessary, but provide the parent with a way to verify the student's retention. Tests for the early volumes consist of multiple choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank and 1 essay. By the 4th volume the tests are more intense: gone are the multiple choice and true/false questions and instead the tests are almost solely essay, a few fill-in-the-blank and placing events in chronological order. One problem I did notice with the test books is they do not always correlate with the questions and answers in the activity books. Many times the questions in the activity books would focus on a certain topic, but the student would be tested on something else. (To be fair the information is covered in the text book.)

Bauer has attempted to provide ancient through modern history in 4 volumes written at the elementary grade levels. Therefore, some events in history are skipped entirely and other events are covered briefly; but all together the amount of information presented is quite impressive.

Consequently, this is a good beginning history curriculum for grades 1-4 which children will enjoy and, more importantly, retain.

In conclusion, for those who want an all encompassing curriculum, that takes little prep time on the parents part; or those that want to follow the Trivium, this series may be for you.

I am a homeschooling mom with a preschooler, a kindergarten student, and a fourth-grader. This book is great for all of them. I will alternately read aloud or play the audio version (in the car, during lunch, etc.). They love it! The chapters are short and easy to understand. The book itself is not intense and it wasn't made to be. The earliest age is six! If the language is too sophisticated or dry, the children will lose interest. I would too! There are lots of stories and myths from some of the different cultures of those times. It gives my children insights to different cultures and their traditions. The book is also helpful to enrich their understanding of what was happening in the world around the same time as some biblical events. It puts into perspective events like Abram moving, Joseph in Egypt, David, all the fighting and wars, etc. But in a way a child can grasp. As a Christian parent, it is hard to fill in the historical gaps or make sense of certain events. This book certainly helps. As far as I can tell, this book in no way, modifies or takes away the gospel message found throughout the Bible and history. So, for the reviewer who complained about the author's adding that Abram's father was scared, so they moved the family......duh! Who wouldn't be scared about constant fighting, being killed, and the threat of losing everything? Many ancient peoples moved for those very same reasons. It isn't unreasonable to make that jump, especially when you are trying to explain these complicated topics to a young child.

The negative reviews are garbage. What are people expecting? The Economist? Newsweek? An SAT study guide? This book is an introduction (condensed version) of the ancient world. The accompanying activity book has additional resources and activities for people who want more information. As for the claims of how a person felt at a particular time, of course that is speculation! Much of history is speculation! We use what we can find evidence of and fill in the gaps based on the collective information we have for that time period. I delve more into the information with my older child by using the activity guide and test booklet. If you're not keen on using this as a textbook, then read it to your children before bed. I guarantee your kids will get excited about history. Isn't that the goal of education? Not to get them to memorize a bunch of nameless faceless facts, but to get them excited, spark their curiosity, and encourage them to learn independently. This book is certainly a tool that can be used for that purpose.

I have purchased the next book and my family cannot wait to begin that book as well.

We use this for homeschooling curriculum and it has been awesome! My boys have a very good grasp on world history now after listening to these audiobooks every night at bedtime. We have the whole series and they have listened to all of them multiple times. I think they are best suited for ages 8-12 for the depth of what they cover and who finds them most interesting. Highly recommend!

In my mind, S. Wise Bauer has attempted and succeeded: She has made history fun again. The children reading (or listening to) the books will not be writing a dissertation based upon what she has written-- but they will be inclined to pick up another history book, and another... Her writing will get them thinking and talking about history beyond dates.

That's why I like this series. I believe some of the negative reviewers have lost site of the purpose: To engage readers on an elementary level. If readers are following the classical model, they will see more detailed information about the events again (probably twice). This first go round just provides a point of reference for later study.

Examining historical events does not begin and end with one book or source. A true historian will pull together many resources in order to form a composite.

In defense of Bauer's writing, I think that some reviewers are expecting a grammar stage history "holy grail" of some sort. I have yet to find one. Every history book has it's pros and cons. In my mind, this one has more pros than cons.

Bauer does not claim to be the final resource or authority for grammar stage world history. As a matter of fact, she provides extensive lists of additional resources in her other books, like the Well Trained Mind and in the companion workbook. This is the main reason I give this book 4 stars. I wish I could give 4.5. Perhaps an abbreviated version of the resource lists should be included in each volume as an appendix if it is going to stand alone.

Overall, I think it's great for what it aims to do: spark discussion and develop life long learners.

Didn't expect world history to become a bedtime request but here we are. My son gets genuinely excited to find out what comes next, which for a book covering ancient civilizations is a pretty remarkable thing.

The writing style is the key — it reads like someone telling you a story rather than presenting facts to memorize. Nomads, early kingdoms, ancient Egypt, the first empires — it all flows naturally from one chapter to the next in a way that builds curiosity instead of overwhelming a young reader. My son has started asking questions and making connections on his own, which is exactly what you want.

The "classical" approach works really well at this age. Starting from the very beginning of human history and moving forward chronologically gives kids a real sense of how one thing led to another, rather than the scattered topic-by-topic approach a lot of elementary history curricula take.

We're already looking at Volume 2. If you have a kid in this age range who's curious about the world, this series is an easy recommendation — one of the best educational reads we've come across.

I read a lot of the reviews on this book - especially the negative reviews - and had to write my own because I think there are many ways to approach this book series.

This is our first year homeschooling our 4th grade daughter and we met and grilled many of the homeschool mothers in our area on their system of teaching. One of them recommended the Wise/Bauer book "The Well-Trained Mind" which seemed to be a very good fit for both my teaching style and our daughter's learning style. "The Well-Trained Mind" recommends, of course, this series of books for teaching history. But what a lot of people are missing, I think, is that Volume 1 is meant for 1st grade, Volume 2 for 2nd grade, etc. These 4 volumes are also meant to be the first of 3 levels of teaching history as the child goes through his/her 12 years of education. In other words, these four volumes are laying the groundwork for what's to come. It's not a be-all end-all history course.

The reason my approach is different is because I'm using this series of books to catch my daughter up to where a well-educated child should be by the 4th grade. Up through to the end of 3rd grade in the public school system, the only exposure she'd had to history is to the timespan just before and just after the American revolutionary war. So we had a lot of ground to cover. But I didn't want it to turn into a grind for her, so I took the authors' intentions to heart and I'm using this series to form a groundwork for a basic understanding of history.

So what I'm doing is covering all four volumes in 1 year. That works out to a little over 2 months per volume or 4 chapters (for Volume 1) per week. I skipped the activity book but did buy the workbook with the quizzes. We've read to our daughter since she was a baby and she still loves to be read to, so for the 1-hour class (which I hold twice a week) I read 2 chapters to her, discussing what we're reading as I go along. She loves it and the book is easy to read from. Before class starts, I give her 2 quizzes from the 2 chapters read in the previous class. She gets about as many questions right as I would and it's just to help reinforce what I've read to her.

So all the complaints about inaccuracies in the book and the author's religious slant (which I didn't find and I was looking for), they don't matter. What really matters is that my daughter enjoys learning about history (it's her favorite class) and she's building a foundation that can be built on in later years.

In addition to this series and its workbooks, I also picked up "The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia." Once a week I give her homework to read assigned pages from this book to reinforce or, perhaps, to give a different point of view on what she's just learned.

All history books will turn up people who will disagree with the content, will find inaccuracies in the material, or won't agree with the author's point of view. But, guess what? It doesn't matter. Your child is still young and you are filling in a background in history that his/her public school peers will never have.

The book looks great! Very well taken care. Looks new!

オリエントからローマ帝国滅亡に至るまでの世界史の教材です。アメンホテプの宗教改革、ハンムラビ法典、アテネの民主政、インドのカースト制といった内容が大変わかりやすく説明されています。英語は平易で、ネイティブでなくても十分読みこなせるので、英語の学習者にもお薦めできます。

The book was very interesting ,the contents of the book depicts ancient cities rulers

Homeschooler here - thought I'd use this read aloud book to dull and lull my 3.5yo to sleep BUT IT DID THE EXACT OPPOSITE 😂😂. Both my toddler (TODDLER!!!) and myself were ACTUALLY captivated by the stories that we stayed awake reading chapter after chapter and wrecked our bedtime!

I can't believe I'm actually saying this but gosh what a real difference a "living book" makes in terms of engagement and attention! I never liked or cared for middle eastern history but gosh this book held me up at night. Also, bought this as my first ever living book and wanted to know what the fuss was about.

Did not disappoint at all!

Um livro simplesmente sensacional! Explicação super didática, capítulos curtos e muito bem explicados. Leitura extremamente prazerosa e fácil. Estou usando com a minha filha de 8 anos e como ela não lê em inglês ainda eu faço a leitura em voz alta traduzindo/contando a história.

Folhas brancas, ilustrações em preto e branco, contém mapas para compreensão de alguns capítulos e letra de tamanho agradável.

My grade 1 daughter and I bought this book as a suggestion from a friend. We homeschool and wanted to add a bit of history to our curriculum. This book turned out to be one of our best purchases all year! My daughter loved every chapter and begged for me to read "just one more chapter" every time. We followed up each chapter with a craft, activity, or coloring page from the accompanying workbook. This book is so full of information that I was learning a lot too. My husband and mother have both asked if they can borrow the book to read as they both found it interesting too! All the information is written as a big long storyline to connect the different parts of history and it is written with enough detail to keep all readers engaged, and written with simple enough language that everyone understands,too! I can not give this book any less than 5 stars. It is worth its weight in gold. Not only will we be re-reading this book, but we will be ordering the next in the series. This is the best history book I've ever read.