I was doing the Book of Time with my 6 year old daughter today. The Book of Time is actually just a Timeline in which we stick all the images of different events, people and places on each specific year or period. Doing this, the kids will somehow have a visual picture of the ‘entire’ history which I believe allows them to relate each character or events better and remembers them more easily.
We were actually not very up-to-date with our Book of Time. We were supposed to stick each character or event as we read them in my daughter’s History books, but then I find it quite disruptive to pause for awhile just to ‘stick’ a single character in the book. I feel like our ‘reading momentum’ falls every time we do this. That’s why I always procastinate in doing the Book of Time.
As a result, we were so far behind it that we had to ‘stick’ a lot of events and people today all in one shot. So today was that day of ‘sticking’ and it was also good because I was able to review and check whether my daughter still remembers our previous lessons.
So, I started my asking my daughter about what she remembers about “Ancient Egypt”, one of our first lessons. My daughter was able to remember a lot of details about this period. I was also browsing her history book and trying to check what she’s saying, as I myself has already forgotten some things. But I was taken aback when my daughter told me about how the Egyptian women ‘mourn’ when their cat died. I was right on that page when she told me the whole paragraph from the book ‘verbatim’. Really! I mean, Ancient Egypt was like week 3 in our curriculum and we’re currently in week 14 but she still remembers that.
As I went on with our review with Ancient Romans, the Vikings and etc, I was more amazed as she really did remember most of the things we studied even the small details. Wow! I guess my daughter has really taken so much interest in History. It must be also because of the great books which we are using that are simple, colorful and full of facts that are easy to understand for the kids.
And by the way, if you’re interested to know the books we’re using for her History/Geography subjects, we are using:
Living Long Ago
Usborne’s Internet Linked Children’s Encylopedia
I Heard Good News Today
* this is my post for November 9, 2024 in my ‘mommy blog’