Story of the World

I stumbled on the book The Well-Trained Mind long before Connor was ready to begin homeschooling, and I knew from the first pages that classical education was what I wanted for our kids.  One of several things that drew me to this method is the way everything is tied together through history.  I was in *college* before I started making cross-curricular connections (i.e., that the same philosophical ideas that inspired the American and French revolutions influenced Beethoven's music), and the idea of helping my children go deeper and make those connections and insights excited me.  Aaron wasn't hard to persuade. *grin*


When we were ready to start seriously looking at how to follow the book, I discovered that Susan Wise Bauer (one of the co-authors of The Well-Trained Mind) had written a history curriculum in four volumes, The Story of the World.  In each volume, Bauer uses a narrative style to introduce elementary-aged children to world history.  I've been looking forward to using it along with the accompanying activity guide, and we're a few chapters into it now and are enjoying it as much as I hoped we would.  Connor has loved the hands-on projects, which I'm planning to chronicle here (with pictures!).  So, on to our first project!