Over the past couple of years, we have touched on Greek myths in our homeschool and both my boys have really enjoyed it. When the opportunity arose to check out D’Aulaires’ Greek Myths Set from one of our favorite companies, Memoria Press, we were beyond excited.
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D’Aulaires’ Greek Myths Set
For this review, Memoria Press sent us the D’Aulaires’ Greek Myths Set that includes:
• D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths: In this beautifully illustrated and easy-to-read 192-page paperback, you will learn about all the great gods and goddesses of ancient Greece.
• Student Guide: In this book, you’ll find all the worksheets needed for the course. There are a total of 30 lessons (25 lessons and 5 review lessons). Along with the lessons, you’ll find maps, 110 drill questions for Greek mythology, Greek myths list, and my personal favorite-pronunciation guide. Let’s face it, while it’s fun reading and learning Greek myths, some of the names are extremely hard to pronounce and I really appreciated having this guide to make sure we are pronouncing all the names correctly.
• Teacher Guide: This is a wonderful companion to go along with the student book. It offers the solutions to the questions in the student book.
• Flashcards: You receive 107 flashcards in total and they all contain the lesson number on them. This is a great way to study and recap what we learn as we go along.
Lesson Plan Booklet
I did purchase separately the D’aulaires’ Greek Myths Lesson Plan book that sets this program up for a one year pace, you can also purchase one for a two-year plan as well. I really loved having this on hand to help me with the lesson plan layout. It also includes directions on creating and using a review box. This book is available in print and PDF format.
Using D’Aulaires’ Greek Myths
We love Classical Studies. With the D’Aulaires’ Greek Myths, we start each day out by talking about facts from the previous lesson. This is a great way for them to retain what we are learning and it doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes. Once we go over the facts from the previous lessons, we then start our lesson for the day. As I mentioned earlier, I did purchase the lesson plans. This made it easier for me on planning things out and as with all Memoria Press lessons plans, you can certainly adjust them to fit your family’s schedule.
While the Daulaire’s Book of Greek Myths is simple enough for my third grader to read and understand, it is recommended that the teach reads the book to the students. This is actually what I preferred since my kindergartener loves Greek myths. He would plop down beside us and listen to the stories. As I mentioned, the illustrations are beautifully done and opened up a lot of discussion with both my boys. After reading a lesson, I would often find at least one of them looking at the book on their own.
One thing I found helpful was to read ahead of the boys just a tad and lightly mark all the vocabulary words in the book. As we would come to the word, we would stop and discuss it. This worked out perfectly. This isn’t difficult to read, but you may find it does include words that your child may not be familiar with. There were some my boys knew already, but we have continued to expand our vocabulary during the study.
Once we finished our reading for the day, we open up our student guide to go over the Facts to Know section. This section highlights the different gods and locations discussed in the lesson. With this part, my kindergartener always hung around. He loved answering these along with his brother. Once we wrapped up the facts to know section, my third grader and I would spend the following three days working through the remaining lessons. So in total, we spend four days on Greek myths and start each day with the flashcard review.
The lessons are absolutely wonderful. Of course, he had vocabulary and comprehension questions, but there is also an activity section. Depending on the section, the activities do vary. For example we may look at the illustrations and discuss those, draw a picture, etc. It was always fun and added so much to the overall study.
We really love this study and look forward to continuing it through next year.
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