History Heroes

Homeschool Review Crew

When we study history we always study the history heroes of the time period.  We were excited when we recently received a new book from YWAM Publishing to review as part of the Homeschool Review Crew.  Heroes of History is the series our book is from.  Obviously they are focused on history heroes that we should know.  The particular book we received is Heroes of History: Davy Crockett.  

Another series from YWAM Publishing is their Christian Heroes Then and Now series.  We own the ENTIRE collection and adore them!  I buy the new ones that have come out each year at our local homeschool conference.  Previously through the Homeschool Review Crew we’ve reviewed other titles in the Heroes of History series so we went into this review knowing we’d love it!!

If you’re wondering YWAM stands for Youth With A Mission.  They have a goal of encouraging young Christians to make a difference.  This is done by publishing good books that help shape our youth.

Our book is recommended for ages 10 and above.  Obviously I had a few under this age who read it as an independent read and even my four-year old was interested when we read it aloud.

How we Used It

As soon as Davy Crockett arrived in the mail it was squirreled away by a child.  First one to claim it was my nine-year old boy who loves Davy Crockett and has already read several of his biographies.  I love knowing that this book was appropriate for him to read and that I didn’t have to pre-read this before letting them grab it.  After he was done it of course got passed through the rest of the house as well.  After the independent readers were through reading the book I took possession again.  You might think this took weeks but really it was about one day or less per child.  They’re fast readers when they want to be!

When I finally got possession of the history heroes book again I began to read it aloud to the whole crew.  We have a time everyday reserved for reading a “person” or “history” type book.  Normally these are YWAM books from the Christian Heroes series but we add in others as we need to.  Not only is this a fantastic read aloud that keeps everyone entertained(well except maybe the toddler) it also comes with a downloadable study guide.  Not all books have a study guide yet but they’re working on them.  The study guide was gifted to us as part of the review; however, they are listed for $5.49 on the website. 

The basic lowdown of how we used our book is that we read it as a read aloud and several of the kids read it as independent reading as well.  We also used the downloadable study guide to glean more from the book.  Fun fact:  Davy never went by Davy until after he was dead.  I didn’t know that!

The Unit Study

We love doing unit studies to go with our reading.  The Downloadable study guide is really more of a unit study.  When you get in there they give you options of using the classroom, homeschool, or small group settings.  We went with homeschool since that’s what we do around here!  Within the study we worked on history, geography, essay writing, creative writing, reading comprehension, public speaking, drama, and art.  I feel you could also add some fun science to the mix and math too.  At least I normally do.  This is a very thorough study.  There is a lot of material in here.  We didn’t use it all but we did use quite a bit.  

A part I always love are the quotes.  These quotes are left up to the parent what to do with but I like to write them out and post them around the house while we’re working through the study.  Then we can take time to talk about them and the kids normally end up memorizing at least a few of them.  These aren’t just things that our history heroes say.  They may be from other history heroes or Aristotle.  You never know what you’re going to get!

Another area that we always use are the chapter questions.  How we normally work through this is I’ll take and write out all the quotes before we start reading the book.  We’ll read a chapter and then use the discussion questions.  From there we move to the next chapter and then those questions.  This was we read the whole book and discuss it.  After we’re through we go back and utilize different areas of the study to emphasize things that I think we should or maybe some areas that I feel the kids didn’t really grasp a concept. 

There are two parts to the unit study.  Part one has all the questions and information that you need to use it.  The second part has the printables such as a fact sheet or information for creating a timeline.  We’re timeline people so I really enjoy doing that.  We also printed off the map so it could be labeled as that’s a fun activity.  Then over the labeling we can go and trace a route of where Davy Crockett went.

Learn More

A few other titles that we’ve reviewed and loved are C. S. Lewis, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and George Washington.

Learn more about history heroes and what other reviewers thought of the books they received by going to the main blog post over on the Homeschool Review Crew blog.  You can also find YWAM and their book series on facebook, twitter, pinterest, and their blog.