Benjamin Franklin {YWAM}
Benjamin Franklin {YWAM}
Homeschool Review Crew
We adore the YWAM Publishing books! I personally have bought the whole set of Christian Heroes Then and Now and grab their new releases each year at our local homeschool conference. We don’t have the whole series for the Heroes of History though. So we were very excited to receive Heroes of History- Benjamin Franklin to review.
Another fun aspect to YWAM books is that you have a study guide that you can use in conjunction with the book. We like to use these for further discussion though we don’t just sit and work through them. I like to go through and pick out a few questions to ask my kids and see what their answers all. This is all verbal though as some of my kids aren’t old enough to really be able to write out good thorough answers. Plus hearing sibling responses helps the younger ones or ones who don’t understand as well get more from the book.
A Little About
These two series are full of great titles about famous heroes. Either heroes of history or Christian heroes. Both series are equally good. We chose to buy the whole Christian Heroes Then and Now series over the Heroes of History for a few reasons but primarily because we wanted some good solid Christian books about missionaries, etc.
They are chapter books. My eight year old has no troubles reading these on her own but she’s probably reading at a third grade level. All of my children enjoy listening to them as read alouds. They also offer audio books for most of the titles as well.
Something I learned while at our local homeschool conference is that YWAM also has curriculum options that involve their books. My oldest was excited looking at their maps of the world geography curriculum. We didn’t purchase it but it definitely went onto our want list.
The Christian Heroes Then and Now covers influential Christian leaders from roughly 1700-1960. Currently they are listed as having 47 titles but two new ones are released each year. This year when I was at conference I pre-ordered the next two which should be out around the first of May.
Heroes of History currently has 29 titles ranging from Christopher Columbus(1451) to Ben Carson(1951). I assume that new titles from this series are being released at intervals as well.
Study Guides
The study guides that go with the books(most have them but not all yet) are downloadable. They come as a zipped or pdf file. There are several different areas of the book that the study guide covers. It’s divided into sections to help you find what you want to cover without a lot of hassle.
These sections are
- historical figure (short summary of the figures biography)
- Unit Study- overview and unit study both in pdf format
- meet the author
- reader reviews
- bonus materials
- more heroes
- about YWAM
We enjoy picking and choosing pieces from the study guide to use. For me, not being very tech savvy I do have an interesting time unzipping and finding the file. Once I get it unzipped and in a location I know where it is(yes I’m bad at this!), it’s easy to use.
You can very easily turn the book into a unit study using the study guide as your curriculum. It covers history, geography, reading with comprehension(an area some of my children struggle with), public speaking, drama, art, creative writing, essay writing, and if the Christian Heroes series you also get scripture study.
We like to use the essay questions as talk aloud questions. This is also what we do with the creative writing normally. Because we love to read we also take the time to grab other books from the time period or about this persons life. So for this study we cleaned out the library of all their Benjamin Franklin books that were age appropriate.
How We Use
Our favorite way to use these books is two fold. I love to use them as read alouds so that all of the kids can hear and learn. But we also just have them on a bookshelf so older kids can grab and read whenever they want. I’m all about having lots of good books available for children to read.
Benjamin Franklin was one of the major characters in the Revolutionary War time frame and one of our founding fathers so we were very interested in learning more about him. It seems that no matter what history period we study in our little school my kids always gravitate back to free reading on the Colonial time period.
Learn More
Learn more about all of the YWAM books that were available for review as well as what other families thought by going HERE. This main blog post on the Homeschool Review Crew blog will give you all the information you need to find out what book or series is best for you. You can also find them on facebook, twitter, pinterest, and instagram.
Also feel free to read our other reviews of YWAM products.
And here posts that talk about the how and why we include these biographies in our homeschool.
Homeschooling Charlotte Mason Style
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