Thursday, January 24, 2008

American Girl History

We have been reading one of the American Girl books as part of our school the last couple of weeks. I know I dogged the price of these dolls in an earlier post (BTW, Morgan and Avery did each get one for Christmas and they LOVE them!), but the books are just the best! There are a couple of reasons I love these books so much.

One is that they are written in a way that is easy enough for my children to read them themselves without them being 2 sentence pages. When Morgan finished one of them a couple of weeks ago, she really felt like she had accomplished something. And, so did I. She read 5 chapters in her own spare time. That brings me to reason #2.

The story line in these books really keeps their attention and they feel like they know these little girls. The fact that the stories are all written about girls close to their age makes it seem even that much more real to them.

And one of my favorites reasons is the historical and cultural content in each book. We have been reading about Addy (a 9 year old girl who grew up as a slave in the 1800's). It has been so eye opening to my children and I think they will remember more reading this history as a story instead of reading it from a text book.

If you are looking for a good, clean and interesting read for your 2nd-5th grader, these would be the first books I would recommend.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cassie - just yesterday I came across this link for American Girl lapbooks. It has some neat ideas that appeal to my 9 year old.

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/American_Girl_Lapbook.php

Unknown said...

I picked up one of these books the other night trying to fall asleep..and I found them really interesting too!

Donna(mom24boyz) said...

There are also great "Boy" ones--My son love ths "Dear America" Books--they are journals of boys during various historical events, from the era of being a New York Newsies to being with settlers in the New America

One of his favorites is "The Journal of Rufus Rowe--a witness to the battle of Fredecksburg
and The Journal of William Thomas Emerson-- A Revolutionary War Patriot.

The books are historically acurate and exciting

I often get mine on Amazon used -I paid just a little of $20.00 (including shipping) for 6 of these books!

Since I have four boys I am sure they will all get great use out of these books!

Brandi said...

I love how much your girls love them too! What a great way to give the joy of reading to your kiddos. . .hey, maybe you'll pick it up too!

Bran

Jennifer said...

I love the American Girl books! We have read them all. Some aloud, some the kids read on their own. We own some of them, but mostly we get them from the library time and time again. They really teach the kids about what it was like during that time period.