Resources for Specific Subjects

Art supplies

Fabric

Computers

Mud, sand, water

Field guides

Lunch boxes

Probably _The Complete Works of William Shakespeare_. We're always looking up this-or-that speech.

We also use our Shorter OED (on CD) and our Oxford Dictionary of Quotations pretty often, as well as our Spanish and French dictionaries.

Field guides (we have a ton of them) and the big coffee table Audubon book on birds get a lot of use.

_Mathematics: From the Birth of Numbers_ is used pretty frequently.

Morganne uses historical references pretty often — a History of US and our ancient civilization references, mostly.

The atlas and globe are rarely used; we drag out the almanac a few times a year (a good almanac is even better than an atlas, IMO, especially for settling questions like: which is bigger, London or Paris?).

The science books are used in spurts, as are various How-To guides.

It's good to have kajillions of field guides, too.

I've decided that I prefer my encyclopedia in CD form. I thought at first that it was important to have a paper encyclopedia, but a good CD encyclopedia (we have Encarta) includes animation sequences, sounds, and hyperlinks that make it a delightful tool for exploration.

* Susan Striker's _Please Touch_

* John Thomson's _Natural Childhood_

* Rahima Baldwin's _You Are Your Child's First Teacher_

* _The Mother's Almanac_, I forget the authors.

Good materials with which to begin:

Play-doh, water, tempera paints, puzzles, picture books, sand, balls, blocks, a climbing structure, the garden, the kitchen, the grocery store.

Susan Striker's book _Please Touch_ is a really good general educational guide for young children.

Two year olds can learn a lot if we talk to them, let them help us do what we're doing, and give them space to explore the world with their own bodies.

For this age group, simple open-ended supplies are invaluable. Give them a bucket full of beans and some containers and they can learn a lot doing dry-pouring. Let them fingerpaint or paint the sidewalk with water.

A slightly more exhaustive list:

Barbara Berger

Jan Brett

Natalie Kinsey-Warnock _The Wild Horses of Sweetbriar_

Susan Jeffers _The Midnight Farm_, _Brother Eagle, Sister Sky_

Barbara Cooney _Miss Rumphius_, _Roxaboxen_

Jamichael Henterley _Good King Wenceslas_, "A Fairy Went A'Marketing_

Patricia Maclachlan _All the Places to Love_

Fiona Pragoff

For young children, I care most about the quality of the illustrations.

Susan Striker has written a great book on this topic called _Please Touch: How to Stimulate Your Child's Creative Development through Music, Movement, Art, and Play_. Her basic premise is that you encourage children's creativity by giving them the opportunity to experiment with lots of different objects and materials. She has a lot of specific suggestions for children ages 0-5.

I think that children are born creative and that their creativity can be enhanced or diminished by their environments. If a child lives in a restrictive or critical environment, the child will be less likely to express her creativity than a child who lives in an open, supportive environment.

"If music is the food of love, play on." (from Twelfth Night by a certain Mr. Shakespeare).

We need to feed our souls as well as our minds.

We have the Amanda's Closet puzzle and it's gotten a lot of use by Matisse and Malcolm.

I was disappointed by the magnetic paper dolls because they were hard to cut out (hours with scissors) and then the head tore off of the paper doll after a few weeks of work.

American Girl magazine has a new paper doll (based on a real modern American girl) with the girl's favorite outfit and the outfits that her foremothers wore. The paper dolls are photographs of the girls themselves and there are little biographies of the girls and their foremothers. Pretty interesting stuff. Makes for a lot of paper dolls and outfits over a few months

Lois Lenski's _Strawberry Girl_ is a good read for children of different ages. It'a about two very different families in Florida around the turn of the century — an established family that lives off the land using open grazing and a new family of farmers that fences their land to grow strawberries, sugarcane, and citrus. The feud between the fathers gets serious at times.

The family relationships are lovely. The book is very different from most other children's books, which is a big plus. The children work hard, know a lot, take care of one another, and struggle to maintain friendships despite the family feuds. The language is charming backwoods Southern.

Like all books written before 1950, there are a few distressing stereotypes and attitudes. Sex roles are naturally very strongly defined. When Birdie, who is minding the Slater baby, meets Jeff Slater at the dry goods store, she asks after his delayed mother but doesn't hand Jeff his baby brother to tend — boys obviously don't tend babies. Girls do, however, plow and set strawberries and drive off hogs with rakes.

The Slater family is presented as a bunch of good-for-nothing hillbillies whose habit of foraging and open grazing is portrayed as shiftless and backwards. The father is a drunkard and a gambler who mends his ways after being converted by a preacher when his wife and children are taken dangerously ill of fever. At the end, he sells out and goes off to work in a phosphate mine as a dynamiter. All true enough to life, I suppose, but there are a powerful lot of human stereotypes there to sift through.

School is portrayed as a wondrous place of learning, something that might have been true of one-room schoolhouses for farm families. Certainly my own grandmother's memories of school are fond — farm children early in this century worked so hard that school seemed like a holiday by comparison. Still, the prejudices against the uneducated Slaters, who are ignorant because they don't go to school, are a little hard for this homeschooling family to take.

Oh yes, and there are several cases where someone gets the stuffing beaten out of him (the girls don't fight) and some poisoned animals, slaughtered chickens, and shot pigs as part of the feud. The boys get larrupped when they misbehave and everyone acts as though beatings are natural and necessary.

Still, it's a book well worth reading, for its faults as well as its virtues. It presents a good view of how people lived in Florida around the turn of the century, how they lived and how they thought. The book contains some lovely glimpses into the natural and human histories of Florida.

Mati loved the Pippi books, but she was bored by the Moomintroll books. She also finds E. Nesbit and Edward Eager boring and the Swallows and the Amazons left her cold. She listened willingly to large portions of _Pearls of Lutra_ and a few Tamora Pierce books, however.

Her favorites are very silly — Pippi, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, Homer Price. I've thought that she might enjoy the Dr. Doolittle books or the Oz books, both of which Morganne couldn't stand.

I've ordered Babe and a couple of books by James Herriot (we have a Moses the Kitten book that Mati and Malcolm like a lot). We might go through the E. B. White books; _Stuart Little_ is pretty silly. I'm not sure she's ready for _Charlotte's Web_, though; it's pretty intense.

I've become a late Robert McCloskey fan.

As a child, I enjoyed a few of his books: _Blueberries for Sal_, _Lentil_, and _Make Way for Ducklings_. Simple and clean, everyday stories told with Scots cadences and lyricism. _Blueberries for Sal_ was one of the first books I bought for Morganne when she was small. Each of my children have enjoyed it; I remember times when we read Little Sal night after night.

We discovered _Homer Price_ some months ago in a used bookstore. _Homer Price_ has the same simple charm of McCloskey's other books, simple everyday life mixed with downhome silliness and human foibles. The whole family enjoyed hearing about Homer's adventures; we went off to bed each night with our story itches fully-satisfied. That stuff would be great for slightly older kids. For little ones, I'd suggest shorter, sillier stuff:

 Morganne has recently been on a poetry kick to augment her Shakespeare kick. She's read the three poetry anthologies we own cover-to-cover. Her favorite poets are William Blake and Emily Dickinson.

On our recent order to amazon, we went looking for more poetry anthologies (plus the illuminated Blake). We discovered that Dover Thrift Editions publishes a large series of poetry collections and anthologies. Amazon sells them for 80 cents apiece.

_101 Great American Poems_, assembled by the American Poetry and Literacy Project, arrived yesterday. The Poetry Fairy left it on Morganne's pillow. It is, as advertised, 101 great American poems, by great American poets. No illustrations, no frills, nothing but poetry.

Morganne read us poems last night at bedtime (her siblings fells asleep to the sound of Longfellow, Emerson, Abraham Lincoln, Frost, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes, and others. She then sat up writing her own poems ("Moonlight Itch" is my favorite of last night's creations).

I encourage you all to check out the Dover Thrift Editions poetry anthologies. At 80 cents each, they're a steal, which is what I imagine the American Poetry and Literacy Project had in mind.

Ruth Stiles Gannett's _Elmer and the Dragon_ books

A. A. Milne's _Winnie the Pooh_ books

Dick King-Smith's books (_Babe the Gallant Pig_)

James Herriot's kid books

E. B. White's books (especially _Trumpet of the Swan_ and

_Stuart Little_)

Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking books

Another book in this vein is Salman Rushdie's _Haroun and the Sea of Stories_, a simply charming fairy-tale-like story of a little boy and his storytelling father and their adventures in a magical dream-land. It's reminiscent of (and better than) _Alice in Wonderland_, but softer, gentler, and more loving. The relationship between Haroun and his father is lovely.

Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy, Tacy, and Tib books are full of adventure and fun without anything that is seriously scary in them. Lots of fine messages, too. Marguerite Henry's books about horses interested Morganne a lot for a time. The _My Father's Dragon_ books are very pleasant for little folk, as are the Pippi books.

I love those books as much as I did when I read them as a child. The friendship between the three girls is lovely, the family relationships warm and loving, and the thoughtful behavior of the Ray parents refreshing. The teenage year books are very silly, but they deal well with the issue of identity versus peer pressure.

I found the Yankee ingenuity in _Carry On, Mr. Bowditch_ to be a bit more than I could stomach. It's a fine book in many ways, but I didn't find the characters to be particularly believable.

Lois Lenski is an often-overlooked author who wrote charming historical fiction (and semi-fiction) for children. _Strawberry Girl_ is a wonderful book, doubly so because it covers a time and place (early twentieth century Florida) that has not already been milked to death. _Indian Captive_ is a fictionalized account of the early life of Mary Jemison, a white captive adopted into the Seminole tribe.

Elizabeth George Speare was one of my favorite authors as a 10-12ish girl. _The Witch of Blackbird Pond_ deals with a girl accused of witchcraft in colonial America. _Calico Captive_ deals with women captured on the frontier during the French and Indian War and their subsequent incarceration in Montreal.

Ursula Leguin is a good introduction to science fiction for young folk. She's written a number of juveniles that are very pleasant reading, but there's nothing in _The Left Hand of Darkness_ or _The Dispossessed_ or _Always Coming Home_ that a young teenager couldn't handle.

Marian Zimmer Bradley is also a good writer for young teens. Yes, the Darkover books are somewhat formulaic. Yes, quite a few of the characters are non-monogamous, gay, or celibate. That's one of the strengths of Bradley's books.

Do you mean other than the graveyard scene? He can quote parts of the "alas poor Yorick" speech, his oldest sister's favorite.

Morganne (10) received a game called "The Play's the Thing," a fairly complicated Shakespeare game that you can play on four levels. Comes with a board and 3 decks of cards. Each deck of cards represents a different play, and you can order additional decks. The playing pieces are 17th century Shakespearean actors. There are plot, scene, character, and dialogue cards. The goal of the game is to put together scenes and perform them. At the easier levels, you read the cards, answer questions about the actions, or explain what's going on in the play. At the highest level, you must perform the scenes from memory.

Morganne was thrilled and I thought I'd pass the word on to the rest of you bardolators out there.

Math is another one of the true joys of human existence, but many people have been brainwashed (mostly by public school teachers) to believe that math is dumb and boring. Here I discuss ways to restore your and your child's natural love of mathematics.

_Elementary Algebra_ arrived along with _Mathematics: A Human Endeavor_. I expected the mathematics book to be a lower-level book, but instead discovered something that looked like a college computational mathematics text. I had fun with it, but I don't think Morganne (almost 9) will get much out of it for a few years.

I am very impressed by the quality of Harold Jacobs' books. They are the sorts of math books I might write if I were going to write math books. Conceptual, light-spirited, fun, and practical all at the same time. Each section begins with a comic or example that grabs your attention, followed by a section that explains an algebraic concept in plain English. The problems are based on real-world examples, famous mathematical puzzles, card tricks, and other applications that pique your interest.

When the books arrived, I sat down with them. Two hours later, I reluctantly dragged myself away to go watch my stepson play football. Our next door neighbor came over, picked up _Mathematics: A Human Endeavor_ and sat transfixed for half an hour. Morganne and Garry are sitting on the couch right now, working the problems together.

I think that every homeschooling family ought to have these books available on their shelves. They are like no math texts I have ever seen. Even adults who think they don't like math will probably like these books; they're real page turners.

_Elementary Algebra_ doesn't require a lot of previous math. Basic arithmetic is probably enough; the book covers fractions and negative numbers. Because of the conceptual nature of the book, most of the problems are computationally easy. I would suggest that it would be most useful for children who have a facility with arithmetic; some of the tricks won't work if you get the arithmetic wrong.

Harold Jacobs has a geometry book, too. Judging from the quality of his other titles, it's probably good, too.

Morganne's take on the book? "I like algebra a lot a lot a lot a lot." And she wants us to take the time to do algebra with her every day.

 My husband Garry has been working through the Trachtenberg math book with our daughter Mati. Several people have asked for more details about the Trachtenberg system, so I asked Garry to write the following review:

Our six-year-old daughter has shown some interest in math, but until two weeks ago, her arithmetic was limited to adding and subtracting small numbers and multiplying very small numbers. She wouldn't have been able to multiply 3 times 6, for example.

[When I first read this, I told Garry that I didn't completely agree with it. While it's true that Mati's arithmetic has been pretty much limited to addition and subtraction of small numbers and multiplication and division of very small numbers, she's done a fair amount of conceptual mathematics, including algebra.]

All that has changed in the past two weeks. Since we've started working with the book _The Trachtenberg Speed System of Basic Mathematics,_ she is thrilled to spend time working on math. We've been keeping our math time down to just a few minutes per day and within the past weeks she has learned to multiply any number times 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 10, 11, or 12. By that I mean that she can now multiple numbers such as 12 times 2398485943 without difficulty in about a minute.

The Trachtenberg method was created by Professor Trachtenberg during the second world war. Professor Trachtenberg was a Russian Engineer who moved from Russia to escape the Communist horde in 1919. He went to Germany and became a magazine editor. When Hitler came to power, he spoke out against fascism and was forced to move to Vienna to escape the Gestapo in 1934. When Hitler took Austria, Trachtenberg's name was on Hitler's most-wanted list. He escaped to Yugoslavia, but was captured there and sent to a concentration camp.

To keep his sanity, Trachtenberg moved into a world of his own— a world of logic and order. While his body daily grew more emaciated, and all about him was pestilence, death, and destruction, his mind refused to accept defeat and followed paths of numbers which, at his bidding, performed miraculous feats.

He did not have books, paper, pen, or pencil. But his mind was equal to the challenge. Mathematics, he believed, was the key to precise thinking. In a world gone mad, the calm logic of numbers were like old friends. His mind, arranging and re-arranging, found new ways of manipulating them.

He visualized gigantic numbers to be added and he set himself the task of totaling them. And since no one can remember thousands of numbers, he invented a fool-proof method that would make it possible for even a child to add thousands of numbers together without making a mistake—without, in fact, ever adding higher than eleven.

Professor Trachtenberg spent the good part of 10 years in and out of concentration camps. He finally escaped for good in 1945 and began writing down the methods he had devised while in prison. In 1950, he started Mathematical Institute in Zurich, the only school of its kind. Here, children and adults eagerly learn the simple methods he discovered. It is probably the only school in the world where students—both day and evening—arrive a good half hour before class is called to order.

What is the Trachtenberg system? What can it do for you?

The Trachtenberg system is based on procedures radically different from the conventional methods with which we are familiar. There are no multiplication tables, no division. To learn the system you need only be able to count. The method is based on a series of keys which must be memorized. Once you have learned them, arithmetic becomes delightfully easy because you will be able to "read" your numbers.

The important benefits of the system are greater ease, greater speed, and greater accuracy. Educators have found that the Trachtenberg system shortens time for mathematical computations by eighty per cent.

The Trachtenberg system has methods for multiplying the numbers 1 through 12 with any number quickly and easily. Each number has one or more "shorthand" techniques that you use to quickly go from the number to be multiplied (the multiplicand) to writing down the answer. You always perform some operation on the multiplicand that leads directly to the answer. For example, the shorthand techniques for multiplying any number by 11 are:

1) The last number of the mulitplicand is put down as the right-handed figure of the answer.

2) Each successive number of the multiplicand is added to its neighbor to the right.

3) The first number of the mulitplicand becomes the left-hand number of the answer.

Using these three steps, you can multiply any number by 11 and quickly write the answer. Techniques for the other numbers are similar. Some are slightly more complicated but none require more than three steps and most do not require any calculation more difficult than adding two single-digit numbers together.

There are seven chapters to the book. The first chapter shows how to multiply numbers between 0 and 12 using the Trachtenberg system.

The second chapter moves on to a more general technique for multiplying two 2-digit numbers together such as 45 times 23. The technique is straightforward and much simplier than the traditional method. This technique is then generalized to multiplying numbers with any number of digits such as 549394583945 times 2839430.

The third chapter describes another, faster method for multiplying any two numbers together.

The fourth chapter shows a method of adding up large columns of numbers and quickly checking your answer.

The fifth chapter is about division. As with multiplication, the methods used to divide large numbers by other large numbers are simpler than traditional methods. Division involves more complex methods than multiplication, but the system is still easier to work than traditional long divison and also includes an easy method for checking your answer and quickly finding errors.

Chapter 6 is about squaring and taking square roots. These involve operations similar to those used for multiplication and division and enable you to square or take the square root of any number with a modest set of calulations. As with multiplication and division, none of the calculations are with large numbers and there are ways to check your results along the way.

The final chapter looks back at the multiplication methods in the first chapter from another perspective. It has a short review of basic methods of algebra and then applies these basic methods to the procedures discussed earlier. It walks through the algebra that was used to create the simple rules for multiplication.

If you have a Windows system, try the Dr. Brain games (our favorites are "The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain" and "The Time Warp of Dr. Brain"). Install them on your computer. Check them out. After you've played them non-stop for a couple of weeks, grudgingly let your child have a turn.

At the beginning of the summer, we ordered Microworlds Logo and Microworlds My Make-Believe Castle. Logo is a programming language designed for kids. My Make-Believe Castle is a pre-reading version of Logo.

Logo has been gathering dust on the bookshelf. My Make-Believe Castle was much-loved. One might almost say too well-loved.

It's a clever game, and indeed it does give one an opportunity to play with rudimentary programming. It's well-designed and unobjectionable *except* for its resemblance to television. The child can set up a scenario and then loop it forever. After a period of time watching the scenario play, the child is rendered catatonic.

Not pretty.

Our latest math program purchases were as follows:

Math Blasters 9-12

Clue Finders Math 9-12

Operation Neptune

Richard Scarry's Best Math Program Ever

Well. There are some really good math programs out there (Treasure MathStorm, Logical Journey of the Zoombinis) and then there are the math programs that are arithmetic work sheets dressed up as arcade games. Math Blaster is definitely the latter. While the premises and execution can be cute, the math definitely isn't. Bah, how boring.

Clue Finders is better. It reminded me of the Carmen Sandiego games. The math activities are varied and take advantage of the capabilities of computer learning. You can try things and see how they work. Word problems are common. There are a few sections that are basically work sheets dressed up as arcade games, but not egregiously so. Most of the game plays like math manipulatives. My favorite part is like a geometric Tetra.

Operation Neptune (an old game) is still better from a math point of view. Everything is a word problem where you need to extract the numbers from instruments or charts before manipulating them. Like Clue Finders, this game adjusts to the math level of the player. Best of all, Operation Neptune provides a nice mix of problems in a credible game context.

I was dubious about the Richard Scarry program, but it's really good. Varied math activities provide a nice hands-on introduction to some heavy-duty concepts (graphs, Cartesian coordinates, multiplication, symmetry, sequences and series). The game is targeted at preK through grade 1, but it easily plays to a slightly older audience.

"The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis" is also a good one. "Incredible Machine" is also useful. Besides, every homeschooling family ought to have these games, anyway — they're too much fun to pass up.

When we first got Miquon, my older daughter loved it. She worked her way quickly through the first two books (except for the Cuisenaire rods exercises, which she skipped — she's not the manipulatives sort). After the first two books, she quietly dropped Miquon. The only things she ever enjoyed doing with Cuisenaire rods were the tangram-like puzzles.

My younger daughter dipped her toes into Miquon for about 2 days. She uses the rods sporadically, maybe a couple of times a year. She enjoyed the Cuisenaire rods alphabet book, but doesn't take the rods out nearly as often as she gets out, say, pattern blocks. She also doesn't tend to use the rods as creatively as pattern blocks — they're a very linear manipulative.

So. We've had the rods for 6 years and used them perhaps a dozen times over the course of those 6 years. It was not one of our better purchases.

We have it, but it hasn't been used much. I was both impressed and horribly disappointed with the book. The activities are excellent and do a good job of demonstrating the basic concepts of Calculus. The explanatory text is so-so, and more directed (I thought) to parents and teachers than to kids. Not only that, but to actually appreciate what Cohen is doing, you need to be thoroughly grounded in calculus.

I could use Cohen's exercises to introduce calculus to my kids, but they would have a hard time working independently from his book. A good math teacher could use Cohen's exercises as a launchpad for calculus. Someone without a calculus background could introduce the exercises and work through them with the children, but I think that a lot would be lost without the supporting conceptual framework.

For math enrichment for young children (7 and up, as Cohen's book says), I prefer Theonni Pappas' books. They're fun and interesting and cover a lot of classical math that no longer finds its way into elementary school curriculae.

Something I want to do in a few years is to offer a conceptual high school-level math course for adolescent girls. I think it would be fun; the teachers at our ISP think it would be fun; I haven't anything close to the time to do it justice right now.

I'll second, third, and fourth Zoombinis and also suggest Sierra's The Incredible Machine.

You might look at Harold Jacobs' _Elementary Algebra_. For very beginning algebra, I like Borenson's _Hands-On Equations_, a manipulative-based approach to algebra.

We enjoy George Shannon's _Stories to Solve_ books (written for children) and Raymond Smullyan's logic puzzle books (written for adults).

Logic puzzles are great for car rides, btw. The reader poses the puzzle, everyone brainstorms until we find the answer, and then we read the next one.

The one sitting on my desk right now is _Fractals, Googols, and Other Mathematical Tales_ which is a kind of collection of mathematical wonders. Theonni's cat Penrose acts as the guide to this world of wonders.

Other titles:

_The Joy of Mathematics_

_More Joy of Mathematics_

_The Magic of Mathematics_

_Mathematics Appreciation_

_Math Talk_

No one worries about homeschooling children getting enough P.E.

Learning about the world around us is the ultimate adventure.

For bird identification, I suggest the Peterson _A Field Guide to Western Birds_ (or Eastern if you're on the Right Coast). The Audubon _Field Guide to North American Birds_ has color photos but is generally less useful, IMO. I have both. They complement one another nicely.

Golden Books also makes kids' field guides. They're nice enough, but shoddily bound. You can also get pocket Bird Finders that are a nice size for glove compartment, purse, or backpack. They're also less useful than a good field guide.

 I've had this book for a few years, and it's a good basic introduction to biology. We have the hardbound version and it's gotten a fair amount of use. The metaphoric approach is often ingenious and well-done. However, I do have the following criticisms of this book:

* Some of the metaphors are force-mapped and can be misleading. You need to read carefully to make sure that the illustrations don't lead you down the primrose path.

* Some of the artwork is really ugly. Did they really have to make proteins so unattractive?

* Sometimes (like in the chloroplast examples), the metaphors and illustrations detract from the beauty and magnificence of the living systems they represent.

* The book explains the mechanisms of life rather well, but there's a lot that it doesn't cover. It's not a biology-system-in-a-single book so much as it is a presentation of the basic theories of biology. As such, it's unique and needed, but also ought (IMO) be augmented with more standard fare on anatomy, plant physiology, cellular biology, organismic biology, population biology, and so forth. Biology is one of my great loves, so I'm liable to include things like immunology, field guides, genetics, field guides, endocrinology, field guides, microbiology, field guides, evolution, field guides, and field guides.

* It never really answers questions to my satisfaction. I always need to consult a meatier source.

For young children, I like the book _Being Born_ by Sheila Kitzinger and Lars Nilsson. There's a short, sensitive section on conception followed by a description of the development of the baby accompanied by wonderful in-utero photographs.

The only way to destroy history is to use a text book. The drama, the excitement, the wealth of ideas in human history are all open to the child who wants to explore.

When I wrote that, my oldest was 5 or 6 and reading the American Girl series and Maud Hart Lovelace and biographies of people like Harriet Tubman.

I also read a lot of biography and historical fiction when I was growing up, but I have forgotten most of the titles. By age 10 or 11, I was reading adult biography and historical fiction. Morganne's now 9.5 and she reads a mix of books written for children and adults.

The American Girl books published by Pleasant Company give a good taste of American history from a personal level. The books are for ages 7 and up. Morganne started reading them at age 4 but still reads them for fun sometimes.

Maud Hart Lovelace's books take place in Minnesota in the early 20th century.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books are so popular that I almost hesitate to mention them. Historical fiction/autobiography of a pioneer family.

Louisa May Alcott's books provide a glimpse into Civil War America. They're also interesting because Ms. Alcott was a progressive, working-class woman.

Elizabeth George Speare wrote several good pieces of historical fiction. _The Witch of Blackbird Pond_ and _Calico Captive_ are two of my favorites.

Carol Ryrie Brink's _Caddie Woodlawn_ is an even better view of pioneer life than the Little House books, IMO.

Karen Cushman has written some good historical fiction (Middle Ages), and so has the author of _Wild Child_ and _Juniper_.

Jean Plaidy has written a lot of biographies for children (she also writes biographies for adults). I wish I could remember the name of the writer who focused on biographies of early American women for children.

Classics such as _The Three Musketeers_, _Ben Hur_, _Robin Hood_, _Ivanhoe_, the various renditions of the Arthur legend, Dickens, etc. provide a good introduction to various historical periods and issues.

 While you're there, Eil, pick up Ages of Empire (Malcolm calls it "Ages of Vampires") and the Roman expansion kit. After one too many posts on *that* game, I downloaded the demo from the Microsoft Web site and it was all over. I've been building civilizations in my sleep ever since.

A lot of the Ages of Empire scenarios (especially in the Ascent of Egypt campaign) are non-militaristic, but others are extremely militaristic. You have to build the whole supporting culture, not just an army. Most of the game is building a stable civilization and defenses, not going on the offensive. One of the interesting things is that you get a feel for the different civilizations — why they succeeded and why they declined. Egypt, for example, was, in many ways more an economic power than a military one, something that probably contributed to its 5,000 year reign. Rome, on the other hand, achieved its economic success largely through military dominance.

Ages of Empire helps me understand that issue of deforestation. Razing cities is easy once you have catapults. Nasty things, they can smash a house in two blows.

I think many computer games are educational — the role-playing adventure games teach problem-solving, as does Age of Vampires. Age of Vampires also teaches something about history (after playing through the scenarios, I understand more about the geography of the ancient world and the cultural achievements of each civilization). You get a real feel for the level of achievement needed to invent the wheel or writing, for example. And for how important basic industry (farming, mining, lumbering, building, quarrying, fishing) is to any society.

Garry says this is all a rationalization, that the girls and I are playing Ages of Vampires because we enjoy it and not because it gives us an idea of how civilizations tick. I admit that there's some truth to that. It's a good satisfying game on many levels.

Trial version can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/games.

There's a book called _The First Honest Book About Lies_ that talks about the ways people misrepresent the facts to suit their ends. The book covers things like advertising and social lies as well as optical illusions and stage magic. A good read for children who want to learn that the world is not as it seems to be, and particularly not how advertisers and manipulators want us to see it.