Weekly book 4/11/14

This week in history, the early China and the Sui and Tang dynasties (SOTW2 ch. 8). We used this book to supplement our study of the Tang dynasty and to highlight a rare female ruler from ancient times. Although it's light on historical detail, it is a decent juvenile non-fiction (or at least historical fiction) and works well as supplementary reading.

We also returned to one of our favorite video series: Legacy, by Michael Wood. Part three of the series, The Mandate of Heaven covers the growth of civilization in China from ancient times to the present. It covers a greater span than we needed, but we've always enjoyed this series, and it helped put things in perspective on the timeline.

This week in science we took a break from our interminable review of BFSU Volume 1 to work a bit in our garden. That did actually spur a review of our earlier plant studies, which prompted Calvin to fish out The Magic School Bus Plants Seeds (which is exactly what we plan to do this weekend after amending the soil this week). The Magic School Bus series is not one of my favorites for many reasons, but Calvin seems to enjoy them, and as long as we only use them as supplements to more detailed science reading, I doubt they do any real harm.

After reading My Side of the Mountain last week, Calvin spotted this other book by Jean Craighead George and opted to give it a try. We didn't give it the same in depth study that we have to Mountain. Instead he read it the same way he always reads good books—voraciously, and then again and again. After the first read, though, I did have him go through it to take notes and write a short review.