Saturday, April 9, 2011

Some Russian History too.

Most of the history studies this whole year have mainly been US History. But I felt like it would be a good idea to throw in a little about other countries too. Especially since the rest of US History (the stuff from the last 100 years or so) is so tied to what is happening in the rest of the world. And since we need to introduce the ideas of Socialism and Communism (they play a big role in the space race, the cold war, and the Vietnam and Korean wars. I thought we should have a little better understanding of what happened in Russia. I am sure it will lead to some good discussions about forms of Government and of course I get to share my thoughts on the subject.

I decided to start by listening to the audio book The Royal Diaries - Anastasia the last Grand Duchess, Russia
I am often surprised at what my boys will let me play for them. They don't seem to mind the American Girl books and this is the second of the Royal Diaries we have read. They get involved in the story I guess and don't mind that it is a female protagonist.

We haven't finished this book quite yet (we still have half of the last disc to go) so I don't know how they deal with the actual end of this Grand Duchess. So far it has been very interesting to see the goings on of the Tzar's family before WWI and into their overthrow through the eyes of this young girl.

Sophie loves all the references to places or things we have studied years agao with FIAR units about Russia. It is nice to know she was listening and remembers.

I can't say our library is going to be lot of help when it comes to teaching Modern History through "Living books" I don't know if I would call this one a "Classic" but it is worth a read.

1 comment:

Bibliophile said...

How are you going to handle the problem of the death of the Grand Duchess? You know that all the imposters have been proven to be false and that the bodies of the Romanovs were discovered about twenty years ago, including Anastasia's?