Terri JohnsonCritiques

Originally published in the REACHEast newsletter for a homeschool support group in November 2008.

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Blackline Maps of World History CD, originally designed for "Story of the World," offers over 200 professionally looking, hand-drawn maps, both labeled and unlabeled. The complete collection includes Ancient Maps (5000 BC to 400AD), Medieval (400 to 1600), New World (1600 to 1850), and Modern World (1850 to present). Notebook covers for each set are available.

Each set contains a table of contents, an introduction, lesson plans, a glossary of terms, and a list of the geographical regions covered. The lesson plans suggest items to mark on each 8½ x 11-size map. For example, in the New World set, a map is titled “Europeans Settle in North America 1607–1624.” The labeled map shows Plymouth, New Amsterdam, and Jamestown and the names of the Great Lakes. The unlabeled map simply shows the blackline map with graphics for the Appalachian Mountains.
My elementary-aged son has colored various landmarks, routes, and national boundaries, as the lesson plans suggest, on the labeled maps. When he's older, we will use the unlabeled maps with our history lessons.

Maps have multiple uses across the curriculum for notebooks, lapbooks, and wall displays. So, gather your atlases and colored pencils and become more familiar with world geography.

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This book delivers a walk through deep tragedy alongside a grieving mother from the first news of her son's suicide to her emergence into peace. A deeply moving account of the social isolation and stigma endured by surviving family members, this story reveals the unblinking truth of what it's like to survive a tragedy. Told in journal entries, poetry, and essays written over a 27-year period, the reader is brought through each stage of grief. The author opens her heart and her life to help others through their journey of grief. Highly recommended for anyone who has lost a loved one to violence or suicide.