Week 21 (2012) - Into Modern Times

I really detest studying the history of our modern era.  Now that we're well into World War II era studies, I'm looking ahead to the rest of the year and sighing a bit....  I do believe that it's a good and necessary study for understanding modern day alignments of allies and trade partners, modern politics, and modern day aggressions (or threats of aggression).  So we are plugging ahead, but I'm really not particularly looking forward to the rest of the year....

Since I didn't mention history at all last week, here's a look at what we've been reading for the past two weeks:

We read more about the era of Fascism from Kingfisher World History Encyclopedia and the DK Millennium Atlas of the 20th Century.



(This edition is more updated than mine....)



I read an old article from USA Today about the one hundredth anniversary of Einstein's "miracle year." (2005)

We've been reading essays and excerpted works for the past couple of weeks regarding the rise of Nazi Germany - how the German people were co-opted, brainwashed, etc. from The Rise of Nazi Germany, Don Nardo, Ed.  This book as provided great discussion material for us.

We've been reading Albert Einstein, Freida Wishinsky.

 


My son completed his reading of The Nazis, William Lace.

We read about World War II from the Usborne Atlas of the 20th Century.



We read about the Bismarck from The Great Ships, Patrick O'Brien.



We read about famous women of the WWII era from Remember the Ladies, Cheryl Harness.



We completed the section of early 20th century heroes (those from the WWII era) from First Facts About American Heroes, David King.



We read about how the various soldiers of WWII were outfitted in A Soldier's Life, Andrew Robertshaw.



We read about how children fared during the war years from  A Child's Eye View of History, Fiona Macdonald.



He read a picture book called Hiroshima No Pika, Toshi Maruki, which about the bombing of Hiroshima and is NOT for younger children....



We read about The Berlin Airlift, following the war (and talked about the beginnings of the Cold War era), Michael Burgan.













My son read Twenty and Ten, Claire Bishop (French resistance); Adolf Hitler, Katie Daynes; and Winston Churchill, Katie Daynes.

         


He's working on completing World War II Heroes, Allan Zullo; and Albert Einstein and Relativity, Steve Parker (he and a friend are preparing reports on Einstein for next week's science class).

  

He completed The Hiding Place and began reading Anne Frank (The Definitive Edition, with previously unpublished material).



Other classes proceeded as usual.  We did attend another play this week and it was thankfully better than last week's offering!  We are doing some volunteer work right now with the daycare run out of our church, helping them get ready for Valentine's Day.  We're also getting our church in on making up car packs of food staples for the homeless.  They will carry these in their cars for the purposes of handing out to those in need when they encounter them....

Regena