by Barbara Shukin
This is the new Teacher's Guide to The Ancient History Portfolio. It's the first in a series of guides to support the History Portfolio books. While the Table of Contents in each of the Portfolio volumes already provides general suggestions of what to include on each page, the Teacher's Guide takes it one step further by providing dozens of hand drawn images, crossword puzzles, word searches, full page one-of-a-kind coloring book pages, specially designed lined pages, and numerous topics for reports, narrations, and copywork. In the Teacher's Guide you will find something specific to put into each and every image box and text box. In many cases, there are multiple, grade appropriate suggestions for each box in order to support families with several children using the books. With the History Portfolio Teacher's Guide you will be off and running without the need to pre-plan each page. Whether you use the Guide as-is, coloring, cutting, and pasting the images into the Portfolio, or whether you use it as a springboard and source of ideas, is up to you. In either case you are sure to find that your work is lightened, and your imagination is set free.
The History Portfolio Series encourages rigorous study and plenty of creativity while providing a compact and handsome way of keeping and storing a student's own written projects and reports, colorful drawings, photographs, clippings, downloaded images... anything that can fit between the pages! Each book is designed for use by an individual, child or adult, and will become a unique record of the student's "journey through history".
The History Portfolio Series: Beautiful history books of the student's own making, something to refer to later as the student's interests grow and expand, and above all, books to treasure.
In each of the four volumes of the History Portfolio Series a Table of Contents provides a comprehensive guide to ensure that important subjects are covered. The table of contents organizes history into topics, and even suggests ideas for filling in pages of the Portfolio. Main topics include specific works of literature, important people, works of art and architecture, important names and eventsin history, plus advances in science and technology. Think of the table of contents as a history spine for you to rely on.
The body of the Portfolio is divided into chapters of commonly studied time periods. For example, in the Ancient Portfolio there are chapters for: First Civilizations, Ancient Near East, Ancient Bible Lands, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece & Ancient Rome. Along with one or more black-line maps of the regions being studied, each chapter contains an entirely unique system of "image boxes" and "text boxes". The attractively formatted pages support and showcase the student work, whether hand or type written text, hand drawn images, graphs, diagrams, photographs, or images accessed from the worldwide web... the choice is entirely up to you and your student.
There are several resources in the Portfolio - in addition to the table of contents - that will help with filling in the boxes, including Topics for Narrations and Reports and Important Dates and Events. You can rely on the Book Recommenations resource to steer you to some very high quality literature. Here you will find titles of books written by authors who are passionate about their subjects, and often speak directly to the reader in a simple, conversational style. The bibliography also has an ample list of historical fiction titles to supplement your studies with exciting stories that can bring the time period to life.
And finally, an essential part of the Portfolio is the uniquely designed accordion-fold Timeline for creative coloring and labeling. The timeline is modeled after the Wall Chart of World History, in which each culture or empire has its own strand, running parallel from left to right. This approach allows the student to clearly see, and compare, what was happening during the same time in different parts of the world. For more Sample pages and recommended resources, visit Homeschool Journey.
Teacher's Guide Sample Pages
