If you've been following along this week, then you already know we've been reading through Cindy Neuschwander's Sir Cumference series. If you haven't been following along, then you can page back a few posts, to see our reviews, and activity suggestions for some of those books.
We also detoured from math into art, during the week, and I checked out a few of Mike Venezia's "Getting to Know The World's Greatest Artists" series.The children, and I have really been taken with the series. Each short book (about 32 pages), has an easy to read text, outlining the artist's biography, giving a short synopsis of political, and cultural, as well as personal events, that influenced their style of painting, or sculpture, and focusing in on what is special, or unique about each artist.
The illustrations rotate between good quality, color photographs of the artists' work, and cartoon strips, showing the artist in funny situations, to go along with the text.
The books are easy enough to read for younger children to enjoy, but filled with enough facts, and pictures of acutal artwork, to engage older children, or even adults.
You can find more about the series, including hands on activity suggestions, and video clips of the animated for DVD versions, at http://www.gettingtoknow.com/.
But I warn you, before you head over to the website, hide your credit cards, and ask a trusted family member to change the password on your Amazon account, because this author not only has the "Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists" series, but also a "Getting to Know All About Art", "Getting to Know the U.S. Presidents", "Getting to Know The World's Greatest Composers", and "Getting to Know The World's Greatest Inventors and Scientists" series, that all look absolutely fantastic.
Not only that, but there's a little button, at the bottom of the that website's page marked, "Order Complete Book Sets Here, With One Click", and offering a 5% discount - AAAAAAAARG!
As if that isn't enough, if you are still looking for more great children's book reviews, and recommendations, click on over to Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns, for this week's What My Child Is Reading link-up.
It's great to be a homeschooler (just keep your library card handy).
Oh man that would be a huge temptation......
ReplyDeleteI've been wanted to do more art and I own a few of the series from my teaching days. I've never used it in my classroom lessons but I'm eager to review them for our homeschool. To keep me from purchasing anymore, I'll refraim from clicking on the links!
ReplyDeleteMust... resist following the links. I think I've seen the series before, but what do you think would be the right age for them if you had to do it with one child?
ReplyDeleteRaising a Happy Child - They are marked K-4, or 5, and that seems about right for a beginning age. I read one alone to C, though, this morning, and she listened, and made comments through the whole thing. I was surpised, because I thought the text might be too long for her. But, she liked the comics quite a bit, so I think the DVDs might really work for preschool age as well. My library has two of the president's DVDs, so I'll let you know :)
ReplyDeleteI have been looking for books just like this. Thanks for the info.
ReplyDeleteThese books look awesome. Too bad the price for the set is so high even with the discount. Our library only has a few of them.
ReplyDeleteHi!
ReplyDeleteI'm George Berlin, I work with Mike Venezia turning his books into animated videos!
I just wanted to add that Mike and I have started a NEW series we wrote and drew together entitled "Mike and George's Weird World Of Wackiness presents"
Vol. 1 is "Ways to get Around" a fun book about we people get places-from dog sleds to rocket skates to boats and planes and wagon trains too!
These are aimed at young learners and have more pictures and simpler writing than the artists books.
Take a peep at our website-
www.mikeandgeorgebooks.com
You can see some sample pages and even email us with what you think!
Thanks again!
George Berlin