Review of Heritage History

I need to start this review by saying that I know from my Facebook friends' comments that they love this product as much as I do, so if you only buy one history product this year, it should be this one! (Disclaimer coming...now!) As part of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I received Heritage History's Ancient Greece curriculum free in exchange for my honest review.  Honestly, I LOVE it, and I'm going to buy more as soon as I post this review (I just saw that they have a "buy 2, get 1 free sale"!).

What is Heritage History, and why am I so excited about it? Simply put, Heritage History is a history curriculum on CD.  Now, if you really like daily lesson plans written out for you, Heritage History is not for you.  However, if you, like me, find that a majority of your school day (apart from math and, gulp, science) is devoted to reading living history books with your kids, you will love Heritage History! A little disclaimer of my own: I actually already owned all of the books included on my CD - I bought the whole Baldwin Project collection years ago.  I *still* think this curriculum is a great buy, though.

When you buy Heritage History's Ancient Greece for $24.99, you will receive:

• 46 books
• 50 maps
• hundreds of pages of study aids, including maps, a 13 page guide to Ancient Greek battles, terms, a reading log, a cover page for the awesome notebook you will be creating, and more

What kinds of books do you get? The ones you are already familiar with if you love Charlotte Mason/classical homeschooling: children's versions of Plutarch, Herodotus, the Odyssey, and others.  Histories by Guerber and Macgregor.  Many more than I can list! What if you don't have the right ereader, you ask? If you have a computer, you have the right ereader.  If you have a Kindle, you have the right ereader.  iDevices, you're covered, too.  Each of the books comes in epub, mobi, pdf, and html formats.  You're covered.

So how have I used Ancient Greece? For one thing, it nicely sorted what is currently in 13 separate zipped files on my computer.  All of the Greece books are already here for me.  Also, I don't have to run them through Calibre (a file format conversion program) because mine are in mobi format, but I have since acquired an iPad.  I don't have to sort through all of the hundreds of maps I have saved in various locations: the relevant ones are all here.  Extras, like the list of battles (very nicely formatted and visually pleasing), are a huge plus.  The 95 page study guide is really the biggest asset on the disc, though.

The study guide breaks down all of the books on the disc by age level and color codes them.  Thus, you can tell which books are the most relevant for your kids at a glance.  Then, the study of Ancient Greece is broken down into historical periods, with the relevant chapters in the included books provided (remember, everything is color-coded; all of the hard work has been done for you).  Timeline dates are given and color-coded.  Summaries of all the eras are also given.  Finally, the whole study guide is just so nicely presented.  That really makes a difference in how I perceive this company: they care about the details.

I was not kidding when I said I was about to buy more CDs from this company.  It has made my coming semester so much easier.  All I have to do now is pull some notebooking pages and note on the guide when I plan to use them (if you have an iPad, do make sure you import the study guide to a writeable .pdf.  It makes planning at the library, for example, so easy!  The Heritage History curriculum can be viewed here, and CDs are available from $19.99 to $24.99.  If you prefer, you can purchase the study guide on its own for $12.99 for the pdf.  As I said, I already own the book collection, so this option would make the most sense for me, but I can't get over how awesome it is to have the books already sorted! I can't recommend these CDs highly enough, but don't take my word for it.  Head on over to the Crew blog.