Comparing texts with early writers

The more I use and look through our Heritage History stuff, the more I love it.  Especially the book “This Country of Ours,” I’ve read the kids several chapters from this book, and each time we all really enjoy it.

This time we were reading about the end of the Civil War and Sherman’s march through Georgia.

It was covered briefly in our All American History textbook, but it was a brilliant and devastating piece of strategy, so I wanted to make sure and cover it more, and this gave me an excuse to work at comparing texts with kiddos.

As I read them “This Country of Ours,” they were listening for 1 thing that was the same and two things that were different.

I was amazed at their observations.  First they remembered fairly well what I’d read them a few days earlier (everyone always wonders if they do), and secondly they came up with some good observations.

Superman said: Union soldiers found free food.  During the night Confederate escaped.

All of them were fascinated by the fact that in All American History it said Sherman destroyed EVERYTHING, but in reality he made a point to not burn houses so people still had a place to live.  He burned almost everything else, including the food, but not houses.

Batman was fascinated by what they did to the rails.  All American History didn’t said they destroyed them, but it didn’t say how.  In “This Country of Ours,” it explained they heated up the rails and when it was hot enough they tied it in knots.  Batman thought this was fascinating.

I have to admit I did too.

Now, the thing I need to figure out is how to include the cool drawings and illustrations we’re doing for our history into what we already have.

How do you store projects and school papers?  We’ve got a geography book that we glue things into, but I don’t know how we want to do this.