Australian Story: An Illustrated Story Review

If you peek in at my blog you’ll probably be aware that we live in Australia, that my husband, and thus my children, are Australians. This means, that when we teach our children history we like to be sure we cover not only US and World history, but also Australian history.

Here’s the thing though, we like to learn our history in a very hands on way. We like to delve into topics and soak them up. We like to feel like we were really there, investigate, question, touch, and really absorb all that we are doing. This means that my kids walk away with a pretty amazing sense of accomplishment when we learn something, but it can also be really daunting for me as the parent/teacher.

There’s a lot of fantastic curriculum out there that pulls together amazing books and resources for World History or US History, but I haven’t found anything that compares for Australian History. Which left me a little frazzled this past summer when I was trying to work out what we’d be doing in that subject area.

I did a lot of asking, because I’m not Australian. Thus my Australian history is limited to what I’ve researched myself, what my husband has shared with me and what we’ve all ready covered as a family. Homeschooling is a lot like that though and many parents aren’t ashamed, if totally honest, to admit that they are learning right alongside their children.

Piecing together our Australian History has been a true family event in our home. I come up with the time period, I look at my spines and then I let my husband help me sort through the massive stack of books that we’ll use to go alongside things. So far so good.

One of the best things I’ve found, though, is the book Australian Story an Illustrated Timeline. Here’s the thing, when you’re learning right alongside your children, sometimes you need a map. A really good map, not one of those crazy GPS maps that will lead you to the middle of the ocean when you were aiming for a mountain, know what I mean?

The Australian Story An Illustrated Timeline is a perfect map! It’s got everything on it from early Australia until 2010. It helps me put everything into a neat and tidy row, or in my case my planner, so I know what time frame we’re covering in what order.

How I Use Australian Story

This book is pretty simple. You open it up and look through it. Seriously, it’s that simple. The idea is to get a view of what happened when in Australian history. There are pictures: true photographs, hand drawn images and even a few pieces of clip art. They are all laid out in historically.

Thus, you won’t find Ned Kelly in the beginning of the book, instead you’ll find information about the various Dutch Explorers who made their way to this great land, but chose not to settle upon it.

For me, I use this book as one of my amazing spines, probably my very first and best spine too. When we finish a time frame in Australian History I flip to that time frame in our book. I share with the boys all the pictures. There are lots of the things we’ve read about or things that were going on during the same time frame we just read about. We discuss them, perhaps even Google them if they are items that are still viewable around the world today.

Then I look at the next time frame and pick out which things we’ll mention and which things we’ll research and study in depth. I jot that down in my planner and set off with my other resources to finish making my plans. I told you it was simple!

What I Love About Australian Story

There is very little not to love about this book. It’s amazing, especially if you a very visual person. I love all the photographs and images scattered on the pages. They really, obviously, make the book.

I love that the dates are bold on the pages. This book doesn’t run in a typical straight line like many timelines, but rather in three columns. Thus seeing the bold dates helps you make note of which thing happened when.

I loved reading the Author’s Note in the back of the book. It was fun to see how the book came to be and who had a helping in hand with it.

I loved that I could pick this book up locally. Our State library{ies} have many copies on hand so it’s pretty easy to have a peek or use it that way, but I was also able to snag this at my local book shop. Once I was able to get them to stop oogling over it so I could take it home…

What I Don’t Like About Australian Story

Honestly, there is absolutely nothing we’ve found in the book that we don’t like, so instead of stating what I don’t like I’m going to share some notes that some people might want to consider:

Notes:

This book is not written from a Young Earth Perspective. They speak of the time when earth was created, yes it uses the word created although the picture implies there might have been a bit of a bang happening there. The first four pages also use the mathematical term “millions of years ago”, in a more specific form debating on what is being spoken of. You could choose to skip those pages entirely if you so desired.

Bottom line:

We really love this book. My boys were delighted to be able to see a picture of the plate Janz left behind, they are inspired by other things they see to want to learn more. Really, when something inspires my children to want to know more, there isn’t much more I can ask for in a product!

To check out other Australian History resources, or the wall timeline that matches this book, check out Kendra’s blog, Aussie Pumpkin Patch.