A bit of our homeschooling - greek mythology

Our history curriculum is The Story of the World, and I appreciate how the author has interwoven stories from religion and myth with the factual account of ancient world history. That puts the "story" into history, and certainly helps keep my little one engaged and interested.

And the Story of the World has also done a nice job of covering the world, so we've had stories from the middle east, africa, india, and greece. I love the global and multicultural perspective.

And yet, when we got to greece, I couldn't just move on after reading one greek myth to Carbon. I have too many fond memories of those stories, and they also appear so often as references in literature and culture - I wanted to spend more time and read them all!

We started in the myth and folklore section of our library, and there were several decent picture books of various myths. Theseus, Perseus, and Hercules seem to be the favorites for retellings. At the bookstore, we found the comic book versions of the myths, and that was nice also, although the stories seemed much more violent with that style of illustration.

We found books of greek mythology written by two of Carbon's favorite authors: Cynthia Rylant and Mary Pope Osborne. And we watched a wonderful story collection from the Jim Henson studio.

But I felt like there was something missing, something I remembered from childhood that just didn't seem to be in these books and videos. And then I remembered the D'Aulaires' book, and how it gave a sort of family history version, emphasizing how the gods and so forth were related to one another. It is well written and can be understood by children, yet it also seems like a comprehensive account of the main and minor stories. After we read the whole book together, I'm satisfied that we did justice to these stories and that Carbon has been given an adequate taste for now.

So, we can go back to The Story of the World, which I believe is going to take us to Rome next. We'll see how far we get in the main text before the next rabbit trail lures us away ...