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At the beginning of the year, I started making a booklist for the kids to read through-out the year for story-time and reading. I let them choose which books seemed interesting to them. On the list was Benjamin West and his Cat, Grimalkin. The kids passed over that one, saying it looked "boring". Now, we are in Unit 6 of BHFHG and read about Benjamin West. Both of my olders were SO fascinated by it, that they begged me to go to the library right away to get the book they had previously disregarded. We are LOVING BHFHG!!! Feeling very blessed right now. Love that my kids are being drawn in by their lessons and wanting to dig deeper. Seems like every week, my library list gets longer and longer. Thank you for this curriuclum.

That's fantastic! I chuckled when I read about your children skipping over a book because it looked "boring". My ds9 will not want to read a book if the main character is a girl. But once he starts reading it the story captures him and then it turns out that the book was good even if it had a girl in it! We've yet to have a "bad" book in HOD!

That's funny because we thought the same thing! But you're right.... that book turned out so much better than we expected! HOD's book choices have never failed to impress me.

It was our favorite on the list so far,except we are really enjoying "Follow My Leader" now and I love how it is giving my ds a glimpse into the life of a disabled person. HOD's choices are truly top notch.

We really enjoyed it too! Ds had picked Squanto, but we finished it so quickly I decided to get BW since our library had it. We both loved it!

countrymom wrote: HOD's choices are truly top notch.

Amen to that! We are so blessed to have a list of great books that we know are safe to read to our kiddos.

"Benjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin" remains one of the most memorable books for our dc. They simply loved it, and I also think they link it to its proper place in history. I think it made an impression on them to begin to develop their interests in the form of hobbies. This is difficult when dc are younger, but as they grow older, they remember things like Benjamin's passion for painting that caused him to try all different kinds of things using just what he had around him to do it - even the hair on his cat's tail and juice from the wild berries near his home. Yes, a wonderful book!

In Christ,
Julie

How cute! My boys loved Benjamin West too. In Rev2Rev we look at some of Benjamin West's artwork and read about Benjamin West again. My son remembered reading about Benjamin West several times before. There are many connections in the guides along the way!

Thanks for sharing!

Blessings,
Carrie

We too really enjoyed Benjamin West. It was cool because the oldest is doing Rev2Rev and he chimed in when we were reading it and added some information along the way. It was great!

We loved Benjamin West too. Such a good book and one I had not read before.

Enjoy!