Heroes of History

We are huge fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder around our house.  The whole Ingalls Wilder family is a favorite for us.  So when the opportunity arose to learn more about Laura and her life through YWAM Publishing’s Heroes of History series we were really excited.  Heroes of History – Laura Ingalls Wilder shares Laura’s storybook life to show where Laura came from the the stories behind the books.  This review also included access to the Heroes of History – Laura Ingalls Wilder Unit Study Guide.

Laura didn’t intend to be a writer.  She was happy just being a housewife (like me!).  But one day, Laura decided to put pen to paper and bring her thoughts to life.  Her “journals” became stories and those stories have brought many families like ours great joy over the years.

Laura shared her childhood with us.  She shared her hardships and her fun experiences, her rivals as well as her loves.  These things show us the life that Laura Ingalls Wilder lived over many decades, bringing to life a past that we could only begin to imagine without her stories.

Laura was an inspirational woman.  She is someone I, and my daughters, greatly look up to.  She’s been an inspiration to my life, to our future as homesteaders learning to live in our community. using what we have in life.  Reading about her struggles and her gains has been so uplifting for us all.

Heroes of History is a book series that shares the lives of well-known and some not so well-known heroes of the past.  Through the books in this series we learn more about the past and the way people lived.  We learn of the great things these wonderfully inspiring people did.

I chose Laura Ingalls Wilder as our review book because of our families great interest in her stories but mostly because my Emmalee truly loves Laura and her life more than any of us.  I believe she is a great role model for my teenage daughter and I knew that Emmalee would love learning even more about Laura and her life.

Through Heroes of History – Laura Ingalls Wilder, Emmalee has learned that Laura didn’t intend to be the family storyteller but she had a great story to tell: the story of her family and her life.  She learned that Laura’s prairie life wasn’t easy.  She learned that the life the Ingalls lived brought them closer together as a family because they had to work together and share.  She learned the specific places that were most important to Laura throughout the history of her life.  She learned how the Ingalls survived through one of the worst snows in South Dakota history.  She followed as Laura found love and a life with her husband that was better than she could have hoped for.

As a bonus to this book, YWAM Publishing provides an Unit Study to be used along with the book.  This guide really brings the book to life by providing additional information to expand the lessons.  For this book, the unit study guide is aptly named Heroes of History – Laura Ingalls Wilder Unit Study.  This guide is a complete printable guide that covers information shared within the book.

You receive a downloadable file which has a start page that helps you maneuver the guide to make the most of it.  You can select which form of the study guide you’d like to use: Small Group, Classroom or Homeschool.   Of course, we used the homeschool file.  This file is made for the small home classroom or as I like to say the “one room schoolhouse”.  It explains how to use this study guide for your homeschool class.  This guide is around 24 pages long.

There are two parts to the guide itself simply named Unit Study-Part One and Unit Study-Part Two. Unit Study-Part One is around 80 pages in length.  The guides are black and white for easy printing.  Through these guides you learn quotes, you breakdown the chapters to better understand them and you are given extra information and additional sources to expand your lessons for your students.  Unit Study-Part Two is a small file that includes the index printables for use with the study.  All these come together for a great study on the character you are researching.

Heroes of History-Laura Ingalls Wilder is available for purchase for $9.99 or if you buy from YWAM Publishing they offer the book for $7.50.  It’s also available as an e-Book.  The downloaded Heroes of History-Laura Ingalls Wilder Unit Study Guide is available for purchase for an additional fee.