This book describes the way of life of several past civilizations. Details cover cultures ranging from ancient Egypt, Rome, and Europe, to Native Americans, French aristocrats, and medieval times.. Facts include descriptions of clothes and fashions, homes and houses, food and eating, and travel and transportation.

Customer Review

 
Amy G. from TN wrote the following on 02/05/2008:
The Usborne Book of Living Long Ago is one of our family favorites! We have been using this book off and on for three years and we learn something new each time we pick it up. This book is great to use as a simple introduction to world history for young children. The subjects covered are Clothes and Fashion, Homes and Houses, Food and Eating, and Travel and Transport. Within each subject, there is a two-page spread dedicated to each basic time period from the earliest times to the present. The students will enjoy learning fun facts about the most primitive cultures, the ancient Egyptians, Romans, Vikings, people from the Middle Ages, North American Indians and 19th century Europeans. The timelines in this book begin 350,000 years ago, but the timelines are in small print at the top left of each page, so they are easy enough to disregard if this doesn’t agree with your family’s beliefs…but taking notice of the timelines can definitely open up interesting discussions with older children. Two of our children, ages 6 and 8, love to look through the pages of this book and learn about the delicious and sometimes disgusting things people have eaten over the course of time. They also think it’s neat to learn about changing fashions and modes of transportation. In addition to that, they enjoy the hands-on activities interspersed throughout the book. For the Clothes and Fashion topic, students learn how to make a “mammoth tusk” necklace, and Egyptian collar, a medieval pouch, a European collar, and a beauty patch. For Homes and Houses, the children can get some practice in art and construction by making reed paintings, a miniature four-poster bed, a model teepee, and a model house. For Food and Eating, they find out how to make a toy Viking cauldron, cook a pumpkin pie, make Medieval fish pasties, and learn how to properly fold a party napkin. For Travel and Transport, students discover how to make a model coracle (an ancient type of boat) that really floats! The colorful and sometimes humorous illustrations in Living Long Ago are absorbing both to younger and older readers. As with most other Usborne books, this book is chock-full of information on every page, both words and illustrations—so for a reader that gets easily sidetracked, it may be a bit overwhelming. This book is small and perfect for little hands, but the print is still large enough to make it easy to read. It would be a good independent reader for older elementary students (probably 3rd grade reading level and up), but we have used it as a read aloud so that we can all learn together! The only teacher preparation required for using this book is gathering ingredients or other supplies for the hands-on activities. Living Long Ago is a fantastic book for introducing history in a relaxed, fun way!