G.A. Henty, chronological order for reading history

Ancient History
1250B.C. The Cat of Bubastes
220B.C. The Young Carthaginian
A.D. 61 Beric the Briton
A.D. 70 For the Temple

The Middle Ages
870 The Dragon and the Raven
1066 Wulf the Saxon
1190 Winning His Spurs
1314 In Freedom's Cause
1340 St George For England
1380 The Lion of St.Mark
1381 A March on London
1400 Both Sides of the Border
1415 At Agincourt
1480 A Knight of the White Cross

Reformation and Exploration
1579 By Pike and Dyke
1580 St.Bartholomew's Eve
1580 Under Drake's Flag
1588 By England's Aid
1595 By Right of Conquest

Wars of Religion and Succession
1630 The Lion of the North
1640 Won by the Sword
1650 Friends Though Divided
1666 When London Burned
1690 Orange and Green
1695 A Jacobite Exile
1703 The Cornet of Horse
1705 The Bravest of the Brave
1710 In the Irish Brigade
1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie

Colonial Disruptions and Competition
1759 With Wolfe in Canada
1760 With Frederick the Great
1780 True to the Old Flag
1780 Held Fast For England
1786 With Clive in India

The Napoleonic Era
1783 In the Reign of Terror
1795 No Surrender!
1795 A Roving Commission
1795 The Tiger of Mysore
1795 By Conduct and Courage
1798 At Aboukir and Acre
1800 At the Point of the Bayonet
1808 With Moore at Corunna
1810 The Young Buglars
1810 Under Wellington's Command
1812 Through Russian Snows
1815 One of the 28th

Indian Troubles and Neighbors' Wars
1820 With Cochrane the Dauntless
1824 On the Irrawaddy
1825 In Greek Waters
1835 With the British Legion
1840 To Herat and Cabul

The Victorian Era: Defending an Empire
1850 Through the Sikh War
1854 Jack Archer
1856 In Times of Peril
1856 Rujub the Juggler
1860 With Lee in Virginia
1865 Out with Garibaldi
1867 The March to Magdala
1870 Maori and Settler
1870 A Woman of the Commune
1870 The Young Franc-Tireurs
1873 By Sheer Pluck
1873 The March to Coomassie
1879 For Name and Fame
1880 The Young Colonists
1882 A Chapter of Adventures
1885 The Dash for Khartoum
1896 Through Three Campaigns
1898 With Kitchener in the Soudan
1899 With Buller in Natal
1900 With Roberts in Pretoria
1900 With the Allies to Pekin

Mapping out the Middle Ages

We will begin the next season of schooling here the end of this week, with a jaunt thru the Middle Ages. We have an interest here with knights, castles, Robin Hood and King Arthur's legends so I'm planning out the next year to focus on this time frame.
I am totally not above exploiting a current interest for the sake of schooling!

So, for the past few weeks I have been browsing websites and book lists, printing reams of pages for lengthy lapbook and notebook selections, organizing our necessary readers here at home, downloading free resources to iBooks and our Kindle app, and browsing used books for deals on good books to use this next season. I have been to AmblesideOnline, Tanglewood Curriculum We will utilize the idea of notebooking and lapbooking for the majority of our work this year. With a topic like Medieval Times, we probably won't stick to conventional lapbooking though, and will put together a mutated version combining the best of both styles.  I am looking at inexpensive artist sketch books for our notebook foundation. If I can't find them on the cheap, we will probably just go with bulk cardstock or cover stock paper and 3-hole them into binders.

I have now re-organized our main school shelves to accommodate our resources, loaded several large binders with print-outs ready for use, set up the work boxes to organize the daily work, and I am hoping to find goodies to decorate our bulletin board as well.



So...what are our plans? Varied, of course, with my range of ages from 6yo up to 14yo. My main helper day to day will be my right hand, 17yo daughter. Here's our general layout...

Bible
Calvary Children's Ministry lessons, 1-2 lessons/week, keeping the subject together
Understanding Charlotte a CM blog has some reading plans already laid out as well We will probably pick up with these and notebook/illustrate each reading for our notebooks
Amblesideonline's Hymn Study, 1/week
Little Folded Hands, Prayers for Children for memory work and skills

Math/Grammar
Our core in these areas has been Rod and Staff texts for the past handful of years, and we're not making any changes there. I do go back and forth using Ray's Arithmetic and the original 1836 version of McGuffey Readers for supplement and quiz work though. Dollar Homeschool has a good price for the entire eclectic education series' (Rays, McGuffey, Harvey's, Thalheimer's and Norton's) all contained in CD form.
We always find bits and pieces online to pad out our lessons and supply extra work or just fun work, such as here
In addition to this, we have spelling daily, and the middles do a lesson in Apples daily.
We will be reading thru Poems Every Child Should Know, 1/week plus illustrating it for our notebooks. This will work into copywork as well.



History
This will be our spine this year, our main reading to lead our Middle Ages study and lapbooking season. Our core texts will be An Island Story, 2 chapters/week on Mondays and Wednesdays, A Child's History of England, 1 chapter/week on Tuesdays, and Story of the World v2, 1 chapter/week on Thursdays.
Our lapbook and notebooking resources have come from all over the Internet. Great sites like HomeschoolShare and Dynamic2Moms filled my lapbook binder, I've been bookmarking all manner of Medieval Times websites, information on castles, knights, and more. I'm sure we won't use all of them, but I'm all about the over-kill :-)

Geography
We'll do as we usually do and map our the locations and such thru our reading. With a spine taking us thru The British Empire of old as they really grew their roots, we will have plenty to do. Our study starts with the Vikings so we will hit the gate running with plenty of adventures in mapping.

Science/Nature Study
We will be using a 2 week unit study approach this year to the animal kingdom at large. Everything from worms, butterflies, wasps, spiders, snakes, bears, turtles, ocean life, and exotic rain forest creatures. Our unit on birds will most likely stretch out to at least 4 weeks, as will the ocean life. Padded out, this should last us all season (36-40 weeks).
This has since changed in the plans. We really enjoyed using God's Marvelous Works (Rod & Staff) last year, so we are going ahead with God's Marvelous Works book 2 this year. There are 4 units for the year, covering 30 lessons. We will study thru Algae and Fungi, Mammals, Sponges, Mollusks, Sea Worms and Jellies, and Amphibians. We will take 1 week to study each lesson, making notebook.lapbook pages and so forth. The unit of Mammals will most likely pad us out an extra 6-8 weeks to complete the entire year.

We will continue along with reading lessons using AlphaPhonics, Word Mastery and 100 Easy Lessons. Here are the great worksheets for the lessons in 100 Easy Lessons, from Donna Young (also a great site for just about every single thing you can think of for planning and organizing your school year!)

We will work on handicrafts and other projects that tie into our time frame, such as stained glass 'windows' and maybe a chain mail project.

And now, the book list. It's definitely not all-inclusive, but I have browsed around, and these suit our interests nicely. I am using as many free, online or downloadable texts as I can find, but we will purchase a few books (used) to add to our library here. For our own library, I try to locate inexpensive hardcover volumes to keep.

Henty has a great assortment for us, including:
In Freedom's Cause
Winning His Spurs
St. George for England
A Knight of the White Cross
The Dragon and the Raven
The Boy Knight
At Agincourt
Wulf the Saxon
Ivanhoe, Walter Scott
H.E. Marshall books free online, Baldwin Project has so many good titles to read online
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Howard Pyle
Otto of the Silver Hand, Howard Pyle
Stories of King Arthur's Knights as Told to the Children, Mary MacGregor
King Arthur and His Knights, Maude L. Radford
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain
Viking Tales, Jennie Hall
Viking Adventures, Clyde Robert Bulla
The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights, Sir James Knowles
Legends of the Middle Ages, Hèlène Adeline Guerber
Sir George and the Dragon
Harald and the Stag
Miss Frizzle's Medieval Adventures
Castle, Robert Macaulay
Robin Hood
Knights of the Round Table
The Usborne Book of Castles
The Door in the Wall
The Kitchen Knight
50 Hands-on Activities for Knights and Castles
Days of Knights and Damsels activity guide
In the Days of William the Conqueror
When Knights were Bold
King Arthur and His Knights
The Knights of the Silver Shield


Other Resources we may utilize:
Storm The Castle has a great list of projects we will definitely be putting into the works here during the year! There are catapults, shields and masks, swords if you're interested, diorama projects and so much more. Thank you Eddie for the heads-up in the comments! We would have missed this great addition! edited addition 8/3
History.com site for The Middle Ages
A Book in Time, Middle Ages
A Book in Time, World History reading list
Chronicles of The Earth blog  Story of the World and lapbook resources Story of the World V2 Resources
Busy Bee Kids Crafts
Middle Ages Games and Activities
Mr Donn's Middle Ages links
Webtech Middle Ages
Sacred Heart of Jesus Academy has a nice collection of book ideas for Middle Ages
Learning Adventures Curriculum, Collection of info pages
Kickbutt Crazy Lapbooks page for Medieval Times
Mattman's Arthurian Resources
Paula's Archives Literature to Supplement History
History for Kids, Middle Ages Projects
AtoZ Kids Stuff pages
Castle craft project, younger levels
Britain Express Medieval History
England in the Middle Ages 
The Middle Ages, Chivalry, and Knighthood
Classical Homeschooling's History on the Internet list
Viking Network Ireland, The Vikings
a great school page on The Middle Ages
Lady of Shallot poem, Alfred Lord Tennyson
King Arthur and the Knights of The Round Table information
Interactives The Middle Ages
Travel to The Days of Old  These pages are from Beacon Learning, there are a lot of lessons to glean from here
FunSchooling Unit Study Archives, Kings, Queens, and Castles
Listmania! list of Kid's Books for Middle Ages and all ages books on Middle Ages

On another note, just for great reading, Classic Reader Online has a lot of good reading in various genres free, online. There is also FullBooks.com, but I haven't checked that one out much yet.


Many titles are available free online thru resources like Project Gutenburg, Baldwin Project, archive.org, and other free text sites, with some available as audio reads as well. Where I could, we utilized these free resources and downloaded them for reading via iBooks or Kindle. Definitely don't go by just my suggestions here for book locations...Google them for yourself and find the source that suits your own needs best.

Ambitious, I know. We will never read everything, but with so many great titles available free online, how could I refuse to load them up just in case we need more free reading fun? I love having too many options than coming up short. There are far more titles and resources available out there than I've listed here. So many great bloggers have been thru the Middle Ages and have lots of notes, ideas, and projects to share. If anyone finds any blog  notes out there, please do share here in the comments!


- Blessings from Abundant Blessings Homestead!

Using Henty for Unit Studies, Vocabulary, and Character

 As any Charlotte Mason follower will tell you, reading good, solid, living books is the best way to instill the good things you want into the hearts and minds of your children.  Reading trivial fluff, as most "literature" that mills out today could be (perhaps loosely) described, only serves to provide time usage.  Reading the living books of generations where honor, character, integrity and morals were highly prized and strongly emphasized, instills so much more into our children, and is hardly a simple usage of time.We just don't have the same understanding of moral character and true values in our society these days.  Personal honor ranks rather low as something to cultivate in the general population.

We love Henty if for nothing more than great family read-alouds.  Forget the fact you are learning a great deal of actual history in the process, or witnessing those true events through the eyes of characters with a strong moral direction in their lives.  They are just plain good, quality reading :o)  To have them as free texts online, available to print off and incorporate into our studies and home libraries is just a huge bonus!

We are downloading and saving the texts that are available here onto a falshdrive for ease in reading on the mini netbook, or to print ourselves and bind.  Staples, Office Depot, OfficeMax and other similar shops will take your flashdrives or CD ROMS and print them and spiral bind them at a cost.  Either way, you will have a great library ready for cozy reading and fun homeschooling.

Here are some notes from the Robinson Curriculum site concerning the Henty stories and some of their homeschool usage:

Using Henty as a Charlotte Mason-style vocabulary resource:

In addition, the vocabulary and sentence structure of scholars in Henty's time were far superior to those of most writers today. While the reader is enjoying a tale of adventure and learning history, he is also subconsciously learning his writing and reading skills by means of the example set by the writer. It is by emulation of others that these skills are best obtained, and Henty sets a superb example - while strongly holding the student's attention.
Grammar and spelling books cannot compete with the verbal skills that a student acquires from the books and spoken words that attract his greatest interest. While a student may learn to answer test questions appropriately, it is the verbal abilities that he actually adopts and applies to everyday life that will determine his future. It is these skills that G. A. Henty effectively improves.

Wholesome Examples of Integrity and Character:G. A. Henty lived during a time in which honesty, integrity, hard work, courage, diligence, perseverance, personal honor and a strong Christian faith were greatly valued. This was especially true of members of the British armed forces, of which Henty was a part. As a consequence, Henty's heroes are models of these virtues of personal character - and always owe their successes to these characteristics.
The young reader identifies with Henty's heroes while he is vicariously reliving their experiences as he reads. These heroes become, for the duration of the story, his peers and examples - and, children learn, almost entirely, by example.
American and British educators a century ago were as much concerned in building good character in their students as they were in imparting to them academic knowledge. This accounts for the great popularity of Henty's works during that golden period of education.

Uusing Henty for unit studies:
There are two types of fiction: hard fiction and soft.  Hard fiction takes place in a reality that is as true to science, engineering, and history as possible with drama and characters added to make the story.  Henty writes hard historical fiction.
In G. A. Henty's, Cat of Bubastes, topics such as irrigation, deserts, and crocodiles are discussed in the context of the story.  This is true of the stories in general so that the student, while reading the books, is given a history lesson, since each story takes place in an actual historical setting, as well as topical studies as characters interact with the environment around them.
Military discussions often take into account the engineering and science involved.

Year			ANCIENT HISTORY
1250 BC			The Cat of Bubastes
220 BC			The Young Carthaginian
A.D 61			Beric the Briton
A.D.70			For the Temple
			THE MIDDLE AGES
870			The Dragon and the Raven
1066			Wulf the Saxon
1190			Winning His Spurs
1314			In Freedom's Cause
1340			St. George for England
1380			The Lion of St. Mark
1381			A March on London
1400			Both Sides of the Border
1415			At Agincourt
1480			A Knight of the White Cross
			REFORMATION AND EXPLORATION
1579			By Pike and Dyke
1580			St. Bartholomew's Eve
1580			Under Drake's Flag
1588			By England's Aid
1595			By Right of Conquest
			WARS OF RELIGION AND SUCCESSION
1630			The Lion of the North
1640			Won by the Sword
1650			Friends Though Divided
1666			When London Burned
1690			Orange and Green
1695			A Jacobite Exile
1703			The Cornet of Horse
1705			The Bravest of the Brave
1710			In the Irish Brigade
1745			Bonnie Prince Charlie
			COLONIAL DISRUPTIONS AND COMPETITION
1759			With Wolfe in Canada
1760			With Frederick the Great
1780			True to the Old Flag
1780			Held Fast for England
1786			With Clive in India

Some notes about Henty reading, courtesy of Timberdoodle:

If you also are looking for history books for your older children, books that will be historically accurate and will stretch their minds, but will not compromise your family's standard of decency, you will be very pleased to learn about the works of G.A. Henty (1832-1902).

Known as "The Boy's Own Historian," his historical epics are profoundly factual stories that highlight some of the greatest people and moments in history. Written to satisfy young men's insatiable hunger for adventure, Henty's stories can be equally riveting for your daughters.

Each story revolves around a fictional boy hero who is diligent, courageous, and intelligent. Where needed, these boys fought wars, sailed seas, prospected for gold, and aided in the overthrow of evil empires. Through Henty's heroes, your child will meet historically strategic leaders and acquire an awareness of the cultures of various European and pagan civilizations.

Each volume of Henty's series is a library-bound hard-cover edition, designed to endure to the next generation. Each book ranges from 200 to 398 pages. Note: in accordance with the period in which they were written, there are a couple of books where an occasional derogatory term is used, or inappropriate dress, or rather lack of it, is illustrated. Preview the books with a bottle of white-out, or train your eldest to search out these problems and eradicate them.

G.A. Henty Books

You can print off and bind G.A. Henty books yourself...or load them on a CD ROM and take them to Staples or Kinkos, OfficeMax or Office Depot and let them print and bind them.

Either way, they are wonderful read-alouds and definitely good history reading.

G.A. Henty Online

We have already downloaded (I did mine as a PDF file...) The Cat of Bubastes, The Boy Knight, Friends, Though Divided, Forests and Friends...and I'll finish capturing the rest on the flashdrive!

Added Notes: 

Hard Bound, Soft Bound, and CD-ROM editions. All 99 of G. A. Henty's books are now available in print and digital formats.  The CDs also includes 53 short stories by Henty and 216 short stories by his contemporaries. Written during the latter part of the 19th Century, G. A. Henty's books were very popular and widely used in the schools of Britain and the United States during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

While many children's adventure books that emphasize the traits of courage, high moral character, diligence, perseverance and other valuable personal virtues were written during this period, G. A. Henty's books are unique. Each adventure takes place within the setting of some important period in human history. From the fall of Jerusalem to the American Civil War, Henty's heroes live their adventures within exciting historical events. The reader learns much detailed history while he is being entertained and taught by exemplary heroes.Moreover, through his personal experiences and careful scholarship, Henty provides very detailed and accurate accounts of history. While one might read a section of a history book concerning, for example, the conquering of Mexico by Spain, most such accounts are dry and shallow in comparison with Henty's tale of the primary happenings and of the way of life of the people caught up in those events.
From the French Revolution to the Great Plague of London, from the Crusades to the American Civil War, Henty readers learn in-depth history, superior vocabulary and literary techniques, and the advantages of high personal character - while they are being entertained by a master storyteller.

And a chronological listing of the Henty stories is available here at the Robinson Curriculum site.

1381		A March on London
1400		Both Sides of the Border
1415		At Agincourt
1480		A Knight of the White Cross
		REFORMATION AND EXPLORATION
1579		By Pike and Dyke
1580		St. Bartholomew's Eve
1580		Under Drake's Flag
1588		By England's Aid
1595		By Right of Conquest
		WARS OF RELIGION AND SUCCESSION
1630		The Lion of the North
1640		Won by the Sword
1650		Friends Though Divided
1666		When London Burned
1690		Orange and Green
1695		A Jacobite Exile
1703		The Cornet of Horse
1705		The Bravest of the Brave
1710		In the Irish Brigade
1745		Bonnie Prince Charlie
		COLONIAL DISRUPTIONS AND COMPETITION
1759		With Wolfe in Canada
1760		With Frederick the Great
1780		True to the Old Flag
1780		Held Fast for England
1786		With Clive in India

THE NAPOLEONIC ERA
1793		In the Reign of Terror
1795		No Surrender!
1795		A Roving Commission
1795		The Tiger of Mysore
1795		By Conduct and Courage
1798		At Aboukir and Acre
1800		At the Point of the Bayonet	82
1808		With Moore at Corunna	83
1810		The Young Buglers	84
1810		Under Wellington's Command	86
1812		Through Russian Snows	87
1815		One of the 28th	88
		INDIAN TROUBLES AND NEIGHBORS' WARS
1820		With Cochrane the Dauntless	90
1824		On the Irrawaddy	91
1825		In Greek Waters	92
1835		With the British Legion	93
1840		To Herat and Cabul	94
		THE VICTORIAN ERA: DEFENDING AN EMPIRE
1850		Through the Sikh War	96
1854		Jack Archer	97
1856		In Times of Peril	98
1856		Rujub the Juggler	99
1860		With Lee in Virginia	102
1865		Out With Garibaldi	103
1867		The March to Magdala	104
1870		Maori and Settler	105
1870		A Woman of the Commune	106
1870		The Young Franc-Tireurs	107
1873		By Sheer Pluck	108
1873		The March to Coomassie	109
1879		For Name and Fame	110
1880		The Young Colonists	111
1882		A Chapter of Adventures	114
1885		The Dash for Khartoum	115
1896		Through Three Campaigns	116
1898		With Kitchener in the Soudan	117
1899		With Buller in Natal	118
1900		With Roberts to Pretoria	119
1900		With the Allies to Pekin