I thought I would share some thoughts and photos on one of the kids favourite books about Ancient Rome. This is a book that I bought for my kids over a year ago and they have paged through it a few times but it has really been in the past 2 weeks with their new interest in Rome that we have read to cover to cover over and over again.
We are big fans of the Usborne flap books and own quite a few (if you are in the UK I have actually picked up a few of ours from local charity shops otherwise Amazon is a good source to get them). I like the Usborne flap books because they always managed to get the kids interested and although there is not as much detail as some of the other historical books we use the kids enjoy paging through them over and over again. Also in all the See inside books that we own there is never anything that is included that I feel is not appropriate for the kids and normally they manage to sneak a bit of humour in (which always amuses my son)
The See Inside Ancient Rome book is divided into the following (normally a double page spread for each topic)
The City of Rome – a single page which takes you back to Rome around two thousand years ago.
On the Streets – double page showing how most people lived in small apartments above the shops
Port Life – the ships coming and going at the port delivering supplies. My son really liked that the flaps lifted to see what it would have been like inside the ships (below deck)
At the Baths – double page showing what the public baths would have been like
How the Rich live – Inside a large house of a wealthy Roman – shows the contrast between the way the wealthy lived and the “average” person lived as shown on the “On the Streets Page”
In the Army – examples of what life would have been like if you were in the army.
Gruesome Games – What it would have looked like inside the Colosseum
Rome Today – Single page showing examples of ruins which still exist today and when you lift the flap you get an idea of what that ruin would have looked like in Ancient Roman times
What’s what – Some examples of the people and objects that were included in the book.
I personally think this is a great book to use with a Roman Topic
Here is a link for the book – See Inside Ancient Rome (Usborne Flap Books) (Usborne See Inside)
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(UK link) and if you are in the US – 
). It turned out to be a great sensory activity. At the beginning my son was very reluctant to work with the wet clay but once we had made 1 coin he really wanted to make more and he got right in and loved it.
. And the Pompeii book that my kids are enjoying is 
. The yellow plastic sticks that the kids used to write the numbers on their coins was actually from a scratch art pack that we bought.
. The level 2 songbird stories that we have include the th, sh and ch sounds but no long vowel sounds. The first time we saw the long vowel sounds coming into the stories was in level 3 – 
. This book contains stories with words that use the long vowel sounds, so it is not going to be very first reader because the kids need to already be comfortable with blending and the more advance sounds (sh, th, ch, ee, ai etc) by the time the get it this book. But I think it is a great book for practicing those long vowel sounds as it also uses lots of words with magic e in them.
ofamily learning together 