One of the best things we as parents (whether we are homeschooling or not) is instill the love of learning in our children. Kids are curious creatures by nature – we just have to provide the opportunity for exploration. As a child, one of my favourite thing to reference was the large set of encyclopedias on our book shelves. I would study things in earnest, eager to learn. Unfortunately – the information in those books is now so sadly out of date that they don’t hold the same appeal for my kids as they did for me.
Thankfully, a bright colourful option is available for them from DK Canada – The Smithsonian Picturepedia. This book is like a whole set of encyclopediae between two covers. (It’s heavy too!)
Inside, the book is divided up in to six main categories:
- Science & Technology
- Nature
- History
- Geography
- Culture
- Sports & Hobbies
Each page is a separate topic within their category – filled with outstanding photography and images combined with lots of short chunks of text which explain and expand. For example, this page on dinosaurs:
Although this page isn’t exactly photography, the artwork is so lifelike and beautiful. I love that it shows readers what each kind of dinosaur looked like, explains some different characteristics of meat eating dinosaurs – such as their anatomy and what they ate.
There are detailed geographical maps in the geography section, and actual historical artifacts in the history section – scattered amongst timelines and other important details.
One section that my boys spent a great long time looking at was the human anatomy. Stripping away the skin and showing the insides of a human body over the full size of two pages fascinated my little curious explorers. They had so many questions about muscles (Do everyone’s muscles look the same if they have big muscles?) and the colours of veins, etc. It sparked a lot of conversation.
We also looked carefully at the astronomy charts – reviewing constellations that we had learned in a previous unit study on space. Seeing the pictures reminded them of things we had learned and talked about then.
Having such vivid imagery in a book like this means that even the littlest of curious minds can explore and learn – non-reading toddlers and early learners, for example. But the older readers can learn beyond the photos to read the short paragraphs and captions to glean much more knowledge that way.
This is why I love books like this Picturepedia – they are exciting, meant for everyone, and help both create and build upon the natural curiosity that we each have. This is such a valuable resource to have in our homeschool.
Visit Amazon.ca to see more inside the book and to order your own copy: Picturepedia
If you are still looking for some books for gifts, check out this great boutique from DK Canada – they have a book for everyone on your list.
Affiliate links used.
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Our family also loves this book! I was pleasantly surprised to see how well priced it was.