What do Miley Cyrus, Pope Francis, and Walter White have in common? Well…very little, actually – except that they are all listed in The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2014. I’ll be honest with you: I can’t remember ever flipping through the pages of an almanac until recently. I’m sure I did back when I was in school. I also used encyclopedias back then. Now I – like most of you, I’m sure – do a quick web search when I’m looking for a bit of data about something. But sometimes it’s just too much trouble to sift through all the information that comes up. Or maybe your internet isn’t always very reliable (like ours every evening from 7 to 10pm). Or maybe you’re just as nerdy as we are and love trivia. We’ve actually had a lot of fun thumbing through The World Almanac.
We took time to review the highlights of the past year’s news. We all learned a few things that we’d either forgotten or somehow missed – like the fact that former NASCAR racer Dick Trickle passed away in May or the story about the young woman who cancelled her wedding and instead of trying to get a refund for the four-course wedding reception decided to invite 200 homeless people to the dinner. We looked at voting records of our representatives, short biographies of U.S. Presidents, up-to-date information about some of the most common diseases and illnesses. I always thought almanacs had “new” information and stats in them and I honestly didn’t know that they had so many basic facts. We also used the time chart to figure out what time it was where we are and what time that makes it for our friends in California. We read about the International Space Station and looked over a chart of notable space missions, which thrilled my little scientists. There are also three sets of color pages: Year in Pictures, Flags and Maps, and Highlights from several major categories such as Science & Technology, Sports, Arts, and People.
I think my favorite thing about the almanac is that it provides a lot of information without being overwhelming. It’s easy enough to navigate that my kids can use it on their own and I don’t have to worry about anything showing up in an online search that I’d rather them not see or accidentally click on to someofficialwebsite.org instead of someofficialwebsite.com and they get a peek of the Terrible Awful. This is a book that we’ll keep in circulation and certainly be using as a part of our homeschool studies.
The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2014 :: $13.99
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