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Review: Have I Got A Story For You!

We got an opportunity to check out Have I Got A Story For You! I had never heard of this company before but the videos are by HiGasfy. We are reviewing their renaissance curriculum. I went with this one because in history this year that the time period we are going over. This curriculum has 12 videos you download, a lesson plan, flashcards and a PowerPoint. Downloading the files was a bit annoying because every zip file was missing one of the files so I had to go back to the download link and download them individually. The lesson plans have different ideas of what you can do after you watch the episodes. There are a lot of different ideas so that you can incorporate the videos into other subjects that you teach. The other activities that you can do include art, writing, science and geography. There is a list vocabulary words and even critical thinking questions. I love that critical thinking is in there so that kids have to really think about the questions versus just giving a blanket answer. There are 3 different main artist for the renaissance set; Da Vince, Michelangelo and Raphael. 


We started by watching the video for episode one. Afterwards I asked my daughter what she thought. She is 6, doing 2nd grade and in history right now as I said we are learning about the middle ages. While our daughter loves history class she said the videos are really boring. The green paint guy, Gasfy, was entertaining to her and looking at the pictures was cool the rest of the video did not appeal to her. I found the content to be very informative albeit quite religious. We do not go as in-depth with religion as the videos do. Something else I did not like about these videos is that they censored the artwork. I get that some people might not want their younger kids to see the differences between men and women but if I take my children to an art museum the pieces are not censored. I also found that the information is something that anyone would be able to easily look up and discuss with their student if they wanted to learn about these artist or the time of the renaissance. Same thing with the lesson plans. You could just google some ideas of art projects, make up your own writing prompts or look at a map. 



So, I would not consider this a must have at all. While all the information is nice to have in one spot ready to go you could research the artist of the renaissance yourself. I did appreciate that the videos are not terribly long. And I liked that our daughter was able to answer the questions on her own without help but I think a large part of that was because she already learned quite a bit of it from our history class. If the videos were more engaging then maybe this curriculum would be worth it but for us it was not and I just did not think it was worth it. I would love to hear if anyone was able to make the video more fun for their child. Let us know in the comment section below.


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