How to Live Like a Stone-Age Hunter

I've been looking for some Prehistoric resources that are age appropriate but accurate for helping elementary aged students understand the time period. Anita Ganeri's How to Live Like a Stone-Age Hunteris one such resource that provides a great overview of the Paleolithic Age in a picture book format.

The book is illustrated with cartoon characters and follows the story of a clan of hunter gatherers living around 15,000 years ago. Dax, a son in the clan, is our narrator in the story and he introduces us to life in the "Stone Age." The author also has text boxes that allow her to add more information that would not fit into knowledge her narrator might have. In the first section one box introduces three parts and names of the period. In order to give the reader more understanding of the historical period the author then provides a time line of history from the Lower Paleolithic to the Bronze Age.

The author then returns to life as a hunter gather using language that children might more readily relate to than more technical terms. For instance the migration of the clans is titled as a camping trip. Most kids think of camping trips as weekend or longer vacations. The title is a little misleading, but the author quickly explains what "camping" meant to the clans.

Moving on we learn about how and why cave paintings were made. There are even descriptions about how paints were made and what the people used for brushes.

The book focuses heavily on hunting. The book describes what and how the people hunted and then how they used what they killed for clothing, shelter, and food. The author introduces the development of tools and the clashes between clans over food, leading to the topic of death and burials.

I found this to be a great introduction or supplemental to a unit on prehistoric man.