Homeschooling

Review: Dot-to-Dot Philadelphia

Since I live “out west” I haven’t had many opportunities to visit historical and cultural sites on the east coast. In fact, I’ve only ever been to Pennsylvania once. We spent one day in Philadelphia and visited Independence Square and other sites with significance to early American history.

When I was offered the opportunity to review the We Are Connected Dot-to-Dot! Philadelphia book from Timberdoodle, I was expecting it to cover the historical sites that I had visited all those years ago. I received a copy of the book in exchange for my review and was surprised to discover that it actually covers a number of cultural sites which are apparently along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia. I had no idea!

Have you seen the extreme dot-to-dot books? These aren’t like the dot-to-dot puzzles you did when you were a little kid, where it’s pretty obvious what the object is before you ever start.

Look how dense these numbers are. Any idea what we’ll be drawing? Yeah, me neither.

Most of the drawings are structured in such a way that you follow numbers consecutively until you get to a star. Then you stop, lift your pencil, find the next number and start again. That definitely added to the challenge. Because the next number was usually not anywhere close to where you lifted your pencil.

Just for fun, I did each line in a different color on this page.

The book includes a key in the back to tell you more about each drawing, but it doesn’t show what the drawing will look like. I like that it keeps you guessing as you’re drawing the picture. Once I finish each drawing, I flip to the back to learn more about these places and events in the city of Philadelphia.

I would love it if they would develop more books about different cities. Wouldn’t that be interesting?

This book is included in Timberdoodle’s 11th Grade Curriculum Kit, but I’m not ashamed to admit I got it for me. I enjoy a variety of pencil puzzles (crossword, sudoku, logic…) as well as adult coloring books on occasion. I find them relaxing. The extreme dot-to-dot books fit right in there.

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