I Used To Know That | Book Review

Facts from School You Forgot to Remember

Take an entertaining trip back to the classroom with I Used to Know That. Witty, engaging, and fun, this little book will appeal to the student in each of us. A one-of-a-kind collection of hundreds of facts learned long ago, it includes:

* Our Changing World: Test your knowledge of the latest geography.
* Prose and Poetry: From Shakespeare to diphthongs, English class will come alive again here.
* Math and Science: Quotients, phalanges, and protons . . . do these long-forgotten words take you back to high school days?
* History: As Santayana once said so well: “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

This book is full of information that, quite honestly I did forget about, minus a few things like the Iliad and the Odyssey, two of my favorite stories in literature. The book is broken down by subject and below are just a few of my “Oh yeah” moments I had reading through I Used To Know That:

• English – I vaguely remember one of my English teachers talking about diphthongs, which is a gliding monosyllabic speech sound that starts at or near on vowel and moves toward another vowel. There was a reason I didn’t pay attention to this. I learned it but never thought I would use it.
• Literature – This chapter is full of great authors from all over the world. Seeing as I love to read and this was one of my favorite subjects I didn’t really learn anything new. I remembered it all.
• Math – UGH! I dislike Math and this whole chapter was new lol as I never retained too much from here
• Science – The Periodic Table of Elements is always a good refresher for me. Too much to hold on to but I love relearning it.
• History – Has always been interesting to me. I love learning about the past on some topics. The best is remembering our presidents.
• Geography – Loved brushing up on my Geography through reading this chapter, I actually learned that I had forgot about a ocean (it was in my head but totally could not recall it)
• General Studies -  I was able to brush up on my Roman Numerals in this chapter, I could never remember them. There was actually a funny guy who sang in bars here that had a whole song about Roman Numerals, and it was quite catchy, too bad I couldn’t remember it that way!

Very interesting book and yet another one that is good to have on hand while teaching my kids. I recommend it to everyone.