This week’s product is a deck of cards featuring artwork, text, and images depicting the classical works of Western civilization. It is called Classics Cards. The deck comes from The Refined Schoolhouse over here. Cost is currently $64.99 for the deck of 148 cards.

It’s a simple product with potential for great impact for education. The subtitle of the product is “A Daily Introduction to the Classics.” That’s how I strive to use it, as in daily, but I sometimes forget, truth be told, LOL. I keep it at the bookshelf by my dining room table, with this poetry book, and my decks of trivia and other question cards from games, and some of my mealtime games.

The idea is to do one card a day and the poem of the day from the poetry book at dinner time. Then we do some trivia questions and a getting-to-know-you question or two. One side of a Classics Card features the artwork or the image of something to do with the classical work or the creator of the work. The other side has an excerpt from the poem, or bio info about the creator, or a description of the classical work, and often the date. Sometimes it has a QR code to scan so you can instantly listen to the classic if it’s music. Sometimes the images are in full color, but mostly they aren’t. The 4″ x 6″ cards are fairly thick and durable to stand up to lots of use from little hands.

My only two minor complaints about this product are:

1. I wish the box was made out of thicker material and that the bottom flaps were sealed. The box, including the bottom flaps, are flimsy compared to the size of the deck of cards they all contain. It is easy for the bottom flaps to get loose, letting the cards easily slide out the bottom. I fixed the problem by sealing it all with packing tape.
2. I wish that this product had come out sooner, like over ten years ago, LOL! I wish I had had this deck when all my seven children were at home. I’m thinking of all the possibilities these cards open up. You could easily go through all the cards in less than a year. You could even go through them twice in less than a year, since 148 x 2 = 296. 296 is less than 365 days. You could review them as a family year after year. You could use them as flash cards, showing the front to see if anyone remembers what the picture is about. After reviewing them multiple times, you could try giving out little key words or phrases to see what your children remember. You could buy two sets and play a Memory game. Since most of the cards have a date on the back, you could play a Timeline game, like over here. This product is a homeschool mama’s dream! I give the product 4.9 out of 5 stars!