Tag Archives: Ancient History

Early Church History

In the midst of the uncertainty it seems silly posting what the boys learned for Early Church History, especially since libraries are closed.

But part of me still wants to hold on to any normal I have so here it is.

After using a curriculum for the boys history, I needed a break from a traditional curriculum.

I did look but did not like anything I found at the time so decided to write my own.

I was reading this book, The Story of the Christian Church that I got while attending bible school on our way to Minnesota and decided that it was so interesting that I wanted the boys to read it.

So I made a study that worked around this book, as well as a worksheet that went with it.

 

I did add other books to our study also.

I really wanted them to read Ben Hur but after I started it, I thought it might be asking too much.

I found the Focus on the Family Audio Drama of it though and decided to give that a try.

It ended up being amazing!

And it was not too scary for my youngest three!

It was so good that both boys went ahead and asked to read Ben Hur!

Then they both told me all the differences between the audio drama and the book.

It was my favorite part of this study.

I also ended up getting a free study guide on the G.A. Henty novel “Beric the Briton” from Nicki Truesdell and the boys really liked it.

She has some amazing information on teaching history also so check out her site.

Ides of April” and “Beyond the Desert Gate” by Mary Ray are so good. My boys really enjoyed reading them again.

My 5yr old liked “Spend the Day in Ancient Rome.” It follows a family in their daily life in Ancient Rome with lots of fun project ideas.

We own three books in that series.

Another favorite are the books and movies by David Macaulay.

They go into the architecture of the cities and are so interesting.

Actually as I was looking up his name for this post, I decided to buy his book on castles and cathedrals to go with our current middle ages study.

They are just so interesting.

I was really happy with how our study of church history went!

Do you have a favorite book that is on early church history, fiction or non-fiction?

Ancient History Curriculum from a Biblical Standpoint.

This book started it.

I tried to get my boys into it when we studied Ancient History 5 or so years ago but they were too young.

This time at 11&12 I feel like so many doors have opened!

They can comprehend so much, that I struggle with not overwhelming them with material to cover.

The Genius of Ancient Man

This book is a great place to start for some christian apologetics and maybe help an older child see history through a biblical point of view.

If you believe God created man intelligent than all of history makes more sense.

Noah’s Ark, Stonehenge, The Tower of Babel, Indus Valley, all of these things point to ancient man being intelligent.

You  will also notice a giant boom of civilizations after the Tower of Babel. Which would make sense if everyone suddenly spoke different languages.

The author wrote a study guide to go with this book and the boys loved it!

Up until this year I have mostly just had the boys reading a lot for history and science, this year I have been having them actually delve deeper and research.

We have had Life in the Great Ice Age for a while and I learned so much from it.

This year I decided to get the boys the study guide to go with it though to see if they could get even more from it.

This would be a great place to start for Elementary Age.

I found this amazing curriculum from Master Books around the same time!

Biblical Archaeology

It definitely pushes them a bit since they are in 7th grade and it was designed for more 9th-12th but they are learning so much!

I love that it helps them see how the bible fits into history.

All of these resources introduce the idea that maybe the excepted timeline for the pharaohs is off.

If you can open yourself to that possibility then you start finding a lot of evidence to the Exodus.

You can read more about it on Answers in Genesis site, here.

I never really understood how important those detailed lists of “begats” were before.

God gave us a timeline.

At the same time we are listening to this amazing audio adventure series called Jonathan Park.

I have been using this series for a while to help teach scientific creationism but these two new adventures happen to be teaching about the same time period we are learning about!

The Dreamers Tomb touches on the evidence for Joseph and Call of the Exodus talks about Moses and the Exodus.

I always come away from listening with new information to look up.

I love that this series pushes me to understand the bible even more.

I had bought the movie “Patterns of Evidence” a while ago and really enjoyed it. It talks all about the evidence for the bible in the egyptian timeline.

Then when we started this study I bought “Patterns of Evidence for Young Explorers.

Both were a great way to get the wheels turning on timelines and the bible but now I have found that they have a curriculum to go with both of them!

We are currently not doing this curriculum due to how much my boys are already doing but I printed the sample to look at and would love to try it.

Patterns of Evidence for Young Explorers Curriculum for Elementary Age and Patterns of Evidence Quest Curriculum for High school.

You can also find it on the Answers in Genesis, site.

I might be a bit addicted to this time period now.

I am currently trying to convince my boys that we should just keep studying Biblical Archaeology for several years…

My 12yr old is not convinced.

Yet.

I will keep working on him though…

Check out my video on these resources.

Ancient China, Gunpowder, and Paper.

china

*This post contains Amazon Associate links

We touched on China BC, here.

This time we were learning about the beginning of Gunpowder, Paper, and China’s three Kingdoms in the 1st century AD

Magic Tree House Fact Tracker #31: China: Land of the Emperor’s Great Wall: A Nonfiction Companion to Magic Tree House #14: Day of the Dragon King (A Stepping Stone Book(TM))
is made to go with the Magic Tree House book “Day Of The Dragon-King (Magic Tree House 14, paper)” but it has a lot of information that was helpful for this study as well.

We also got “The Story of Paper” by Ying Chang Compestine.

I had planned to try to make paper with the boys but when it came down to it what I wanted to do proved to be too much work for me to jump in on.

I found resources for Gunpowder hard to come by but here are two interesting video clips we found on the history channel’s site,

Gunpowder: A Brief Big History

Gunpowder to Guns

characters7

I did decide to delve into Chinese Characters and Mandarin this time though.

characters6

The boys had a lot of fun trying out different characters for numbers.

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The book they used is “The First 100 Chinese Characters: Simplified Character Edition: The Quick and Easy Way to Learn the Basic Chinese Characters (Tuttle Language Library)”.

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We used Tuttle Chinese for Kids Flash Cards Kit Vol 1 Simplified Character: [Includes 64 Flash Cards, Downloadable Audio, Wall Chart & Learning Guide]: Simplified Character v. 1 (Tuttle Flash Cards) to learn some Mandarin.

I have the Early Start Mandarin Chinese with Bao Bei the Panda
videos for children that are great at teaching words and phrases but they proved too young for the boys now.

I was a little sad they are too big for them.

I remember how much they liked them when they were little and how great they are at teaching Mandarin!

chopsticks

I had the boys try out chopsticks for the first time as well!

It did not go well with my youngest…

HA!

If you want to see other resources that I saved but did not get to, check out my Pinterest board for Ancient History, here.