Tag Archives: Ancient History

Solomon, Hatshepsut, Spartans, Jonah, & King Tut

10/31/2014 Danielle Huddleston Leave a comment

The timeline we are using speculates that Hatshepsut could be the Queen of Sheba that meets with Solomon.

I think it is an interesting theory so we learned about Hatshepsut at the same time we were learning about Solomon.

We used the action bible for Solomon.

“Hatshepsut, His Majesty, Herself” and “Hatshepsut: The Princess Who Became King” were similar books so we just read through one of them.

We also watched “Unwrapping the Pharaohs” by David Down on Hepshetsut.

We read “How the Sphinx got to the Museum” before and the boys liked it a lot.

It is a nice intro for younger kids.

The boys read these top three books on their own.

It is nice and sad at the same time.

We can get through a lot more books but I miss out on some now.

I got this book with the grand plan of doing lots of fun things while learning about Egypt.

The only reason any of the projects in this book got done is because of the boys though.

My youngest insisted on making this house.

All that prep and he spent maybe 5-10mins on it…

I asked if maybe he wanted to put a little more work into it but he insisted it had everything the picture did.

He also really wanted to make the chest in the book.

I just let him go at it.

For King Tut, I had the boys read “The Curse of King Tut’s Mummy” and “Who was King Tut“.

There are some documentaries on Netflix also but I have still not gotten to them!

I have no clue why, it happens.

For Jonah, I thought I would mix it up a bit and bought the Adventures in Odyssey episode about him to listen to.

It was really good and helped the story come to life!

We watched the documentary from PBS called “The Spartans” also.

It was well done and very interesting but you might want to watch it before letting your kids watch it.

They mentioned the Spartans love life a couple times in a way that may not be appropriate and I learned things that I never remember learning about the Spartans before.

Like the city elders got to decide if your baby was worthy of being a Spartan or not, if they decided they were inferior then they would throw them off a cliff…

They also took boys away at the age of 7 to turn them into super soldier/killers.

Apparently Hitler was a big fan of their society if that helps.

We only watched the first episode.

I was pretty scarred from just that.

My boys being typical boys thought a super soldier society was awesome…

They glossed right over the infanticide.

We talked about the drawbacks to being a Spartan though.

I think they realize raising little boys to be killers might not be fun or the best thing for a people.

Boys…

Homeschooling

Samson, Eli, Samuel, David, Saul and Iron

10/22/2014 Danielle Huddleston Leave a comment

For most of our bible history we are using this well used Action Bible.

The boys know that we do not always agree with their interpretation though.

They add stuff that is not in a KJV, I guess to make the story more interesting?

For our study of David I also had the boys read “Showdown with the Shepherd”.

I really enjoy the Imagination Station books and so does my 6yr old.

I tried out a way of learning history that I want to use later on.

The boys learn by answering questions to do with that time period.

I saw a curriculum that taught with this method and thought it was awesome!

I of course can’t remember the name of it now.

If you know could you let me know?

That would be great!

I wrote down one bible verse that they had to look up to finish and the rest could be answered with the action bible.

It took a little bit of time but it was quicker than trying to read all about David.

I knew they probably already knew the information anyway.

My oldest proved that by answering most of these from memory.

We finished up our metal study with another science experiment.

This one involved pouring bleach and vinegar in with steel wool.

We used distilled water this time so we would have a better control.

Our last rust experiments seemed to prove our water needs filtered…

The reaction was so fast!

We ended up going to visit family for the last week of our study of metal so I do not have pictures for that week.

The boys did get to see metal melted down for making bullets though!

I am counting that as part of their study.

UPDATE!

My mother in-law took pics!

I left the above experiment sitting on our table while we were gone.

I was hoping to document when it rusted completely.

My youngest ended up knocking the cups over, spilling them all over the table and the groceries so that idea was scrapped.

Maybe next time.

Do you have a favorite historical bible novel for kids?

Homeschooling

Deborah, the Hittites, Iron, & the Middle East

09/16/2014 Danielle Huddleston 1 Comment

The last two weeks we have been learning about the early Judges of Israel, the Hittites, the Hyksos, the Middle East, and Metallurgy.

I ended up buying the book above “The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe” by Theodore Gray.

If you would like to learn about the elements it is a great book! I really like the visual given for each element!

We also watched “Nova: Hunting the Elements” on Netflix which I highly recommend.

It gives a great intro to what the elements are and is told in such a way that the boys enjoyed it.

Popcorn helped as well…

Netflix also has several “How Stuff Works” episodes on metal.

We have watched the one on steel so far and it was really interesting.

The book above “Metal” by Claire Llewellyn gives a really good intro to metal.

We have been using Wikipedia and the free lapbook I found for most of our information on metal so we have not needed it yet though.

To learn about the early judges of Israel we mostly used the Action Bible.

The boys really like it and it gets the story across.

The “Hittite Warrior” is about the time of Deborah also though so they are learning about it some from that.

The boys have really like this book, the only problem I have with it is we are learning history using Ussher’s Timeline and the book does not use that so some of the information about what is taking place at the same time is off.

I do like them to hear both sides though so this does not bother me too much.

A really fun source for Deborah is the “Battle at the Kishon” by the Imagination Station!

I bought it on itunes and we really enjoyed listening to it!

We watched a video from “Digging up the Past” about the Pyramids of Egypt to learn more about the Hyksos.

Also the Smithsonian Channel has several short clips about the Hittites that we enjoyed watching.

I try to find as much as I can that would give the boys a good idea of what it would be like to live during the time we are learning about.

I also really like these two geography games I found for the boys to play.

The one on ducksters.com you have to name the countries in the middle east and kidsgeo.com you have to place the countries that are in that continent.

My boys actually enjoyed both a lot and I am happy to be learning about them at the same time!

Geography has never been my strong suit.

I found out you can buy Iron Filings from a thrifty mom‘s blog post.

I do recommend that you place the magnet into a ziplock bag before you let your children do this.

They ended up putting the iron filings on the magnet to play with and shape.

I still have not gotten all of the iron off those magnets…

We did the “Eating Nails for Breakfast” experiment.

Being the amazing mom I am, I had them eat a bowl before I explained what we were doing.

My oldest looked a bit sick when I said we were going to see if there was metal in what he just ate.

He was also not really happy that I was using the last of their sugary cereal to compare to the iron in total.

We used hot water to dissolve the cereal.

It dissolved in less than 15mins.

We also extracted the iron so we could look at it under our microscope(one of my favorite school purchases).

It was crazy to look at it that close and think you just ate it!

He was a bit grossed out.

I might have considered this payback for giving me a hard time during some of our school subjects that day if I were not an adult.

But I am an adult so of course I did not do that…

We tested metals thermal conductivity with a spoon and a hot skillet, similar experiment here.

We just placed the spoon on the hot skillet until it started to warm up, we did the same thing with one of my plastic cooking spoons to see if it was a conductor.

Information on Metallurgy is hard to find for young kids so I was pretty excited to find a free lapbook about metals on freehomeschooldeals.com.

We have not assembled much of the lapbook(we had never made one before this) but I am using a lot of the information that they provide.

The next experiment we did was on rust.

I took it from two different experiments actually found, here and here.

My oldest was in charge of documenting the reactions of iron filings in, water(control), water with vinegar, and water with salt.

My youngest was in charge of documenting the reactions of steel wool in, water(control), water with vinegar, and water with salt.

My parents were in town for this one.

We studied the rust under our microscope again.

It was incredible!

We will be doing a slightly different test this week using distilled water.

Our water has too many minerals and chemicals in it and was not a very good control.

I hope this helped someone looking to do something similar!

This took me a lot of time to find information on so I will be glad if I saved just one person a couple hours!

I had no clue that when you try to research “metal” you get a lot of crazy painted musicians…

I did eventually get on the right track though!

Do you have a favorite experiment with metal?

We are continuing our study for the rest of this month so I would appreciate any tips!