Time to Judge (Part 1)

It is a "Time to Judge" because we have just finished studying what was happening around the world during the time of the Judges in the Bible (more about that in Part 2).  It's also a time to judge my history curricula as we reach the mid-point in the school year (I have a great new book review at the bottom too!).

I realized I needed to make some major tweaks to my history curricula and timeline.  It had become too analytical and I could no longer tie the points in a story together.  It has been my goal for the boys to understand ancient history using the bible as a backbone and reference the events around the world during different biblical times. I need to get back to that focus.

For instance, though I'm glad we discussed Hinduism a few weeks back, I realized it was a belief system, not an event and therefore really had no place to be part of our timeline memorization.  This thought will change how we deal with some other points on the timeline in the future as well.

Here's another example.  As I tried to prepare our study or the "Zhou Dynasty in China", I realized we had already studied it when we studied the Shang Dynasty toward the beginning of the year.  The great video we watched had covered both dynasties and I could find no more interesting children books to read.  Additionally, it was very difficult to tie into the surrounding timeline pieces smoothly.  In the beginning, the link had been the sudden building of pyramids all over the world.  So all we ended up doing was reviewing what they had learned and marking the timeline.

In a similar line of thought, I have added "King Saul" to the timeline and decided to start each week with a summary section that notes when we will go into each item in detail.  I will no longer try to study each point at the beginning as it is marked on the timeline but when it best fits into the story, thus somewhat separating the timeline and our history study (i.e. Studying Homer this week as we study the Trojan War).  I think this will better achieve my goal of creating a living history they will remember.  

I'd like to say I am going to revise it all right now, but that's not realistic.  I will be adding, eliminating, and amending different points over the coming months as I prepare to teach each week's lesson, so stay tuned.

Now for the "Book Review":

Veritas Press just released a new book called Pages of History  by Bruce Etter.  It's a living history book intertwined with a biblical message.  I was intrigued and I went ahead and bought one of the first copies.

"WOW!!!" is a great word to use to describe this book.  If you are part of a CC community its' a MUST HAVE book and if your not a part of CC Community, it's still a MUST HAVE book.  I am going to be gifting it to our best friends who do not even home school.  

The book follows the Veritas Press timeline cards, therefore the Egyptian timeline is different from ours.  They do take the time to explain why they think Hateshput was Moses' adopted mother (instead of Queen of Sheba in our timeline). I'm going to use the discrepancies as a great point to discuss the merits of the two differing arguments (like I said I'm being a little less analytical).

This book is a great overview of history, but what really makes it a must have book is how it ties the bible to each point in history.  For instance, when they talk about Hammurabi, they do a contrast of his code, our modern justice system and the bible.  When they cover the Ten Commandments, they take the time to discuss how they are mirror laws.  They explain how we need to obey both sides of the law, the positive and the negative i.e. Do not murder is mirrored by love your neighbor.

I'm half way through pre-reading the book and my only note of caution would be that the author purports that "false gods" are demons.  This may a topic you'll want to discuss or skip.  This is an example of why I always encourage parents to pre-read ALL books before their children read them.  We have been charged by God as parents to censor what our children see, hear and say.  Only you as the parent know how that best fits in our family in relation to God's word.

I look forward to finishing the book and then reading with the boys and perhaps even incorporating those readings in with our history lessons.