MYSTERY OF HISTORY,VOLUME 1

(Written by Justin's wife) Disclaimer: if you aren't a Christian, this curriculum may not be for you. This is a Bible-based curriculum that shows how what happened in the Bible aligns with other events throughout history. It follows the young earth creationist belief. The third edition is fantastic because it includes great colored photographs and is hardcover. One little tweak I would make would be explaining artistic license to your student when it comes to the pictures. I believe the author used pieces of historical art to show scenes such as "Cain and Able" or "The Prophet Isiah". Some of these pictures show people one way when there's no certainty that is how that person actually looked. Especially when talking about ancient history. So I think for this it's helpful to let students know that artists' pull from their own ideas of how someone should look.The text is well done. Accessible for students of different ages. The author tries to word it like she's having a conversation with a friend, rather than keeping it dry like many textbooks do. I'm an adult and it kept my attention, and even my four year old has shown an interest in it. I can't judge what an older kid or teenager would think, since I only have a younger child.

Love this series

Haven't started using yet, but just flipping through we are impressed. The teaching companion PDF is chalk full of enriching ideas to correlate with the lessons! So exciting to use this in our home classroom this year

I can't say enough about this series MOH 1 -MOH 4. I have used it with my kids ages 5, 7, 10, 13, 16,17. Using Brightidea press to print out coloring pages that go perfectly with every lesson for the Youngers and then usingthe notebooking pages for the middles and tests and quizzes for the olders...We ALL loved listing to the audios (with nice calm music that goes to the theme of each lesson) of them...I think it was one of the kids favorite times of day. 3 days per week. Finished each vol in a school year.WHAT I LOVE THE MOST about it is: 1.) it ties in Jesus/the Bible...into every lesson near the end...which totally makes sense bc Jesus is part of every day of History! It is NOT over spiritualized though...I grew up with Abeka which kinda did that. She deals with the best and the worst parts of history and does not takes a "side"...but gives various views (ie. like how people saw Christopher Colombus). THe people in history come across as they were... Real. Sinners. In need of God's mercy. Making good choices and bad. It was clear to myself and the kids how much choices affect history...and 2.) She is a GREAT story teller and she wraps you into the Mystery that is History.I just have to say I am a VERY eclectic homeschool mom that has tried out so so many curriculum...and of all the curriculum this is the ONLY one I have ever stucj with through all my kids and then did another round 5 years later :-)

We bought all parts of the curricula & worked through it all for 1/2 of it and a bit beyond. We got 100% on almost all of its pretests for the whole book. It is a narrative book as if grandma tells you stories at bedtime, not meaty at all, requires extensive supplementation with hard to find materials at a public library. It also requires lots of printing of pretests, tests, exercises, activities.... You will be managing a ton of loose paper sheets. Since the chapters are vague and short, the learning cards were almost not used by us. The audio of the textbook is well done, so if you travel or have a child that does not read well or dislikes reading, these CDs would help. If your child dislikes taking notes, then lap book makes sense. It is too much to do both writing and lap booking. Some people prefer to buy Evan-Moor Ancient Civilizations Pockets. I have both lap book and pockets and I prefer the substitution, too. We really wanted to like this history series but boy is it vague, busy and so focused on Israel. We are moving on to a better-suited program in the mid-year. One that has all one needs, no chasing of anything, all binded & preprinted, meaty & well balanced in content about major countries/nations.