Does it ever overwhelm you how God has given us so much?
I shared last week how I found out that I would be teaching Mystery of History next year. Even though I have taught in schools and have a teaching degree, I have never taught history in a classical way like Mystery of History does and I have never taught 11 students from 1st – 8th grade before.
Since Mystery of History: Ancient Times covers the time of Creation all the way through the resurrection of Christ, I am also going to teach Bible at the same time. Here is how I have been overwhelmed by all that God has given us and by the goodness of God to direct our paths. I will put each link as a bullet point below so you can go to the various resources if you wish.
I had started looking at Bright Ideas website at all of the different supplemental resources they provide to go along with Mystery of History. I was debating whether or not we needed to buy the supplemental CD ($149 for a co-op license) or just buy the notebooking pages. I decided to start googling notebooking pages, when — duh — I remembered I had a lifetime subscription to NotebookingPages.com. I went over there and found tons of notebooking pages I could use.
- There are many free resources even without the subscription to NotebookingPages HERE.
- I googled some more and found an incredible set of pages at The Notebooking Nook.
- I found these awesome timeline characters from My Homeschool Printables. She has them for all 4 volumes!
- BibleStoryPrintables.com also had a whole set of notebooking pages and timeline printables that coincide with Volume 1.
- Then I went and asked to join the Yahoo group for Mistory of History, Volume 1. Holy cow! They have so much free information right in that group. I LOVED the listening guides they have for every. single. lesson!!! (And the answers — all printable!) So cool! They have supplemental files with ideas for videos and extra readings. And there are lesson plans showing how they used Story of the World, The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, Usborne Encyclopedia of the Ancient World, Veritas Press History Cards, Victor Journey through the Bible (or David C. Cook Journey Through the Bible by V. Gilbert Beers), and more. Because I’m geeky enough, that yes, I ordered all those books (all were used books on Ebay and Amazon of course) — and more — as I want the kids to have real books to look upon and I want my 7th – 8th graders to do more reading than what MOH provides in their lesson plan. I’ll do another post with all the books I have ordered so far — and I’m going to stop looking as I have more than enough now.
- In the supplemental information, the links for some videos kept directing to the TBN website, but I couldn’t find the videos. I finally found out that the videos, Ancient Secrets of the Bible, are now all available on Amazon Prime — yay for me as I am a Prime member! I need to watch the videos first to make sure they line up with what we believe, but they look like they might be good. You have to be a Prime member to watch these for free. You can always try Amazon Prime for a 30-Day Free Trial
to see if it is worth it for you to be a Prime member. (affiliate link)
- My biggest hang-up was what was I going to have my 7th and 8th graders do for Bible that was challenging enough but yet not teacher intensive as I am just a volunteer at our little school and I still have to teach phonics to two different grade levels and get home to get stuff done for part or the day. I went to a website where a blogger was sharing her lesson plans. She had her high school kids read The Lie by Ken Ham. I thought about ordering it, but I first went to Answers In Genesis’s website. Can you believe that The Lie is online for free — and many other books and videos as well. And they have a whole kid section with printable kid devotionals and kid videos and kid books and free printable PDF’s? I knew they had videos that could be watched, but not all this other stuff! Talk about doing a happy dance and also having my brain explode with too much information!
to see if it is worth it for you to be a Prime member. (affiliate link)I have too much information now! This never would have been possible 10-15 years ago. Only in this information era with the worldwide web at our disposal are we able to take advantage of all these resources. I am also so thankful for all of these bloggers who have made notebooking pages and other resources and let us download it for free! Amazing!
God has given us so much — not just in our ability to study and have quality education for our children at an affordable price. Every day as we look around us and see how much God has showered us with His blessings, our hearts should respond in praise and adoration.
What are you praising God for today?
Here were two heartfelt posts from last week:
- Divorce and Children: Get Over Yourself from Kandy Apple Mama
- To Each of My Children on Mother’s Day from Lovely Little Lives
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It is overwhelming how blessed we are. I am always amazed that people take the time to put resources on the internet to share. So, so, grateful. We are truly blessed to live in this day and time and country!
I agree — I kept saying, “They could charge for this!” But I’m so thankful they didn’t! I did give them a ton of pageviews at least.
Ooh, how nice! Just a reminder, if you still have The Well-Trained Mind, she gives a thorough guide for the logic stage grades on what you can do to beef up their history with writing assignments and notebooking, using the Kingfisher Encyclopedia! We have been using Victor Journey the last two years in school (we did ancients last year), and I’m not that thrilled with it. But it does give some neat info. Skip the intros, though. SOTW–if you have the activity guides, they are wonderful for some hands-on ideas for the littles, maps, coloring pages, all of that. Then the littles, grades 1-5 can practice narrating with the helpful review questions in there. But MOH probably has all of that too. 🙂 It really is too much in the end, isn’t it? Fun. 🙂 Praise the Lord!
Oh, and you might also see if there is a FB group for MOH. MFW has one, and I have gotten SO MUCH stuff from it!
I am going to check it out!
It is too much! I found some free coloring pages on the one website I shared – MOH does have some, but I really don’t want to buy them since I found some for free. I’ll see about Victor’s Journey — it is ordered. Kingfisher’s I have and Usborne internet linked encyclopedia for ancients and more — I’ll share in another post what I have — but I probably have too much. I’ll have to update at the end of the year what I liked. Can’t wait to talk about it in person. Not too many people understand us 🙂