What's In the Bible?

Have you seen the video series called What's in the Bible? Its produced by Phil Viscer who created Veggie Tales. The purpose is to give kids an overview of the Bible from start to finish and explain why we believe what we do and what the Bible is. Not just to teach the stories but what is the Bible anyway.
Well, we picked up a few from the library just to check them out. My boys are 9 so I thought they may be a little young. NO WAY, they LOVE them!!!!!! So, we have been using them for our Bible lessons and have three more videos to go. We even watched Why do we call it Christmas? It also was great.
My boys are big fact guys so all the facts and details they give are really helpful and give us lots to discuss afterwards. Plus the catchy tunes and jokes they repeat all day.
Get one and watch it with your kids and see what you think. I think they are awesome.

I just found this site that uses this series in their bible curriculum. Thinking Kids Blog. Looks promising.

Pre History Unit. Old Earth Creation.

We are using Story of the World for History. Because History starts MUCH further back in time than the book starts we started with a Pre History unit.

*****{To determine if this unit is of interest to you: This is from an OLD earth creationist perspective. We also acknowledge that MICRO evolution (within species) is a fact, but not MACRO (between species) The evolutionary part is easily altered for whatever your perspective is}.*****

I could not really find a great unit out there for this. Most everything is either strictly secular evolutionary process or young earth creationist. Neither of which we adhere to. So I put together my own Pre History Unit from various sources. We did a fly over without a lot of detail. This is elementary after all. If you are also a homeschooling family who is Old Earth Creationist then this section is for you! Let's share, send me your thoughts and ideas in the comments section. I am sure we will be doing this again and will need better stuff!

For this we are using a modified Note booking concept in which we keep everything in a three ring binder. Each activity is recorded in a picture or writing or both and placed in the binder.  This is organized for elementary age.

Ancient Africa Unit Study

One reason I decided to home school was to give my kids a broader view of history. In school we mainly cover Europe and The US. We briefly touch on Native peoples and South America and Asia. We even more briefly touch on Africa.
Why? Well, I don't know. But it is not ok with me.
If we are to be a world community of diverse yet understanding people who value other cultures and people different than ourselves then we should probably try to have some level of understanding for them. When we know where others come from we understand them more. When we understand them more we see how alike we are and how amazing the differences are too. So, why not study what makes Africa, Africa or China, China, etc? I wonder if the level of discrimination would be less if we really studied the history of other countries like we study our own. This is especially true as American culture is a mix of so many cultures and so many that are NON European get totally ignored. Let's understand one another by knowing and respecting a broader range of history.

I could not find anywhere any one book or curriculum that does a decent job of covering Ancient Africa. There are some great resources that cover PART of Ancient Africa but not all of it. So, I have done my best to create a curriculum that will cover all of Ancient Africa, as best as I can. We touch on Egypt briefly but most curriculum's cover Egypt pretty well, so it was not necessary.

This unit is designed for independent readers and workers grades 3-6.  It can be altered for any child's interest or level.  I have put it in it's own tab. I hope you enjoy it! We sure are. <link>