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OT Study and history of other ancient cultures – how to mesh these without overloading?
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I am looking for ideas on how to tie in some study of ancient cultures along with our study of the OT, similar to what Module 1 does…but because we are AO users I don’t want to do the full blown Module 1 because I’m afraid of adding too much onto my kids since they already have other history readings to do. I’m seeking to do this less formally as part of our family Bible study.
I’m thinking about using the Greenleaf Guide to the OT to help schedule the OT readings and give us some points of discussion. Best as I can tell from the sample, however, this only covers Bible and not the other ancient cultures. The other resources I’ve considered adding in to help supplement this with some background information on other cultures, but am having difficulty deciding between:
– Using the Christine Miller edition of The Story of the Ancient World – but since this has a lot of Bible stories repeated in it, I’m not sure if this would be overkill if we were already reading the stories from the Bible? I really like the looks of this book though, and wish I could figure out how to make it work for us.
– Using the new SCM Ancient Egypt and her neighbors book – possibly in the audio version – and listening to or reading the appropriate sections as we encounter them chronogically in the OT narrative. Probably also adding in Boy of the Pyramids as a free-read or family read aloud at some point while our Bible reading is set in Egypt.
– Possibly the Truthquest Beginnings commentary – although to be honest I’m not a big fan of the tone used by the author of the commentaries. (Admittedly, I’ve only seen one of the American History for young chidren ones in its entirety which I didn’t care for – maybe the Beginnings one is different because it’s not American history? I don’t know.) However, the sample did seem to show how I could line up some supplementary books I am considering with the Bible text. Not sure I want to pay that much if I only end up using it as an aid to scheduling and not using the commentaries themselves.
Any thoughts or ideas on these options? Or something else I haven’t thought of yet? Whatever we do, I will start with my dd8 next year and probably spread the study of the OT over several years.
Thanks for any help or ideas!
Jen
You could look into Mystery of History. I believe that does a good job of that. One thing that I didn’t like about MOH was that it jumped around quite a bit and just seemed to skim the surface, but if you were using it as a supplement and going more in depth with something else, I think it might work.
I like the idea of the audio of the Ancient Neighbors. I also think that if you went the route of the Christine Miller book, you could mention the Bible story she re-tells as a reference and just go to the next story. Story of the World might work for that too – skipping the Bible stories and reading the others, and it is very inexpensive.
Have you thought about getting All Through the Ages by Christine Miller and using that to add interesting stories about all those civilizations without necessarily having to tie into the OT? If you are keeping the Book of Centuries or a timeline, that seems almost the easiest way to go.
Based on what you say you do, I think that I’d do the Ancient Egypt and the All Through the Ages – because you can add as you want without tweaking all the time.
I second All Through the Ages. The Story of the Ancient World would be redundant and the Greenleaf Guide does not cover the parallel ancient cultures. I just picked books that were available from my library out of ATTA.
Also, adding in the audio of Ancient Egypt and Her Neighbors is good. We used Warings What in the World….Ancients.
Also, read, both together and independently (over a two year period):
Adam and His Kin
Genesis: Finding Our Roots by Beechick
The Sumerians (Ancient World series)
The First Book of Ancient Mesopotamia and Persia
Ancient Mesopotamia (People of the Ancient World series)- independently
Gilgamesh the Hero by MAcCaugherean
Legends of the BIble
The Art of Lands in the Bible ( very good and informative-highly recommend)
Victory on the Walls (Independent)
Hittite Warrior
God King (Independently)
Letters from Egypt
RIddle of the Rosetta Stone
Incans, Aztecs and Mayans by John Holzman (ch. 3-4)
The Ancient MAyans
YOu Wouldn’t want to be a Sumerian Slave
Shadow HAwk
Science in Ancient Mesopotamia
Boy of the Pyramids
Tales of Ancient Egypt
Independent listening: Cat of Bubastes; Cleopatra by J. Abbot
The Ancient Chinese (PotW)
Tales of a Chinese Grandmother
Art in History Series
The Great wall
See Inside an Ancient Chinese Town
Life in Ancient China
and
Ancient India (PotW)
and
Life in Ancient Japan
Also, Netflix documentaries and a timeline. I decided I’d go crazy trying to figure out the times for things as there are different timelines within the cultures and you can’t be sure of hardly anything prior to 600 BCE. Plus, the Hebrews weren’t in Egypt for 400 years, as a Christian based timeline has them, so that messes things up, too. So I’ve decided to just focus on the order of cultures and what I consider important to their education to retain.
HTH
Thanks for the ideas, all. These ideas do help me to think through things! (I’m probably overthinking…but then again, I’m good at that!) I actually do have a copy of ATTA, however because we are overseas I have had a hard time making as much use of it as I could because we have limited library access (and I wouldn’t necessarily want to purchase and ship a lot of books we may or may not reread). We do have a small resource center for the use of homeschooling missionary families and I could check and see if anything’s there… I guess that’s why I was leaning more towards the ‘spine’ type books where I might be able to get away with only purchasing one to go along with the Bible reading. I do kind of like the idea of not necessarily trying to mesh everything together, and just doing Bible as Bible and adding in Ancient Egypt and Her Neighbors in audio – maybe as a lunchtime thing – and perhaps a handful of others as free reading depending on what I can find available in our little library here.
Rachel – of the books you listed, are there any you would consider worth actually purchasing if I was unable to find enough in the library?
Appreciate the ideas…and if anyone else has any, keep them coming!
Jen
You might check librivox for some other audio books, and I am sure that some of those would be available for a Kindle or other device. That might add some w/o shipping…
I’ve been mulling over this for awhile and thinking what I may do is just do the OT with the Greenleaf guide for scheduling and discussion as the Bible that I assign to my dd to read independently for school, and then do Ancient Egypt and her neighbors at some point in audio (and add things to our timeline to see the chronology as it relates to Bible.) Then I’ll try to pull in some of the other selections from ATTA as free reads or family read alouds (like Boy of the Pyramids or some of the other historical fiction/literature titles) – but not stress too much about what I can and can’t find either in our little library or electronically – this would just be the “gravy” so to speak.
As for the Christine Miller book – rather than trying to make it mesh with our school Bible schedule, maybe I will use this as our family bedtime Bible story in another year or 2 when my littler ones might be able to enjoy it too. It IS mostly a Bible storybook with a few chapters inserted here and there to give background to the various cultures. That seems much more doable to me than trying to coordinate everything. We’re supposed to be letting our kids make their own connections anyhow, aren’t we!? =)
Thanks for helping me think things through!
Jen
Rachel, what a list! Thanks for saving me the legwork! I was all set to ask for recommendations, and when I searched, I found this list. Perfect! Now just one question: Are these the books you chose out of ATTA, or are these in addition to the ones from ATTA?
I think they all came from ATTA. Maybe some from Veritas Press (or just also in their catalog). These others are other sources (Jewish and respected historians):
Understanding the Old Testament: An Introductory Atlas to the Hebrew Bible – Carta- Baruch Sarel
The Atlas of Biblical Jerusalem – Dan Bahat
The Sacred Bridge: Carta’s Atlas of the Biblical World
Purim and the Persian Empire: A Historical, Archeological, and Geographical Perspective – Yehuda Landy – high school/adult
Jerusalem in the Time of Nehemiah – Leen Ritmeyer-ages 9+
Adara (during Elisha’s time)- Beatrice Gormley
Tirzah (in Egypt with Moses)- Lucille Travis
Tales and Customs of the Ancient Hebrews – Eva Harbst (ages 7-10)
From Sinai to Jerusalem: The Wanderings of the Holy Ark – Leen Ritmeyer – ages 9+
The Hammer – Alfred J. Church – Maccabees (Greek/Hasmonean period-post Alexander) found at Heritage HIstory
HTH
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