Mystery of History, Vol. 2 Text

Linda Lacour Hobar

Picking up where Volume 1 leaves off, this volume begins with the Pentecost and the first followers of Jesus (including Paul) around 29 A.D and chronologically continues through the early church and moves into the Middle Ages, covering the years through about 1456 A.D. The format of this book is very similar to that of the first volume; however, there are some small differences. Firstly, there are fewer lessons (84 as opposed to 108), but these lessons are slightly longer, offering more information on a given topic. Lessons generally take the form of real-life biographies, sharing the stories of men and women who changed the world while simultaneously showing the relationship between God and the world during that period. Another new feature is the bolding of key words to aid students in finding the information again later for activity or vocabulary purposes. As in the first book, this volume includes pretests to be given at the beginning of each week, end of the week reviews, memory card suggestions, bi-weekly quizzes, quarterly worksheets, and two semester tests. Memory cards are fact cards that students create for each lesson, capturing the main points and dates on an easy to review flashcard. The end of the week reviews continue to hold timeline and mapping exercises, providing students with helpful visuals of when important figures lived and where places studied are located. This volume also contains even more activities following each lesson than the first volume. This is simply to provide you with more choices, not to overwhelm you with feeling like you should do them all! These activities are generally categorized into younger, middle, and older student activities in order to accommodate the curriculum to a wider spread of grade levels, with the youngest comprised of many hands-on activities to help them experience history, middle activities a combination of hands-on exercises with research, and the older ideas centering on research, encouraging students to learn more and dig deeper into the people and lessons from history. The activities and memory cards, as well as the weekly and quarterly reviews and tests, are meant to ensure long-term retention of the key events and people throughout history, as opposed to the short term memory capacity we often hold history (and other subjects!) lessons in. The back of this hefty 700-page book contains the outline maps for the lessons, additional fun supplemental activities, suggestions of books and resources for further study of many of the topics, a chart of materials needed for the activities found in each lesson, and a full answer key. The fascinating journey across the continents continues as students discover who lived when and the way God worked His plan throughout this period of history.

https://youtu.be/FNxprf47UUE