Having Fun With Mystery of History

This year we (10th, 4th, 2nd, K) are using Mystery of History Vol 1Creation to the Resurrection.  We are loving this curriculum!  It is especially nice to be able to do history with all of the children at the same time.  Chelsea of course being in the 10th grade has to do more of the activities to make it a  High School level.  Anthony being in K may not remember everything we are doing, but he will go through the course again  in a few years.  Since we do history 2 days a week, we are doing all 3 weekly readings and one activity on Mondays, and the timeline figures, mapping exercises, and memory cards on Wednesday, and so far that has been working out well. 

This week we learned about The Sumerians, The Tower of Babel, and The Epic of Gilgamesh.  For our activity we made our own cuneiform tablets using clay, a rolling pin, and a butter knife.  In the book, it asks how hard it would be to erase your mistakes if you wrote your schoolwork on a clay tablet.  So Anthony decided to try to erase his writings.  He took the flat side of his butter knife and scraped it across his clay and it took away all of his writings.

Here is a picture of the timeline board we created.  I used a tri fold science project board and colored strips of paper.  We are using Amy Pak's timeline figures from www.homeschoolinthewoods.com.  Making the timeline has really helped the boys understand  B.C. time.  It was very confusing to them at first why 4500 B.C. came before 3500 B.C. not after, but putting it on the timeline has made a big difference and it is their favorite part of history.

A closer shot of the timeline figures

In addition to the readings, timeline, mapping, and memory cards, Chelsea also does one activity from each section.  For example, one of the activities for older students this week was: investigate who Nimrod was in the Bible.  Find out what his name meant and what his association was with the Tower of Babel.  Write 2 paragraphs on this topic and file it in your notebook.