More on Old Testament History

After finishing up our investigation into dinosaurs (which we spent a few months on) we have been making faster progress through history. Our "real" history is being taken care of by Dad. He reads the sections outlined in the Greenleaf press old testament history guide each morning after breakfast. They take turns narrating the story. As far as I am concerned that is enough but it is fun to do some extra activities on the side. The following are snap shots of our fun with old testament history. A bit of notebooking, a bit of coloring. Sometimes a 3D model or a paper doll and a puppet skit. So now for the Garden of Eden...

Garden of Eden coloring page by TJ.

Adam and Eve notebooking page by TJ

Adam and Eve coloring page by Zak.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil notebooking page by Max.

Noah's Ark coloring page by TJ

We read portions from Adam and His Kin as we went through this part of history from Noah until Abram.

3D Noah's ark by Zak.

Noah's Ark notebooking page by TJ

We aslo read through Noah's Ark and the Arart Adventure...now we all want to go see if we can find it!

Tower of Babel notebooking page and puppets (with a membership)by TJ.

With these two projects we read the Tower of Babel pop up book

Paper doll of Hammurabi by TJ

Gilgamesh notebooking page by TJ.

We read Gilgamesh the King.

God calls Abraham coloring page by Max.

Abram and Lot puppets and background (by membership) by Max.

We stuck the background up onto a wall in our dinning room and put a tablecloth over some of the dinning room chainrs in front of the background picture to create a puppet stage. The each of the boys took a turn enacting the story of Abram giving lot the choice of land to raise their livestock on.

Everyone's Abrams and Lots.

Abraham sacrifices Issac notebooking page by Zak.

Now... on ward ho! oh I mean on to Jacob and Esau.

Dinosaurs By Design



We are notebooking our way through the old testament. When we began out mini unit on dinosuars the boys were happy tracing. Then one day Zak started writing anything and everything he could on scraps of paper, filling in blanks that I had pre-made a word for. The other two were doing the same. I could see they were ready to move along. So I had to make new notebook pages for them. In the end our dinosaur pages have a sort of tale to tell just like the fossils we were studying. We started with these pages from The Notebooking Nook:

For dinosaurs that were not in the set from The Notebooking Nook I made some with images from the internet (gogle the dinosaur's name and the word images) and my Startwrite program.

Another sample page. I am sorry I can not give you a link to these, my startwrite program is being difficult right now and I can not retrieve documents I have saved. Once I get it sorted out I'll update this with links to these pages.

We colored some pictures of dinosaurs.


We traced the names of the 40 dinosaurs found in our 'Spine' Dinosaurs by Design.

Then I created this copywork notebook so the boys could begin copying words instead of tracing them. You may notice we were tracing in cursive and are now copying in manuscript. They seem to enjoy doing both but were not ready to do cursive on their own. We still practice cursive in other subjects by tracing and we are copying now in manuscript. (our history of why we do cursive at all at this age is here)

It took us quite a while to work through all 40 dinosaurs. (about 2 months) We did one a day, and we have history scheduled every day as it is part of our core, so that would be five dinosaurs a week. However to break up the routine and keep lessons interesting I added a few games to the mix. Using these Montessori cards  I made, we played concentration and go fish. I created them in color so you could print them out either in color or  in black and white as we have done here.

Once we were more familar with what picture went with what name we played Dinosaur Bingo to learn more interesting facts about these 40 creatures who were designed by God.

And for the ecnomical price of $1 I found this file folder game last summer at The Dollar store. We bought a few bags of plastic dinosaurs for place markers. The questions helped us to learn more facts about the dinosaurs and the difference between herbivores, carnivores and omnivores.

One of the interesting facts about dinosaurs is fossils. What is a fossil? How it is made? To answer some of these questions we read a book called Dry Bones..and other Fossils by Gary Parker. The illustrations are ideal for coloring so I put them together with startwrite  and made a few tracing pages. I'll update this with links to the pages once my program is working again. Here is a sample page.

From Dinos by Design we photocopied these images and put together and activity of the phases of fossilization.

Last but not least, the boys were each given a 'pet dinosaur' at the very beginning of our mini unit. They were told to listen and learn specifically about this one dinosaur. They learned it's name, what it eats, and other interesting facts about it. Then to finalize our study they each did a little oral show and tell about it. here are T.J's and Max's dino pets.

The end.

Happy fossil hunting!

In the Begining, God created....

We began our investigation of the History of the Old Testament this year with Creation. Our text is the Bible and the reader of that is Dad. I began these notebooking pages a week or so after they had heard the story from Dad as a fun way to illustrate and narrate what God created on each day. We did a couple of pages a week adding copy work to them to record the story and give more practice to handwriting. The above selections of work were done by my oldest son Max.

Day One by T.J. He just had to add people and a house!

Day Two by Max.

Day Three by Zak.

Day Four by Max. "You will notice," says Max as he is drawing, "That the sun in real life really has no rays. So my sun is just a round blob."

Day Five by Zak. You will notice that one of the dolphins has some red on it...yes it is blood. Zak says that a shark from the waters below has taken a bite out of the dolphin and the dolphin is swimming away. Run dolphin run!

Day Six by Max.

Day Seven by Zak. He made two earths because he wanted to. Then God was soooo tired after that, he laid down on his pillow to rest.

Intermittantly we did a few science experiments to look more closely at the things God had created. We began with light on the first day.

Zak here is making fire with his magnifying glass. I was a little reluctant to show them this little trick but in the end their patience wore thin and they grew very weary of waiting for the sun to burn the paper. I got it to burn so they did see it work but it would take more wait than they have just now. PHEW!

It was a cool lesson from Genesis For Kids....in this lesson we learned that Archidmedes once defended his city by using the power of the sun and mirrors. When the enemy ships appeared in the bay near the city the soldiers stood their ground, each with a mirror shining the light from the sun onto the ships. Eventually the ships were burned up before they could attack the city and the city was saved!!

We then looked at air on the second day. We did another experiment with a candle, vinegar, a bottle and baking soda. We lit a candle...then put baking soda and vinegar in the bottle. Quickly we put the mouth of the bottle near the candle and the CO2 put the flame out!

We also made balloon cars from this fun website!

Genesis for kids has alot of great ideas but for my little guys they were a bit too hard. We put the book aside for a while until it sparks more interest.

A few days after we were finished with the notebooking pages I began to form little activities to serve as a review of the days of creation ensuring that in the end they will know what was created on what day as easily as they know their names. It is part of my attempt this year to implement The Law of Reviews into my teaching plans.

The first review we did was this 7 days of creation worksheet.

I can not remember where I found this worksheet, but the small pictures are cut from flash cards I found here.

Then I found these coloring pages here and colored them making them into story boards. I used them to retell the story by reading the account from Genesis on each page. Following the story was a fun game I read about some where to learn phonics called flashlight phonics. In this case, "flash light creation." To begin, we closed off a portion of the house to make it as dark as possible. Then with the boys out of the dark room I "hid" the days in different spots. Some under the table some high on the wall, some near the ground and some half hidden etc. Then, when the boys come into the dark room with their flash lights I call out one of the days..."day 1" and they look for the picture that describes day one, then day two etc. We did this several times relocating pictures to new places and doing the days in order and out of order etc. We will probably play it again some time in the future for it is a great way for kinestic learners (boys) to connect with facts and ideas.

This week to review the days of creation we did this work sheet......

.......and these Flash cards.....

.....and these puppets which we used while we listened to the creation song by Veritas Press. It is in the first part of the Old Testament and Ancient times song CD.

The above Days were made by Zak.

Day 6 was made by Max.

As they were making the puppets I could see that they are really getting it down. So we will move on to Dinosaurs from here and periodically use one of these activities to keep the information sinking into their brains.