Search Results for: Joseph

Long Story Short: summary of our weeks on Joseph

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Contrary to what my recent blogging record implies, we’ve been plugging away at our Bible lessons as usual.  I continue to be so thankful for Marty Machowski’s Long Story Short.  During a season of minimal schooling, I am confident our children are still getting a steady diet of Bible knowledge thanks to the thoughtful devotions in this book.  I haven’t been doing a lot of extras, just our nightly devotions and a “listening lesson” for during the day, which we primarily use as we drive around town.  Even so, as we’ve gone through the last few weeks on the story of Joseph’s life, both boys have learned a lot, and Ian especially has it firmly engraved upon his heart.

The more we read about Joseph, the more in awe I am of how God works in our lives.  It really is an incredible story.  God took something horrible (broken family relationships, near murder, selling a brother into slavery and deceiving their father) and used it to save countless lives during the famine that came years later.  And one of the pivotal events of the Bible, the Exodus, wouldn’t have happened Joseph (and later his family) hadn’t gone down to Egypt.

The story lends itself to so many discussions, and we often used our extra night (the book includes 5 devotions each week, plus we do one night in The Gospel Story Bible, also by Machowski) to read through what the Bible said about pride, trust, forgiveness, etc.  I used Parenting With Scripture to easily look up verses on each topic, but a Child Training Bible would also be a good tool.  (I just didn’t want to take the time to flip through all the verses to pick out which ones to read with the boys, so Parenting With Scripture was handy because the verses were all laid out on one page.)

Go-Along Books The story of Joseph is found in most children’s Bible storybooks.  We read it in several over the weeks we spent on the story, but I also really liked this book: Joseph by Brian Wildsmith.  It is a thorough retelling of the story, accompanied by beautiful illustrations.  Ian especially liked the hieroglyphics (thank you, Little Einsteins, for introducing them!)

Bible Notebook I have to admit, we haven’t been working on a memory verse, but we did talk about Romans 8:28 so I put it on our Bible notebook page so the boys could review it whenever they look through their books.  For the craft, I considered repeating what we did the last time Ian and I talked about Joseph, but I didn’t want both his notebook pages to be the same.  Instead I just had them color on coffee filters and then use an eyedropper of water to help the colors spread out.  We cut out two wedges for the arms and then bunched the rest up for the coat and glued them on top of people we drew.  Ian thinks they look like dresses.  I have to agree.   At least they’re colorful!

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Multimedia

We watched several related videos over the course of our study:

  • Joseph: King of Dreams DreamWorks took a few liberties with the story (mostly about the timing of Rachel’s death, how long Joseph was in prison, etc.), but overall our whole family enjoyed watching this together and comparing it to the biblical account.
  • Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat While the cover of the DVD touts it as the “classic family musical,” THIS IS ONE TO KEEP THE REMOTE HANDY ON!  We completely skipped the scene with Potiphar’s wife because the costumes were so inappropriate.  There were a few other scenes that had some questionable costuming as well but I let them pass because it wasn’t as obvious and Ian didn’t seem to notice.  It’s really too bad, because the music itself is very family friendly (with the exception of Potiphar’s wife saying, “Come and lie with me, love,” but since that’s pretty much what the Bible records, I’m not going to complain).
  • Veggie Tales: The Ballad of Little Joe Ian has seen this one before, but I don’t think he’d ever realized it’s (loosely!) based on the story of Joseph.  This time he definitely caught the similarities.

I had so many things to use in our “Listening Lessons” to go with Joseph.  I broke it down and tried to only use the ones that specifically applied to the part of the story we were focused on each week.  Here’s a summary of all the things we listened to:

Ian and I closed out our time on Joseph by going to a live theater performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (one we had been assured was appropriate for kids).  It’s a fast-paced show, so it kept his attention the whole time.  We really enjoyed our special “date” together! Oh well.

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Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Joseph’s Colorful Coat

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In accordance with the ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 6 lesson, we spent a week talking about Joseph’s colorful coat, his dreams, and how he ended up in Egypt after his brothers sold him.  I did use the Bible verse from the curriculum this week (Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:21).  I love Steve Green’s Hide ‘Em In Your Heart CDs, because they do a great job of helping us memorize Scripture.  I just wish they incorporated Bible reference so we knew where to find the verses!  Here was our iPod playlist for the week:

For our Bible Notebook, Ian made a “coat” from a tissue paper collage.  I found a paper doll online, then saved the image and enlarged it so it would take up the full page.  Then used it to draw the outline of a coat for Ian to fill in with tissue paper squares.


After it was dry, I cut it out and helped Ian paste it over the Joseph paper doll, along with the hair he chose for him.

Every week when we add our latest creation to Ian’s Bible Notebook, we read through all the previous pages.  He’s getting very good at “reading” the memory verses!

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Bible lessons, Preschool

Handprint/Footprint Nativity Scene Tree Skirt

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Every Christmas growing up I looked forward to seeing the handprint with a poem my preschool teachers helped me make as a Christmas gift for my parents back when I was two.  I really wanted to do something to capture my own children’s sweet little hands and feet, and while I was searching for ideas for our Father’s Day gifts last spring, I found several ideas for making pictures from a Nativity scene.  I decided to combine them to decorate a skirt to go around our Christmas tree.

I bought a burlap tree skirt (I chose this one because it was a little nicer quality and was lined, but there are cheaper ones out there) and used acrylic paint I already had. The browns were a little lumpy, so those prints didn’t turn out quite as nicely as I’d have liked, but over all I’m pleased with how it turned out.

My three older boys provided the handprint camels and full fingerprint wise men, robed in their favorite colors.  Nathaniel’s hand made a sweet donkey.  Nico and Arianna provided the footprints for Joseph and Mary, while Clara’s little foot made the manger for Baby Jesus.

Then the Ian, Elijah, and Nico used their footprints for shepherds, and Nathaniel’s and Arianna’s hands were the sheep.  (Clara’s seven months and it’s really hard to get a good handprint, so I didn’t dare trying the two colors for a sheep with her.  She made the little brown cow instead.)  I painted both girls’ feet white to make the angels and then just added a few details.

I probably should have ironed the skirt before we started the painting, but I figure it’s going to get covered up with gifts anyway.  I hope the kids will enjoy getting it out every year and marveling over how small their hands and feet were back in 2017.

Merry Christmas!

Posted in Holidays

Wrapping Up Week 15 (2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 

Last week was mostly spent recovering from our road trip.  At home we focused mostly on math and history.  The boys also had their IEW class and all the kids were happy to be back to their Friday music classes.  I’m both looking forward to and dreading the holidays, because while a break is always nice, it’s hard for us to get back in the swing of things!

Sir GawainWe continued enjoying King Arthur stories by reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as told by Michael Morpurgo and beautifully illustrated by Michael Foreman.  Ian enjoyed the book, though I found myself wondering if I should have skipped this one.  During part of the story, Gawain is tempted by the wife of his host, and I became a little uncomfortable.  We talked about the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, comparing the wisdom Joseph showed by fleeing with Gawain’s foolishness in allowing someone else’s wife to spend time alone with him and accepting her kisses.  It wasn’t exactly a discussion I would have planned for my 2nd grader, but once it had come up I didn’t want to just ignore the situation and give the impression that I was okay with such behavior.

Elijah really enjoyed mapping our trip and keeping track of which states we passed through, so I tried to give him time to practice the geography he had learned.  He really enjoyed looking at maps of the US and putting together a wooden puzzle of the states.  I love that we were able to make the map come alive for him, and I’m looking forward to exploring more of the country in the years to come!

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Posted in Weekly Wrap Up

History Cycle Year 1 Resources (Creation – Roman Empire)

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This year as Ian went through 1st grade we began our four year history cycle, covering the time from Creation through the Roman Empire.  At first I tried to settle on a “spine” to provide structure for our year, but eventually I decided that for this first time through it was more important to me to give Ian a general feel for each time period and people group we studied.  I ended up turning more to “living books” and videos that helped him get a sense of what was going on in each time and place. We also kept a notebook of the things we learned about (though I must admit we slacked on that as the months went by).

I’ve come across a lot of great resource lists for older students, but at times I found it challenging to find age-appropriate books and videos for a 1st grader, so I thought I’d look back over our year and put together a list of some of the things I discovered that work well for younger students.  (Includes affiliate links.)

History Cycle 1

Year-Long Resources We Drew From Selectively:

Primeval History (Including Creation, the Flood, Dinosaurs, and Early Civilizations)

Books

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Videos

Notebooking Resources

Ancient Egypt

Books

Videos

Other

God’s People/Ancient Israel

Books

Videos

  • Joseph: King of Dreams
  • Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat While the cover of the DVD touts it as the “classic family musical,” THIS IS ONE TO KEEP THE REMOTE HANDY ON!  We completely skipped the scene with Potiphar’s wife because the costumes were so inappropriate.  There were a few other scenes that had some questionable costuming as well but I let them pass because it wasn’t as obvious and Ian didn’t seem to notice.  It’s really too bad, because the music itself is very family friendly (with the exception of Potiphar’s wife saying, “Come and lie with me, love,” but since that’s pretty much what the Bible records, I’m not going to complain).
  • Wars of Humanity combo pack and Jericho: The Promise Fulfilled from Shatterpoint Entertainment

Ancient Greece

Books

Videos

Notebooking Resources

Greece Lapbook 1

Roman Empire

Books

Videos

  • Friends and Heroes (animated series; 3 seasons, covering early Christians in Alexandria, Jerusalem, and finally Rome, A.D. 69-71, including the siege and fall of Jerusalem;includes Bible stories in each episode)
  • The Perpetua Story (from the Torchlighters series, about an early Christian martyr)
  • Polycarp and Perpetua, (documentary about two early Christian martyrs, not necessarily written for children, but contained many dramatizations and kept Ian’s attention)

If I come across other resources that are good for this age, I’ll add them to the list.  If you have some favorites that eluded us, please tell us about them in the comments!

Posted in Homeschool Resources, Organization

Advent 2014 – Day 14

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Advent 2014
 Books:

Who is Coming to Our House? by Joseph Slate (for Arianna)

The Crippled Lamb by Max Lucado (for Elijah)

We skipped last night’s Jesse Tree LEGO Challenge, but we let Arianna hang the ornament for David’s anointing on the tree tonight when Ian hung the one about Elijah.  The story of Elijah and the showdown on Mt. Carmel is one of my favorite parts of the Old Testament, so I enjoyed telling this one to the kids again.  Ian built an elaborate altar with a trench full of water as I read through both nights’ readings in Jotham’s Journey.

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Posted in Holidays

Wrapping Up Week 19 (2014-15)

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weekly wrap-up
 I was planning on letting this be a light week and not worrying about catching up until after Christmas, but somehow we ended up doing more than I planned.  No complaints here!

Bible/Circle Time

Walk With Me to the Nativity: A Journey to Bethlehem by Karen HarperFor the two weeks before we break for Christmas, we’re going through the ten lessons in Walk With Me to the Nativity: A Journey to Bethlehem by Karen Harper.  This week we covered the time from Isaiah and Micah’s prophecies about Jesus’ birth through Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem.  This was a book I’d added to our library a couple years ago, and I think it’s a good fit for us right now.  It has some great information without going too deep for a first grader.  I also love that most of the lessons incorporate picture study with classic paintings.

We also used our morning circle time to read the Advent books the kids unwrapped each day.

Math

Ian worked through lessons Mathematics Enhancement Programme 81-85 (Year 2).  With Elijah, I switched over to the new version of Year 1, which has less pages in the practice books because the Friday revision lessons are separate.  Since Elijah is really quick at math, I’m going to skip the revision pages unless it looks like he really needs them.  He often wants to complete 2 lessons in a day.  My hope is that eventually he’ll catch up with Ian so we can work together on math.

Literature

We were weeks behind on Ambleside Online, Year 1, but this week we managed to get caught up on most of our books.  (Woohoo!)  I’m hoping by the time we start school again after Christmas break that we’ll be back on track.

History Cycle

I’ve been trying out some of the Magic Tree House books by Mary Pope Osborne.  I’m not entirely comfortable with them (due to the light treatment of magic and elements of pagan religions), but for now I’m willing to give them a chance with a lot of discussion.  We checked out some audiobooks from the library, and Ian is loving listening to them in the car (though I won’t let him take them into his room to listen by himself).

Ian’s a good reader, but he’s usually reluctant to read on his own, so I was pleasantly surprised when he decided to read through Stallion by Starlight, about Alexander the Great (which is next on our schedule for history).  That’s one of the reasons I’m sticking with the books for now, though I think we’ll only use them as related to things were studying for school.

We also read 2 chapters about Alexander the Great in A Child’s History of the World by V.M. Hillyer.  Ian liked knowing so much of what was going on in these chapters since many of the details had been included in the Magic Tree House book.

Science

God’s Design for Life is the one curriculum I’m using that is structured enough to make it hard when we get behind.  This week we did science every day to catch up, making it through lessons 13-21 in The Human Body, covering the brain, reflexes, and the five senses.  Ian completed the pages on the senses in The Usborne Human Body Sticker Book.

P1040967xThe boys really enjoyed these lessons and the activities that went along with them (although Ian keeps asking if any of the lessons will let him build a model, like we did in the animal lessons).  We tasted bitter cacao powder, which wasn’t nearly the treat they thought it would be until we added some sugar.  They also checked out how pupils adjust to let in just the right amount of light.

 

Posted in Ambleside Online

25 CHRISTmas Books for Preschoolers

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A few years ago we started a tradition of wrapping up a book each day of Advent leading up to Christmas, and I shared a list of books we used to go along with Truth in the Tinsel.  Every year I’ve added a few new Christmas books to our collection (with more kids to open them), and this year we’ll be opening 2 books each day: one geared toward my preschoolers, and 1 for my older kids.  So I thought it was about time I organized the books into two lists and shared them.  (In other words, there are several repeats from the old list this time around, but the books with longer stories have been replaced with more preschool-friendly choices.)

Preschool Christmas Books
Everywhere we go at Christmas our kids tend to be bombarded with messages about Santa and elves, so we try really hard to counter those with Christ-focused stories, songs, and decorations.  These books are a reflection of our family’s choice to keep Jesus at the forefront of all our Christmas activities.

I’ve listed them in subject groups rather than the order I pass them out.  I do tend to give most of the books about symbols early on so that the kids will recognize them and make the connection to Christ as we go through the season, but as a general rule I try to mix them up a bit so we don’t end up with all the stable/animal stories in a big clump.  I just thought these groups would be more helpful for anyone not familiar with the books.

Books about Christmas Symbols

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Jesus, Me and My Christmas Tree by Crystal Bowman (A little girl goes through various ornaments on her tree that relate to the Christmas story.)

2.

J is for Jesus by Crystal Bowman (rhyme about the symbolism of the candy cane)

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Christmas Angels by Crystal Bowman (rhyming story about angels in the Christmas story so children think of the Bible when they see angel decorations)

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A Star for Jesus by Crystal Bowman (rhyming story about the Christmas star)

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The Pine Tree Parable by Liz Curtis Higgs (a story about a farmer and his wife who make a sacrifice that brings great joy.  Bible verses throughout.)

Books Based on Songs

6.

Mary, Did You Know? by Mark Lowry, illustrated by Phil Boatwright (beautiful illustrations and accompanying Scripture verses)

7. We Three Kings by Spirin, Gennady

We Three Kings traditional carol illustrated by Gennady Spirin (The pictures are probably more pleasing to adults, but I like the chance to expose my children to beautiful art.)

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The Animals’ Christmas Carol illustrated by Helen Ward (beautiful pictures to go along with the medieval carol “The Friendly Beasts”)

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The Little Drummer Boy illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats (a favorite song of ours, with pictures by the author of The Snowy Day)

10.

12 Days of Christmas beautifully illustrated by Laurel Long (in the right order, which is surprisingly hard to find!)

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Away in a Manger illustrated by Thomas Kinkade (all three verses, with paintings of both the manger scene and an old-fashioned village)

Books About the First Christmas

12.

This is the Stable by Cynthia Cotton (full of repetition and rhyme, similar to “This is the House That Jack Built”)

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Christmas in the Manger by Nola Buck (simple rhymes about those present at Jesus’ birth)

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The Christmas Star by Marcus Pfister (beautiful watercolor and glitter illustrations by the author/illustrator of The Rainbow Fish)

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Song of the Stars by Sally Lloyd-Jones (full of excitement about the arrival of Jesus–I like to save this one for Christmas morning because it captures the joy when the wait is over)

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Humphrey’s First Christmas by Carol Heyer (about a self-absorbed donkey who goes with the three kings to find Christ and realizes that he alone is worthy of praise)

17.

Baby Jesus is Born by Juliet David (Very simple retelling of the whole Christmas story, starting with the angel visiting Mary and ending with the family returning to Nazareth.)

18.

The Christmas Story: The Brick Bible for Kids by Brendan Powell Smith (I am not a fan of the Brick Bible in general, and I hesitated even to buy this because I didn’t want to support the anti-Christian author, but several trusted friends recommended it and I knew my boys especially would love it, so I decided to find a used copy for our family.  If your kids are sensitive, be warned that it does include the part of the story where Herod orders the baby boys of Bethlehem killed.)

19.

Room for a Little One by Martin Waddell (about the animals in the stable when Jesus was born)

20.

The Animals’ Christmas Eve by Gale Wiersum (a counting book about the animals in the stable)

21.

Who is Coming to Our House? by Joseph Slate (about the animals getting ready to welcome baby Jesus to their stable)

22.

Bethlehem Night by Julie Stiegemeyer (story of the night Christ was born, told in rhyme–good fit for Christmas Eve)

Other Family Favorites

23.

Baboushka and the Three Kings by Ruth Robbins (An old Russian story about a woman who meets the wise men on their way to visit the Christ child.)

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Mouskin’s Christmas Eve by Edna Miller (classic story about a mouse who finds his way into a house at Christmastime and finds peace in the shelter of a manger scene)

25. 

Mortimer’s Christmas Manger by Karma Wilson (also about a little mouse exploring a manger scene, but a more detailed story)

If you have school-age kids, check out 25 CHRISTmas Picture Books for Older Children.  I hope your family finds some new favorites to enjoy this Christmas!

(NOTE: As I’ve discovered new books, I’ve replaced some of the titles in the original post.  I’m keeping them around for when I want to wrap up books for more kids each day, but these are currently my 25 favorites for preschool-age children.)

Posted in Holidays

Wrapping Up Week 5 (2014-15)

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weekly wrap-up

We’ve fallen into a pretty good routine now that we’ve finished Week 5 of this school year.  Even when unexpected things come up, we’ve been able to get through most of what I want to finish in a week.  (And I’m learning what to let go, which is huge for me!)  Here’s a glimpse at the past week:

Bible

This week we officially began going through the New Testament. (Woohoo!) Each evening we’ll be going through chronological readings with the family in Old Story New, but Ian and I will also be using Bible Road Trip: Year Three as part of our schooling.  Up until now our time with BRT has only involved matching up weeks from Years One and Two with our family devotions and doing the research (and videos) that went along.  Now we’re adding a new component to our morning reading, since BRT will take us through the New Testament book by book.

I’m currently planning to use the Lower Grammar assignments with just Ian.  I’ve thought about doing the Preschool/Kindergarten level and including Elijah and Arianna, but we already have so many picture Bible storybooks, I didn’t really want to buy the one that goes along with BRT.  If the reading load is overwhelming for Ian, however, I may end up deciding to do that.

It would be nice to include everyone in our morning Bible time.  This week I started spending some time in worship with all the children before we started our school day, and it would be easy to add some Bible reading after that before letting the little ones go off to play.  I’d like to start encouraging them to stay with us for our devotional time (even if I don’t use the BRT Preschool materials).  This week we continued reading Prudence and the Millers (Chapters 7-10) and made it through Proverbs 15:1-20.

Bible pageSince this was our first official week with BRT, Ian started his new Bible notebook.  If you’ve seen any of the Bible lessons I’ve posted over the last couple of years, you know we’ve done Bible notebook pages of some sort or another since he turned 3.  This year we’re stepping up to add a slightly more academic component rather than just fun crafts, but hopefully we’ll get some of those in it too.

This week Ian started writing the names of the books of the Bible on the Bible library bookshelf page I created a while back, as well as creating a page on the “Armor of God” to go along with one of our readings for Week 1 – “What is the Bible?”.  We did this craft a while back in our Armor of God unit using the picture of the boy given with the armor, but I thought this time it would be fun to use a picture of Ian himself and include text boxes with the passage we had read.  Of course, when the others saw his page, they wanted to do their own. Armor of God Collage

The boys were in their pajamas when I whipped the camera out, which at first Ian didn’t like, but it adds some fun color to their pages so we ended up just going with it.  After taking pictures of each kid, I opened them in Paint and selected around their bodies to delete the background (so I wouldn’t waste ink).  Then I pasted the images into a Word document so I could adjust what size they would be on the page.

Math

We got through lessons 11-15 of the Mathematics Enhancement Programme (Year 2).  So far Ian’s been very comfortable with it, not too challenged, and his confidence has really grown.  I’m impressed with how much he is able to do, especially considering how challenging parts of Year 1 were for him.  The only area I’m really keeping an eye on is how quick (or slow) he is with his math facts.  He’s made some improvement (and we’ve gotten in some extra practice with one of our reviews), but he could get through the practice book pages a lot faster if he knew them, and I could see him getting bogged down soon if MEP moves on and he’s still trying to count out sums for each part of the more complex problems.

Literature (Ambleside Online)

We caught up with our Ambleside Online, Year 1 reading this week, going back to A Child’s Garden of Verses for poetry and enjoying another story in James Herriot’s Treasury for Children.  I think that’s Ian’s favorite AO book so far, though he also really enjoys the Aesop’s fables.

History Cycle

This was the first week we’ve deviated from the schedule in Mystery of History, Vol.1, which spent an entire week (3 lessons) on Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Since we’ve covered Old Testament history in depth already, I don’t feel a need to linger on the biblical stories in MoH.  Rather, I combined those lessons into one day of reviewing the Patriarchs, and then we moved on to Hammurabi.

Patriarchs

Since Ian already knows the stories of the Patriarchs, I wanted to focus more on the “big picture” and how they fit into the grand scheme of history.  After connecting Abraham to what we’ve read about Sumeria, we talked about his faith and the covenant God made with him.  It’s pretty amazing how this one man who lived thousands of years ago has helped shape the world for all of history ever since.

P1030735We talked about Abraham’s family line and how important it is to understanding history.  We made a family tree for Ian’s history notebook (with pasted pictures from the Homeschool In the Woods’ History Through the Ages-Collection CD with approximate dates) and read Ballad of Matthews Begats, a cute book which takes the reader through the family line from Abraham to Jesus.  (The words are even put to music in a fun song on the CD included with the book.)  At Ian’s request, we also revisited some of our favorite books and videos from the last time we studied Joseph.

Hammurabi

I read Ian the chapter about Hammurabi in Story of the World, Vol. 1 by Susan Wise Bauer.  We talked about some of his laws and discussed what was fair about them (or not).  I printed the free notebook page on Hammurabi from biblestoryprintables.com to go in the plastic page protector with the Hammurabi figure from Famous Figures of Ancient Times for Ian’s history notebook.

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Science

This week in the God’s Design for Life curriculum we learned about fish.  In addition to reading lessons 11-13 in The World of Animals, we watched Bill Nye the Science Guy: Fish, Ian made a collage for his notebook, and he read About Fish by Cathryn Sill.

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We started to read The Life Cycle of a Salmon by Bobbie Kalman, but Ian wasn’t as into it as he has been with other books in this series.  I ended up just leaving it out, along with The Life Cycle of a Shark, and The Life Cycle of a Sea Horse, which he enjoyed going through on his own while the others were napping.

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Extras

This was our last week in the Salsa unit based on Caperucita Roja (Little Red Riding Hood).  All three older kids have learned so much from this program.  Although I usually only do the lesson plans with Ian, Elijah has started showing a fascination with using another language, and Arianna often requests to watch a Salsa video.  It’s fun to see them all learning together.

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Posted in Ambleside Online

Get to Know Mary by Nancy I. Sanders (Book Review)

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When I got the chance to review Mary in the Get to Know series by Nancy I. Sanders (Zondervan, 2014), I thought this was going to be a fictionalized biography of Jesus’ mother.  Instead, it turned out to be an in-depth study of Mary’s life.

The book isn’t told as a story, though it does include stories from Mary’s life as described in the Bible.  However, Sanders helps young readers get a fuller understanding of those Bible passages by explaining customs and describing what life would have been like for Mary.

For example, in Chapter 6 (“Mary and Joseph’s Home), we read about what kind of houses poor people in Nazareth might have had.  Then we learn about what kinds of food they ate and how they treated sickness and various ailments.

“Mary might wash clothes in the streams that formed when it rained hard or with water she got from the village well.  Soap was made from animal fat mixed with ashes from plants.”

Each chapter is full of fascinating details and beautiful color illustrations and photographs that help bring Mary’s world to life. There are explanations of Jewish holy days, pictures of archeological finds from Mary’s time, maps showing where things take place, and much more.

Although the reading level is too advanced for my boys (better for upper elementary), I plan to read parts of it aloud to them as we begin our study of the New Testament.  It is a wonderful resource for teaching about life in Israel at the time of Christ.  I look forward to reading other books in the Get to Know series.

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