Gh Creation Review

[Calfu Baransky]

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We really enjoyed history this year. Beginning at creation we worked our way to Ancient Greece. It was so interesting learning about how all of the ancient civilizations began. My girls really enjoyed the Ancient Egypt study this year. My favorite book was the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History From Ancient to Modern Times. It is an internet linked book. You can visit their website and enter the book title, it will give you videos, games, and other resources pertaining to each page. My girls loved looking through it.

Streams of Civilizations is meant for older children. I would sometimes pre-read myself and then summarize for my girls. But after while I got tired of doing that and I would just read straight out of the book while they colored or worked on a project of some sort. The bulk of what they learned/ remembered was from the Usborne history book.

This curriculum mostly uses Science in the Beginning. I love the idea of this book. It goes through all things science from day one to day six of creation. For each day there are various experiments to conduct. After the experiments you read about what you did. Then the children can answer questions about it. There are notebooks that go along with the curriculum but I opted to go a different way. I had my girls keep a science journal. So after each experiment they would draw a picture of it and then write about what happened. My oldest usually wrote more detailed explanations than my youngest. They both really enjoyed the science up until the last couple of months of school. Towards the end the experiments are 3 times a week. It was just getting to be a lot of work. And a lot of times my girls asked to skip certain experiments.

When studying Ancient Egypt we used the Pyramids book. This was actually really fun to do. It included some fun activities and projects that go along with pyramids. My girls enjoyed doing the various activities together.

For Bible each day we usually just read different passages in the Bible. We started in Genesis and have worked our way up to Nehemiah. We also used the DK Illustrated Family Bible as well. I mostly read from this instead of the Bible readings except for when there was no suggested readings in this book. They also had weekly memory verses to copy and recite.

English From the Roots Up will be used in the following curriculum as well. During CTG you learn all of the Greek root words and next year the Latin root words. The curriculum includes a book with all of the root words, definitions, and derivatives of each. It also includes how to use the book and some teaching notes.

The book is meant to be drawn in, but if you have more than one child or would like to reuse it they recommend making copies of certain pages. I chose to get a blank sketch book for each of my girls to use. For lessons where there were things you had to draw on I would just quickly draw them in their sketch books for them to fill in. For example, the photo below shows a lesson where they had to draw designs on the two pots. So I drew the outline of the pots for them to draw on. I know not everyone can or wants to do this, but it worked for us.

The music studies were mostly listening to cds of famous composers, their biographies and their music. My girls always enjoyed when we would listen to them. I would usually play it while they were doing independent work or art.

I love having a curriculum already set up for me. I love having the lesson plans done and the resources and books selected. But I also really love adding our own spin on things. Especially additional projects, crafts, and activities. That being said I added a few various books and resources this year that we all really enjoyed.

If you only do one extra thing, join the Facebook group! This group is full of other families who are working through or have already completed the curriculum. It is the perfect place to ask questions and get recommendations on the curriculum. The file section is jam packed with free resources to use in conjunction with the curriculum.

Before we started the school year I searched for some fun projects to add to our curriculum. I found these cool Art in History art projects that I knew my girls would love. They have many projects for various time periods. I got this one for our Ancient Egypt study and this one for our Ancient Greece study.

I also added my own projects I though my girls would enjoy. For Ancient Egypt they painted and decorated a sarcophagus. For the mummy they wrapped gauze around a thick dowel rod. They also made their own cartouches, which is suggested in the curriculum. But I took it up a notch and made them out of clay. Once they were dried my girls painted them gold.

For science my girls keep a science journal. They each have a Juniper Grove Journal with a notebook insert. I customized a notebook with a half blank page and a half lined page and labeled it Science. After each experiment they drew a picture of what happened and explained the process. Although we skipped quite a few science experiments throughout the year.

Toward the end of the year the experiments are 3 times a week. My girls started to get very uninterested in all of the experiments so some weeks we would skip a day or two. I would have preferred this curriculum to be 1 experiment a week with maybe some reading or videos the other day or two.

I have always loved the book basket in the back of the teachers manual. And I was really good about getting books the first half of the year. But again, after we were all sick in January, that was one of the things I started skipping. And then I just never really added it back in. I hope to utilize it all next year though!

Thank you so much for your support over the years on my blog, Instagram, and Facebook page. I love sharing about our homeschool journey, the things we love to use, and what works for us in hopes that it might help you in your homeschool journey. Please let me know if you have any questions about this curriculum or anything for that matter!

When we purchased our tickets to Ark Encounter, we decided to buy the package deal so we could also visit the Creation Museum. The Creation Museum has been around a lot longer than Ark Encounter and it's not too far of a drive from Ark Encounter, so we decided to incorporate it into our trip too.

The morning we went to the Creation Museum it was gloomy and bit rainy and a weekday, so it was very quiet. We didn't have trouble finding any parking space and there was no line at all for checking in.

We packed our rain jackets, so grabbed those and started outside first. The grounds are beautiful and since it wasn't raining too hard (mostly spritzing), we took our time exploring all that there was to see. The gardens on the grounds were incredibly beautiful and all laid out really well.

They had alpacas, chickens, donkeys, goats, and pigs. Similar to Ark Encounter, they also camels you could pay extra to ride and a zip line course but we skipped all of that. We also skipped the park because everything was wet, but it looked fun.

When the outside got more full we headed inside and went straight to watching a 4D movie on creation. Our kids loved getting to wear the special glasses and the effects of a seat rumble or cool air blasts along with the film. The film we saw was the entirety of the gospel message presented. It was really cool!

As we made our way through the upper level, we say exhibits about the authority of the Bible, and creation and then went through a flow of exhibits that followed the story of creation, corruption, catastrophe, confusion, Christ, the cross, and consummation.

The Bible exhibit was fascinating but required a lot of reading and was very dark, so our kids didn't like it as much. I could have spent all day in there! The Garden of Eden display in the creation section was my children's favorite and was the most kid friendly. They also liked the display on dragons and mythology.

The corruption, catastrophe and confusion exhibits detailed a lot of what is found now at the Ark Encounter (as far as information about the flood, the ark, dinosaurs, etc).You can tell this museum was built first and then they decided to expand to build Ark Encounter.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what it was, but this upper level felt somehow "preachy" to me or "argumentative" in a way. It was certainly fascinating, and I really loved some of the exhibits but it definitely felt different somehow than Ark Encounter.

The last three exhibits are very explicit in the redemption gospel message. I loved the inclusion of prophecy in the Christ exhibit. I've been deep into that information all summer writing Signs of the Savior, so it was very cool to see that same information in a museum!

This first part of the museum included a lot of apologetics, creationism vs. evolution information on a scientific approach to days of creation. Most of the museum required reading and there were a few displays that we scary for my kids (those that included images of starvation, poverty, war, destruction, slavery and the holocaust, etc) that we zipped through. I would say the target age was older than the target age for Ark Encounter.

Another exhibit my kids really loved was the Insectorium. There was an interactive animatronic figure that my kids loved hearing share about all the different insects and bugs and how they fit into God's creation.

The animations and the models were so cool to look at with the kids. It was really powerful to reflect on how amazing this part of creation is and what a gift it is to have a role in participating in the process!

We got suckered into a gift shop on the way out, but our kids were so happy to leave with a stuffed animal and plus plus blocks to remember their trip. Honestly the gift shop prices were fairly reasonable and I saw a few of our favorite books featured on their shelves!

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