History Studies: Making Unleavened Bread

This week in our Mystery of History studies we read about Moses and the Exodus out of Egypt. It was a story we have read many time in our Bible, but this week through some historical fiction and other activities, we were able to gain a deeper appreciation of this Biblical event.



The first book we read was Tirzah by Lucille Travis. This book tells the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt through the eyes of a 12yr. Hebrew girl. What I liked about this book is that it made us think about what it might have been like trekking through the desert with Moses. Many times I have read this story in the Bible but didn't think about details. How did the Israelites feel when they were being chased by Pharaoh? What was it like seeing the cloud lead them through the desert?

Pin It

Moses had instructed the people to quickly pack and be able to leave at a moment's notice. He told them to make bread without yeast, since making bread with yeast took a long time to bake. Bread without yeast is called unleavened bread. After reading in our Bible and our history book, I handed my older kids the Old Testament Days: an Activity Guide by Nancy Sanders and told them they were in charge of making unleavened bread for our family.

They gathered the supplies: flour, salt, milk, oil and honey and started making the bread.

First the flour was measured.

Then the salt.

All the wet ingredients were mixed in a separate bowl and then mixed together with the dry ingredients.

The girls mixed the dough with their hands and then placed small circles onto a cookie pan. They pricked each circle with a fork and placed into the oven.

After 20 minutes, our bread was done!

We ate ours with a little butter and honey. Yum!

While eating the bread, we talked about how Jewish people remember the miraculous way God delivered them from Egypt by celebrating Passover. We could probably spend a couple more weeks just learning all about the symbols and significance of Passover!

We've actually spent 2 weeks longer on this unit than what was scheduled. I do this often. :) Many times there are so many cool projects, books, and activities that we want to do that won't fit in the schedule. If my kids are interested in going deeper, we make time in our schedule. Once we are done with our rabbit-trail studies, then we go back to the next history lesson. It took awhile for the box-checker in me to get to the point of sometimes abandoning the schedule, but I've found that it's ok! :)

You might be interested in:
Illuminations: Getting Started with our new History Program
Mystery of History and the Ancient Egypt and the Minoans




Disclosure: There are affiliate links in this post. Thank you in advance for supporting this site.


Pin It

Ancient History: Eygpt and the Minoans

We have now completed one month of Illuminations by Bright Ideas Press (I'll have a detailed review up next month). Using Mystery of History Vol.1, we learned about Early Egypt, Stonehenge, and the Minoan Civilization this past week.

Our read-aloud book for the past couple of weeks has been The Golden Goblet. I am a big fan of good, historical fiction books. I learned more about history reading historical fiction books as a kid than I did in my history classes. I pre-read this just so that I could be enthusiastic and pronounce things correctly when reading aloud to my kids. I enjoyed it and my kids are starting too as well. It definitely is for older elementary children as there are some sensitive topics (Ranofer is often beaten and starved by his half-brother.)

After reading a couple chapters in the book, my son illustrated one of the scenes with his Legos.

A good part of the book takes place in a goldsmith shop, so this shows Ranofer working--well if I explained the whole thing I would give too much of the story away! :)

My 9yr. old daughter on the other hand, was very interested in what we learned about the Minoans and on her own, created her version of a fresco (well without plaster--she made do with what was on-hand.) I love that my kids are interested enough to do projects that are not assigned! She also made a salt-dough amulet, but I failed to photograph that project.

I was excited to get a box of books in the mail! These books will be used later in the year for our history studies. Just a few more left and then I will have all I need for the year. If you are wondering what the book list looks like, you can check out the Illuminations Year 1 Grade 3-8 list on Amazon. I've also been pinning ideas on my MOH1 Pinterest board.

What's been your favorite time-period to study in history?

Pin It

Weekly Wrap-Up: Illuminations

I can't believe I'm organized enough to actually link up in my first ever Weekly-Wrap Up hosted by WUHS. We've been working hard at getting back into the school grove after the holidays. We added some new curriculum this semester and will be adding WriteShop Junior book D to the line-up as soon as the mailman delivers it.

We finished up our second week of using Illuminations and Mystery of History Vol.1. Illuminations is is an all-inclusive *curriculum, covering Bible, Language Arts, Literature, Science, Humanities, Geography, History, Life Skills, and Projects. We've been reading through our first book, Adam and His Kin by Ruth Beechick. I decided to read this aloud to the kids and I have been surprised at how interested they are in this book about Adam's family. It has brought up some good questions and discussions.

Each week I print out the Illuminations schedule and put it in my binder (I print out a month's worth of schedule/materials at a time). I file each behind the appropriate tab. Then I print custom schedule sheets for my 3 older kids to place in their binders. Illuminations always you to edit and change the text on the schedule. So for instance, my children are using a different spelling program than what is scheduled in Illuminations. I can replace the text with my children's specific spelling assignments. I love that!

My kids place their weekly schedule in their Mystery of History binder. It is set up with tabs for all the continents plus a misc. tab. All their history, geography, and reading assignments will be filed here.

Here's an earlier assignment that was filed in the notebook. Assignments vary from reports, graphic organizers, maps, to notebooking pages and art projects. By the end of the year each child will have a complete portfolio of work.

 

I like that all my kids are covering the same time-period but have different levels of assignments. This week we read about Noah and the flood and dinosaurs. My younger kids played a dino matching game while my middle schoolers worked on a mini-report on an ice-age animal. 

Since our local co-op is not meeting yet, we have been using this opportunity to work through some fun science experiments from Christian Kids Explore Science: Earth & Space. We've studied astronomy in-depth a couple of years ago, but I thought it would be a nice way to review and it tied in well with our Days of Creation lessons in history. Can you guess what this experiment was? It looks like a galaxy with all the star confetti. It was actually a tornado-in-a-bottle.

My younger girls are continuing with All About Reading Pre-Level 1 and Level 1. This activity was for my 5yr. old, but the 3yr. old wanted to "feed the monster" too. Each slip of paper had a word that my 5 year old had to read before feeding the monster.

The girls have also been using the ipad for school, making crafts, coloring, and of course playing. :) Well that's it for this week! Swing on over to WUHS to see what everyone else is up to.