Book Reviews – Page 31

I’ve recently signed up for a couple of programs in which I can get free books in exchange for reviewing them. I’m primarily reviewing them for Esther’s website (www.ignitelit.com), but occasionally I’ll be posting a review on this blog as well because some of the publishers require that. So, read it if you’re interested, skip it if you’re not!

Prayers That Changed History gives us a unique look at history. Tricia Goyer, a homeschooling mom, wrote the book as an encouragement to all of us, and especially children, to pray. We never know the impact our prayers might have on other people and even the course of history. Most of the people mentioned are quite familiar—who hasn’t heard of George Mueller or Amy Carmichael? Some are more obscure, though; do you know what Robert Raikes did for mankind?

Each of the 25 chapters begins with a picture of the person highlighted, and the dates of that person’s life, and then you get to read a story from the person’s life, describing a particular time that he/she prayed specifically for something. Then, the author gives “Something to Think About”–application to our lives today. Following this is the result in history of the person’s prayer, and then a story in the Bible that is somewhat similar to the story just told. Following this is more application and a final statement to cement the lesson.

I appreciated this look at history. Most of the stories were already quite familiar, but I had never read the one Tricia Goyer told about Amy Carmichael. It was an amazing testimony of the power of prayer!

Prayers That Changed History would be a wonderful resource to accompany a study of Christians throughout history, as well as a good devotional. I would recommend having middle school or high school children read it, maybe a chapter a week.

I received this book free from the publisher through the BookLook.com® book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

I’m excited about what we’re using for Science this year for the boys. Until now, we’ve always used Sonlight Curriculum’s Science, which is a variety of subjects each year and mostly Usborne books. They have activity sheets to go along with the books, and the curriculum is all right as far as it goes. I was starting to feel, though, that we were just scratching the surface of all the different subjects and never digging in deeper, and the boys were getting very bored with it, groaning when it was time to do science. That’s not what we want! Well, sometime around the first of the year I noticed some science books come up on an email list I get, on which homeschoolers around New Zealand can buy and sell books they don’t need anymore. These books were published by Apologia Press, and I knew how much my Mom liked the high school level books they put out. Esther used one last year, and loved it–I never heard her talk so much about what she was learning as with that book! So, I took a closer look on the Apologia website at these books, for elementary students. I liked what I saw! They have six books for younger children, covering Astronomy, Botany, Zoology (three years: birds, fish, land animals), and Human Anatomy. There is a hard cover textbook for each level/subjects, and a notebooking journal to go along with it, with lesson plans. There are actually two notebooks for each textbook, one for older children and one for younger. I was able to get a couple of the textbooks, and notebooks for the Human Anatomy book, from the email list, so we could take a good look. Wow! I liked them immediately! The boys picked up the one about fish right away and were fascinated; one boy even started doing a project from it. I decided, though, that since we had the notebooks for Human Anatomy that we’d do that one this year, and ordered more notebooks so each boy will have one. One of the boys is still proclaiming loudly that the book is boring, and one is ambivalent, but the other two are enthusiastic–and I love it, too! This book glorifies God as Creator and designer all the way through, and shows clearly how wonderfully we are designed. So far, we’ve studied cells, and the boys each got to draw a diagram of a cell (not a simple thing, by the way!). Now, we’re studying bones and the skeleton, and when we happened to eat chicken the day we learned about growth plates we actually found a growth plate on a chicken bone! The notebooking journals provide a great way to write down what they’ve learned, and draw pictures. Some pages have questions to answer or activities to do; we’ll be building a “personal person” for each boy as we go, with overlays to glue onto a picture, showing the skeleton, muscular system, nervous system, etc. I am so thankful to have stumbled onto this book!

This is how we do science–all of us sit on the floor. I read aloud from the textbook, and then we work on filling in the notebooks.

Prayers That Changed History–a book review

Science This Year