Grapevine Studies: New Testament Overview Part 1 {Curriculum Review}

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I have always found that bible studies with children go best when you can get them involved...especially if there is pictures. Grapevine Studies provides a bible curriculum designed with that idea in mind. We recently reviewed their New Testament Overview Part 1 (specifically New Testament 1: Level 1 Birth of John to Jesus' Ministry, New Testament 1: Level 2 Birth of John to Jesus' Ministry, and New Testament 1: Beginner John to the Apostles) with our boys ages 5 and 10.

Product Summary

Grapevine Studies is a leading Bible method and curriculum for teachers desiring to teach biblical studies with simple, practical, and easy to implement studies for children of all ages. Their method for the early students of "Hear-Draw-Review" ensures an understanding of the stories even from a pre-school age. As the child gets older, the program switches to a Read-Draw-Review approach to encourage them to dive into the Bible themselves. One thing that sets the curriculum apart is the use of simple stick figures to help share the Bible stories! With simple drawings, even the youngest bible student can document the stories they are learning! All of the products are available as printed or digital books.

The company has this great graphic to give you an idea on how the program changes in difficulty with each level...

Grapevine Studies offers the following curriculum:
*Biblical Feasts and Holy Days
*Birth of Jesus
*Esther
*Joseph
*New Testament Overview (7 units)
--John to the Apostles
--Birth of John to Jesus' Ministry
--Jesus' Ministry
--Jesus' Ministry to His Trials
--Jesus' Last Week
--The Cross to the Upper Room
--Acts to Revelation
*New Testament Catechism
*Old Testament Overview (8 units)
--Creation to Babel
--Creation to Jacob
--Abraham to the Tabernacle
--Joseph to the Promised Land
--The Twelve Spies to Solomon
--The Jordan River to the Temple
--The Temple to Nehemiah
--The Prophets to Nehemiah
*Old Testament Catechism
*Ruth
*The Resurrection
*Timelines (6 different units)
*Moses and the Exodus

Each unit contains from 9 to 14 weekly lessons which are laid out for you in a very easy to each manner. In fact, the company provides you instruction on How To Teach their program to make it even easier for you to get started. You can also visit their website to figure out which level to start with!

There are several levels within each unit which can be purchased to match the age range and ability of your child:

Traceables (Age 3-5)
Beginners (Age 5-7)
Level 1 (Age 6-8)
Level 2 (Age 8-10)
Level 3 (Age 10-13)
Level 4 (Age 13+)
Multi-Level (Age 7+)

We were given the digital downloadable curriculum for New Testament 1: Beginner John to Apostles, as well as the traceable version of New Testament 1: Level 1 Birth of John to Jesus' Ministry, New Testament 1: Level 2 Birth of John to Jesus' Ministry, and the accompanying teacher books. All were downloadable e-Books. We reviewed these with our boys age 5 and 10.

How Did We Use This Product?

I initially picked the NT 1: Beginner John to Apostles, not realizing (aka. READING on the website. LOL) that it wouldn't be compatible with the NT 1: Level 2 Birth of John to Jesus' Ministry that I was going to use with Little Britches. I think I thought it was the Level 1 Traceable version which IS compatible, and what we used last year.

The NT 1: Beginner John to Apostles uses the same method as the others, except it is geared specifically for ages 3-5 and not available in a higher level. It is traceable (though also available blank for independent drawing) and ideal for introducing the NT stories to preschool and Kindergarten aged kiddos. It has 11 weekly lessons and contains memory verses and reviews. This will take you from the birth of John to the choosing of the Apostles.

After looking at what I had printed off and comparing it to the Level 2 that I had printed off, I realized it wasn't going to work for us as a simultaneous lesson! Fortunately, Grapevine generously had sent over the Level 1 Traceable version with the Level 2. This allowed us not to lose any time as we switched over to the Level 1 Traceable for Baby Britches, so he could work in unison with Little Britches. This makes it much much easier for me to teach them together.

As I did the last time we used the program for review, I printed out the boys' lesson pages and kept them in a 3 hole binder. This time, however, I kept the Teachers manual on my Kindle for reference which saved me a lot of printing!

This is the suggested schedule for the program:
 Daily Schedule                                                
 Day 1: Timeline Review  Page                             
 Day 2: Lesson page 1                                           
 Day 3: Lesson page 2                                           
 Day 4: Student Drawing Page

With a Weekly Schedule suggestion of:
Timeline Review (5-10 minutes)
Lesson Pages 1 and 2 (30-35 minutes)
Student Drawing Page (5-15 minutes)

We operate on four day a week school routine with half days on Fridays, thus this schedule from Grapevine fits very well into our routine. There are some days I might mix Day 1 with Day 2's work, but that was dependent on how quickly the boys finished their Timeline reviews.

There aren't many supplies required for the program. Each curriculum shares the supplies needed to teach the program--it's pretty simple:
Student: Bible, Colored Pencils, Student or Traceable Book
Teacher: Bible, Bible Dictionary, Dry Erase Board & Markers (8 colors), and the Teacher Book

If you don't have a dry erase board, then a big sketch pad and colored pencils or markers would work perfectly fine. We just happen to have a big dry erase board.

This is an open and go product, as the teacher book shares notes on how to go about teaching the curriculum, as well as little tips to remember. It describes what each portion of the lesson is for and how it can be done. It also gives you visuals of what the child's completed work will/should look like in every day's lesson. There is no guessing on what they need to do. It tells you!

Elizabeth and Zacharias and Zacharias visited by Gabriel

The curriculum began with a timeline narration that goes over all the events (drawings) that will be covered in detail throughout the course of the curriculum. Once this is done (takes about a week of doing a page a day), you start the normal lesson plan schedule that I mentioned above.

As of today, we are finishing up our 5th week of working on this curriculum. We will be starting Lesson 5 next week. We have been working on this product 3-4 days a week.

What Are Our Thoughts On This Product?

We all enjoy this product! The boys would remind me when it was time to pull it out. They liked drawing the pictures best of all. I find that Little Britches is able to answer the lesson review questions a lot better than his little brother (as expected), but both of them do well in their overall memory of the lessons.

This program is very easy to implement and truly only takes 15-20 minutes tops to do. We tried to follow the basic schedule that was provided in the teachers guide just as we did last year.

I made a few revisions to the stick figures in this unit (the angels, and a few other minor things)--but these are just related to our own personal beliefs, and not something that others might necessarily do. This is why this program is really great--you can adapt it if you need to, in order to meet your needs.

Shepherds hearing angels singing

We chose not to really do anything with the vocabulary, although I would ask them random questions relating to their meanings if I was curious if they knew a term.

The boys enjoyed doing the event cards as usual, and they always add far more than whatever was part of the original stick figure.

The program includes a section review to go over everything covered after week 6, and then again after week 12. This is just a couple pages of nothing but questions--can be done orally or written--and then a couple timeline reviews. I like to have Little Britches write his answers down (they are all short answer) and I have Baby Britches give me his answers orally. This is a great way to check their comprehension of the stories that we went over.

Each of the units sells for about $28 ($18 for Teacher e-Book, $10 for Student e-Book) which may be a bit steep for my budget if I want to continue to do the curriculum for several future units; however, it's a 10-14 week curriculum, so it's going to provide lessons over a few months, not to mention that it is really a very good program and reusable (if you go with the digital version), which makes the cost much more frugal!

I really don't have anything seriously negative to say about the program, because it has worked well for us so far!

Will we continue to use this curriculum?
Yes! I plan on using it to completion and then possibly picking another one from their unit studies.

Would We Recommend This Product?

Yes, I would! I think that if you are looking for a program that does the "hard work" for you by laying out the stories in small pieces for easy retention, this is perfect! If you want a program that incorporates memory work, this is a great one! If you want it to be fairly open-and-go, this is it! If you want to do one unit with age appropriate work for each child, this would be something to check out! I really appreciate that I can do the same program with both boys, yet have age appropriate work for them. I also love that it's designed to have material for even the very young--beginning at age 3 with the traceable options.

Want to Know More?

We have reviewed the New Testament Overview Part 1(New Testament 1: Beginner John to Apostles, as well as the traceable version of New Testament 1: Level 1 Birth of John to Jesus' Ministry, New Testament 1: Level 2 Birth of John to Jesus' Ministry) from Grapevine Studies with our family. You know what we think, but what did the rest of the crew think about this program? 

Want to stay up to date on the latest releases and sales from Grapevine Studies? Make sure you get connected on these social media outlets.

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I am so happy that this program worked for us as well as the previous unit study did. I will continue to be recommending Grapevine Studies to anyone looking for a simple and effective biblical program to use across a wide age range of students. It's fun too!

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Random 5 for Friday (on Saturday)~A Week of Adventures

Another week comes to a close...the first week of March. Hard to believe that it's already the third month of this year. But March means that winter will finally have to fade away and make way for glorious spring! Here are some of our adventures that we had this week as part of Random 5 for Friday!

The links on this blog and in the posts may be affiliate links.  Please see my disclosure policy for full details and thank you for your support!

1. Sunday was delightful! It was so warm and we enjoyed spending the day outside! I got in the mood to garden and started working my way through my seed catalogs to plan what all needs to be purchased for the new growing season. I have a blog post almost done about all the pre-gardening planning that can be done while you are waiting for everything to be ready to go.

2. Monday. LOL. About mid-morning, I kept hearing noises in our chimney and realized a bird had gotten stuck in the flue. This happens about once a year, so it's not a new experience. As we have done before, we just wait for the bird to come down into the woodstove itself and then we dispose of it. It was not to be so simple this time. The bird DID make it down the pipe and into the stove, however, before I could take care of it, there was a bit of excitement. I was on the phone with my mom and all of sudden I heard LIttle Britches yell that Baby Britches had opened the stove door and the bird had escaped. In the house. So I quickly hung up on my mom "Mom, I have to go. There is a bird on the loose in the house!" and then set about a course of action to get that bird OUT! Fortunately, after the initial chaos, we were able to usher it towards a door and outside. And the best news? It didn't poop on anything! LOL! My mom definitely got a chuckle that morning.

3. Tuesday. So it was just your normal day. I made dinner over at my inlaws house because my mother-in-law is out of town and I wanted to feed my father-in-law. My soon to be sister-in-law came over to help. All was fine until I went to open to open a can of black beans as I always do...and then...oh. That's not good. And then my finger starts bleeding all over. Yep, classic slicing of finger on can lid. It was quite a filet and it would NOT stop bleeding. Fortunately with Lauren (my soon to be SIL) there, she helped me get ice and compression. And then finished dinner. After 1 1/2 hrs it was still bleeding so we discussed whether or not I needed to get stitches and decided to go back to my house. I had butterfly bandaids, gauze and tape there. Thankfully once I got it done up like that the bleeding stopped. But ugh. how aggravating! LOL! And nothing like a thickly bandaged pointer finger!

4. So now I'm on the lookout for a new can opener. Mine was just a nice classic style with padded handles. But I'm now leaning towards this highly recommended Kuhn Auto Safety Lid Lifter or this OXO Good Grips Smooth Edge Can Opener. No more jagged lids at all! Both are highly recommended with very good reviews.

5. We also got new furniture this week! We decided to downsize and moved our two end tables, a coffee table, loveseat, couch, and recliner out. In its place, we moved back in a new power reclining loveseat, reclining couch, and a new coffee table that is just pretty awesome. The coffee table is MINE because it has the best storage!

One side lifts up to give you a tray table of sorts and underneath--lots of storage. The other side lid lifts out and it's nothing but storage! This is why we were able to eliminate the end tables! Now I can store everything in this! The one side is for nothing but library books. The other has my stationary, phone books, blanket, and other odds and ends in baskets for easy grabbing. Everyone just loves it, and we especially love that it is a perfect match to our entertainment center. Did I mention it's also on wheels for easy movement? It's just fabulous! Everyone has been asking us where we found it. We found it at our local fabulous furniture store (aka. Big Sandy Superstore) but it's an Ashley brand which seems to be carried everywhere. They call it a Lift Cocktail Table. I just call it awesome. LOL!

We were very happy to be able to bless an older couple with all our old furniture. They lost all their own in a fire early last year and have been using just hodge podge leftovers that people donated. They are very excited to have all of our stuff delivered tomorrow and we are so happy to be able to help them out.

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I hope you have a simply lovely rest of your weekend! I am having a mini mom day out tomorrow as I have to run some errands in Cincinnati. I have simply got to find suspenders for Baby Britches. He's got the tiniest little tooshie and his pants just WON'T stay up! LOL! I'm hoping some stores will be already filling up with the nice Easter clothes as that will give me what I need I'm sure!

The Dragon and the Raven: Kings, Castles, Vikings, and Adventure! {Product Review}

Heirloom Audio Productions just recently released the next G.A. Henty audiodrama in their collection, The Dragon and the Raven! We have already been blessed to have copies of the three previous audiodramas in their collection, and were eager to review this exciting new story. Would it be up to the high quality of the previous productions? We sure hoped so!

Product Summary

The Dragon and the Raven is #4 in the collection of audiodramas produced by Heirloom Audio Productions. Adapted from the book by G.A. Henty of the same name, the story takes us to the early 9th century and the world of King Alfred the Great--when he was still just a king of Wessex-- as he attempts to keep the invading Danes from completely taking over England. With everyone else surrendering in the wake of the viking destruction, King Alfred of Wessex is joined by young Edmund, and together the two young warriors fight to turn the tide and save their world as they know it. With God on their side, nothing is impossible!

With a cast ensemble of John Ryhs-Davies (Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones), Helen George (Call the Midwife), Brian Blessed (Star Wars, Tarzan, King Lear), and Sylvester McCoy (Doctor Who VII, The Hobbit), the production is superb! Once again Emmy-Award winning composer John Campbell contributes a fabulous original soundtrack. With full movie sound effects, this isn't just any old audiodrama--it's an ADVENTURE!

The Dragon and the Raven is a 2 CD set (2 hrs of story) for $29.97 and comes with instant access MP3 download. You will also receive the following bonuses:

1. The complete The Dragon and Raven eStudy Guide and Discussion Starter (48 page PDF)
2. A beautiful, printable copy of the inspirational verse (Proverbs 21:31) as quoted by King Alfred in The Dragon and The Raven which can be framed.
3. The Official The Dragon and The Raven Soundtrack MP3 download.

Perfect for ages 6-100+, this is a high quality production, you don't want to miss!

We were given the 2 CD set, and the bonuses to review with our family.

How Did We Use the Product?

As we typically do, we simply started at the beginning! We had to run a lot of errands one day, and I knew we would be in the car for at least an hour, so we began The Dragon and the Raven. I didn't have the eStudy Guide with me at the time, so I didn't look at it WHILE we were listening. I did pull it up and pull out some questions to incorporated in our discussions later. I prefer having it printed out, but since that would use up a lot of ink/paper, I opted to just read it from my Kindle Fire which worked perfectly fine this time. It was a simple download.

The other bonus I used was the mp3 complete soundtrack of the production! That's actually a really nice background music for when I am driving!

What Are Our Thoughts on the Product?

Oh my. I don't know that there is anything I can say that I didn't say on the last three reviews I did of a Heirloom Audio Production audiodrama! That stories are intriguing and fun. The soundtrack is phenomenal. The bringing to life of the characters, simply marvelous. There were a few actors/actresses in this production that I know from TV, so when I heard their voices on the production, I knew immediately who they were. Having experienced performers makes the production that much better because they know how to do their voices with the right intonations.

And as for the music...sigh. What a treat to have such a high quality soundtrack! It is so nice to have the soundtrack itself as a bonus mp3 with this product. Sometimes you miss the beauty of the music as you are listening to the dialogue.

As usual, the The Dragon and The Raven eStudy Guide and Discussion Starter was great to check the attention of my boys. I always like how it adds discussion questions for you to take it further. This one also provided internet links, so you could look up more information, like on the Alfred Jewel that is mentioned in the story. Little Britches was eager to see what it looked like...though he declared it rather ugly. LOL.

I also love that the focus throughout the story is how on God and His help and protection through the trials and situations the characters find themselves in.

Are there any cons?
No, not really. We just love these productions. Knowing I can keep the family interested in something for the 2 hrs per audiodrama is just fabulous for long trips...although lately they have been asking to listen even for shorter errands!

Would I Recommend the Product?

Absolutely! This is one product that I really think the whole family would enjoy. The history is brought to life with great drama, and the study guide helps you take it even further for critical thinking and discussions. I didn't know anything about the Danes and King Alfred, so now I want to research more into the very incredible story!

As I have said about the other three audiodramas, the quality of the whole thing is simply incredible. You will love how it brings you in. If you want to have a stash of great selections to play for those long car trips or plane rides, you need to be thinking about adding the audiodramas from Heirloom Audio Productions to your list!

As an aside--these are Christian productions, so there is a lot of mention about the relationship with God each of these main characters had and how it was such a part of their lives. So if that would bother you, you might reconsider purchasing this product, because it's definitely a major part of the story.

Want to Know More?

We reviewed The Dragon and the Raven from Heirloom Audio Productions. You know how much we enjoy the audiodramas, but what did the rest of the review crew think?

Stay up to date on all the latest information from Heirloom Audio Productions on these social media sites:

Facebook: 

https://www.facebook.com/HeirloomAudio

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https://twitter.com/HeirloomStories @HeirloomStories

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@HeirloomAudioOfficial

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I am so glad that this 4th installment of the stories of G.A. Henty was just as enjoyable as the others were. We have already received the news that the next audiodrama to ve released with be The Cat of Bubastes which was G.A. Henty's first book and takes place in Ancient Egypt. I'm sure it will be a spectacular production as well!