The Mystery of History Volume 2 Lesson Plan

You may remember my Lost in History post last fall when I decided to scrap our entire history plan and start something new.  Well, I'm glad we made the switch.  This week we finished the MOH Vol. 2 and it worked out well for our family.

I must admit I was leery at first given MOH is known for following the classical method of education.  However, it was very easy to morph into Charlotte Mason.  We mostly used MOH as a spine, adding great literature/living books to our study.  RileyAnn kept a history notebook, but we didn't do many of the suggested projects.   Keep in mind we spent the first 15 weeks of the school year studying Ancient Rome and the life of Jesus Christ with our original plan.  You can find those plans/resources here.

MOH Vol. 2 is a study of the early church and the middle ages.  There were a few lessons that overlapped, but I took it as review.  The following is a loose plan of how and what books I added to our MOH study....

Mystery of History	Added Resources
Lesson 1 - Pentecost and the First Followers of Jesus	Vos Story Bible Ch 57-63
Lesson 2 - Saul, Who is Also Called Paul	Vos Ch 64-68
Lesson 3 - Paul's Missionary Journeys	Vos Ch 69-72
Lesson 4 - Nero	Vos Ch 73-74
Lesson 5 - Martyrs of the Early Church	Vos Ch 75-76

Lesson 6 - Josephus
Lesson 7 - Masada	Vos Ch 77-80 - Exploring Ancient Cities of the Bible
8 - Dead Sea Scrolls	Vos Ch 81 - Grew Salt Crystals
9 - The Buried City of Pompeii	Vos Ch 82 - Pompeii....Buried Alive
10 - Bar-Kokhba	Vos Ch 83
11 - The Apostle's Creed	Vos Ch 84 - memorize the Creed
12 - St. Valentine	Vos Ch 85-86 - St. Valentine's Day
13 - Diocletian Divides the Roman Empire	Vos Ch 87
14 - Constantine I and the Edict of Milan	Vos Ch 88
15 - The Golden Age of India	India: The Culture, The People, The Land
16 - The Maya	Vos Ch 89 - The Mystery of the Maya: Uncovering the Lost City...
17 - St. Augustine of Hippo	Vos Ch 90
18 - The Holy Bible and the Vulgate of Jerome	Vos Ch 91 - St. Jerome and the Lion
19 - St. Patrick of Ireland	Vos Ch 92 - St. Patrick's Day
20 - Attila the Hun
21 - Fall of Western Roman Empire	Vos Ch 93
22 - Daily Life in the Dark Ages	The Sword in the Tree  A Medieval Feast
23 - King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table	Favorite Medieval Tales
24 - Justinian I and Theodora, Byzantine Empire
25 - Columba, Missionary to Scotland	Across a Dark and Wild Sea Marguerite Makes a Book
26 - Early Japan and Prince Shotoku
27 - Gregory the Great	Augustine Came to Kent
28 - The Sui and Tang Dynasties of China
29 - Mohammed and the Birth of Muslims
30 - The Spread of Islam	Saladin - started reading, but didn't finish
31 - Wu Zetian, Empress of China
32 - The Epic of Beowulf	Favorite Medieval Tales Saint George and the Dragon
33 - Al-Andalus....Medieval Spain
34 - St. Boniface, Apostle to Germany
35 - The Iconoclast Controversy
36 - Charles "Martel" and the Battle of Tours
37 - Charlemagne	Favorite Medieval Tales Charlemagne
38 - The Thousand and One Nights: Tales from Arabia
39 - Invasion of the Vikings	Viking Adventure DK Vikings
40 - The Vikings....
42 - Alfred the Great, King of England
43 - Lydveldid Island (Iceland)
47 - Otto I and the Holy Roman Empire	(you might consider Grimm's Fairy Tales, which we'd read in the past)
48 - Vladimer I of Russia
51 - Eric the Red and the Settlement of Greenland	Eric the Red & Leif the Lucky
52 - Leif Ericcson Discovers America	Beorn the Proud
53 -  Macbeth King of Scotland
55 - William the Conqueror & the Battle of Hastings
56 - Pope Gregory VII, Henry IV & The Investiture Controversy	The Minstrel in the Tower
57 - The Early Crusades

59 - Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of Two Nations
60 - The Jews of the Middle Ages
61 - Richard the Lionhearted, Saladin and the 3rd Crusade	Coat of Arms The Making of a Knight: How Sir James Earned His Armor  Created a Coat of Arms
62 - The Classic Tale of Robin Hood	Favorite Medieval Tales (you might consider Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest, which we'd read in the past)
64 - St. Francis of Assisi, St. Clara and St. Dominic	Brother Francis and the Friendly Beast
65- The Children's Crusade	The Pied Piper of Hamelin
66 - King John and the Magna Carta	Castle Diary: The Journal of Tobias Burgess, Page Magna Carta
69 - Roger Bacon
70 - The Great Khans and the Mongol Invasion of China	(you might consider The King and His Hawk as retold by James Baldwin, which we'd read in the past)
71 - Marco Polo Travels East	Marco Polo
72 - Sir William Wallace, Sir Robert the Bruce, "Bravehearts" of Scotland	The Door in the Wall
74 - The Aztecs	Kingfisher Aztecs & Incas (1st half)
75 - The Hundred Years' War
76 - The Black Death of Europe
77 - The Ming Dynasty of China & the Forbidden City	Little Pear
78 - John Wycliffe, "Morning Star of the Reformation"
79 - Geoffrey Chaucer & The Canterbury Tales	Chanticleer and the Fox Favorite Medieval Tales
80 - John Huss
81 - Life and Death of Joan of Arc	Joan of Arc - didn't finish - we've read other books about Joan of Arc in the past
82 - The Inkas of South America	Kingfisher Aztecs & Incas (2nd half)
83 - The Ottoman Turks Take Constantinople
84 - Johannes Gutenberg Invents the Printing Press	Fine Print - didn't finish - we've read other books about Gutenberg in the past

You might notice that we skipped a few lessons throughout.  Since I was using this primarily for 1st and 2nd grade, there were some lessons I felt unnecessary or over their head at this point.  However, if you are using this with older students, say 4th and up, I wouldn't recommend skipping lessons.  The suggested activities and mapwork would be more pertinent with older students as well.  

We do keep a timeline and have since the beginning of our history study starting with creation and ancient Mesopotamia.  I like the Sonlight Book of Time for this.  It's an easy to store spiral bound book.  We use timeline figures from Homeschool in the Woods.   

RileyAnn also completed History Pockets Ancient Civilizations by Evan Moor.  

It's intended for grades 1-3 and covers: 

What is History?

Ancient Mesopotamia

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Greece

Ancient Rome

Ancient China

Ancient Aztec World

We spread it out over the two years we covered these early civilizations.  She ended up with a really neat ancient civilization portfolio.  I may blog about it at anther time.  

I recommend The Mystery of History by Linda Lacour Hobar.  We plan to continue with Vol. 3 in the fall.