Table of Contents for TGS 2 Instructor Book

Here is the Table of Contents of the Instructor Book for Telling God’s Story, Year Two: The Kingdom of Heaven, which is currently at the printer.

Telling God’s Story, Year Two: The Kingdom of Heaven

Introduction

Unit 1: Stories Jesus Told
Lesson 1: Talking the Talk and Walking the Walk (Matthew 21:28–32)
Lesson 2: The Kingdom of God Grows on its Own No Matter What (Mark 4:26–29) Lesson 3: Everyone is Your Neighbor (Luke 10:30–37)
Lesson 4: Don’t Stop Forgiving Others (Matthew 18:21–35)
Lesson 5: God is Equally Gracious to All (Matthew 20:1–16)

Unit 2: Miracles Jesus Did
Lesson 6: Kings Don’t Pay Taxes (Matthew 17:24–27)
Lesson 7: Taking Jesus at His Word (John 4:46–54)
Lesson 8: King Jesus Has Mercy on the Helpless (Luke 18:35–43)
Lesson 9: The Faith of the Outsiders (Luke 17:11–19)
Lesson 10: Jesus Actually Touches a Dead Girl and a Sick Woman (Matthew 9:18–26)

Unit 3: Teachings of Jesus
Lesson 11: God Loves the Rich and the Poor the Same (Luke 14:7–14)
Lesson 12: No One’s Sins are too Big for God to Forgive (Luke 7:36–50)
Lesson 13: Jesus is the Shepherd who Loves His Sheep (John 10:11–21)
Lesson 14: Jesus is Greater than Death (John 11:17–27)
Lesson 15: Staying Connected to Jesus (John 15:1–8)

Unit 4: The Sermon on the Mount
Lesson 16: Give to the Needy without Showing Off (Matthew 6:1–4)
Lesson 17: You Cannot Serve God and Another (Matthew 6:19–24)
Lesson 18: Be Honest With Yourself Before You Judge Others (Matthew 7:1–5)
Lesson 19: Living a Disciplined Life (Matthew 7:13–14)
Lesson 20: Bad Trees Always Bear Bad Fruit (Matthew 7:15–23)

Unit 5: Jesus’ Early Life
Lesson 21: God Is On the Move . . . Again (Luke 1:5–25)
Lesson 22: The Coming of the King (Luke 1:26–38)
Lesson 23: God Exalts the Humble (Luke 1:39–56)
Lesson 24: God is about to Rescue Israel (Luke 1:57–80)

Unit 6: Jesus’ Disciples
Lesson 25: Jesus is the Son of God (Matthew 16:13–20)
Lesson 26: No One Has a Higher Rank in God’s Kingdom (Matthew 18:1–4)
Lesson 27: Jesus Leaves No One Out (Mark 9:38–41)
Lesson 28: Jesus’ Followers Are Servants, not Commanders (Mark 10:35–45)

Unit 7: Opposition to Jesus
Lesson 29: Jesus Upsets a Synagogue Service (Luke 4:14–30)
Lesson 30: False Teaching Spreads like Yeast (Matthew 16:5–12)
Lesson 31: A Clean Heart is Better than Clean Food (Matthew 15:1–20)
Lesson 32: Surrendering our Lives to God Every Day (Matthew 16:21–26)

Unit 8: The End of Jesus’ Life
Lesson 33: Obey God More than Caesar (Matthew 22:15–22)
Lesson 34: Jesus Introduces a New Exodus (Matthew 26:17–28)
Lesson 35: Jesus Suffers and Prays Alone (Matthew 26:36–46)
Lesson 36: Jesus Doesn’t Fight Back When Arrested (Matthew 26:47–56)

Supplemental Lessons: The Rest of the Story
Supplemental Lesson 1: A Politician Condemns an Innocent Man (John 19:1–16)
Supplemental Lesson 2: The Death of Jesus Fulfills Scripture (John 19:28–37)
Supplemental Lesson 3: Mary Magdalene Spreads the News that Jesus is Alive (John 20:10–18)

January Publishing Updates

We’ve been hearing from many of you who are enjoying Telling God’s Story, Year One and are almost ready to start using Year Two with your students, so we wanted to post a brief update on availability:

Telling God’s Story, Year 2 Instructor Text is at the printer, being prepped for printing. We saw the proofs last Friday and they look wonderful!
The Activity Book for Telling God’s Story, Year 2 is at the typesetter. After that, it’ll have one more quality-check and then it, too, will go to the printer.

We are planning to offer PDF versions of both these books for sale, on our webstore, sometime in the first half of March (we’ll announce the exact date on Facebook and on this blog). When we put those up, we’ll also post free samples of the first few lessons to our site.
The print versions should be available from our store sometime in late March (and at Amazon by April).

Thank you for your patience during this long production process.

And how it grows, nobody knows…

This month we heard from a missionary in Africa who is using our books to educate her children and the children at her church. That’s wonderful, but not unusual. But then she mentioned that she’s also using Telling God’s Story, Year One with a new convert, a local woman who is using the book to learn more about Jesus. That is something we truly didn’t foresee: that our little book about Jesus could introduce him not just to children, but also to adults, thousands of miles from our office, in a country we’ll never see.

In Mark 4:26-28, Jesus describes the growth of God’s kingdom like this: “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.”

This passage, which inspired the cover to Telling God’s Story, Year 2, just became real to us in a new way.

 

Publishing Updates

We have enjoyed hearing from so many of you who are using Telling God’s Story, Year One with your children, and loving it. Some of you have asked about Year Two, so here are a few updates:

• The instructor text for Telling God’s Story, Year Two: The Kingdom of Heaven has made it through the first stage of proofreading. (That means we’re about to receive a manuscript covered in red pencil marks and notations like “There is no “z” in “Caesar”). Next, it will be going through another level of proofreading and fact-checking.
• The student activity book for Telling God’s Story, Year Two: The Kingdom of Heaven is almost ready to go to the typesetter. We’re excited about this one, too: historical recipes and craft projects; new mazes, maps, word-searches, and crossword puzzles; 39 new coloring pages; service projects (or “Put it Into Practice,” as we call them); rambunctious games for large and small groups; Scripture memorization, and more.
• We expect to have PDF versions of these books for sale on our webstore by December, with print versions available by February. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter to see more updates.
• Have you seen the cover yet? It’s by one of our artists, Jeff West, who was inspired by Jesus’ parable of the kingdom in Mark 4:26-29:

Great Review from Englewood

The Englewood Review of Books has given Telling God’s Story an extensive review in their latest print issue, and they love it. They called it “a compassionate, intelligent, wise, and holistic approach to the Bible and to raising our children to be followers of Christ.”

They praised the overview text and the yearly instructor and student books as being “accessible, clearly written, and easy to follow.” And they were on board with our approach of introducing theological concepts in age-appropriate ways.

Their reviewers (including a homeschool co-op teacher) also said, “If your goal is to provide your children with a full, vibrant and cohesive understanding of God’s story and of God’s desire to reconcile all things, Telling God’s Story provides a good starting point.”

So far the review is only available in their print edition, but if they post it online we will certainly be linking to it.

Meet a Contributor III: Alia Heise

In previous posts, we’ve introduced two of the people who contributed activities and projects to Telling God’s Story, Year One Activity Book (available now) and to the Year Two Activity Book (coming in January). Today we’ll meet a third contributor: Alia Heise. You may have seen Alia’s creativity on display already, in the Story of the World lapbook she and her children made (it was featured in a Peace Hill Press YouTube video), or on the many classical-education resources she’s posted at her blog, Chronicle of the Earth.

 Tell us a bit about your children, please. How many do you have, what ages are they, and what is something unique about each one?

Felicia (nickname Yaya) is 9 and is my “mini-me” in personality. She is a real take-charge girl, always planning something, works quickly, sets goals, a real mover. Noah (nickname Bee) is 6 and is a dawdler, a goof, a math whiz and highly emotional. Elliotte (nickname Bit-Bit) is 3 and is keeping her true personality a secret or perhaps she just hasn’t decided yet. Generally she is an easy-going kid who throws us a few curveballs every once in awhile.

What sorts of challenges have you and your husband faced in teaching your children about God, answering tough questions about God/Jesus/matters of life and death, etc?  

I feel that our move from a Protestant church to Eastern Orthodoxy has made our job of teaching our children about God easier. This is because our faith allows for much more mystery and “unknowns” in God and in faith than our previous experience allowed for. It helps take the pressure of “we have to have it all figured out” off of us as parents. Though my 5 year old son did once declare “We’re not Christian, we’re Orthodox!” which made for a difficult explanation! The Story of the World, Volume Two has actually really helped my children understand the branches of Christianity better, and where we fit among them.

Besides “Telling God’s Story,” what other books or projects have you contributed to?

I have had several articles published in my original field (human lactation) and I currently am a professional speaker in that field. Homeschooling: Because of my Story of the World lapbook development I have been afforded the opportunity to be a presenter on lapbooking at homeschooling conferences.

What’s your workspace? Do you work at home, or at outside locations, or at an office, or all of the above? What tools/computers do you use?

This is a “laugh out loud” question for me. We are currently pursuing a home on my parent’s land for a shared homesteading venture and that has been a three year process that is not yet complete, which means we have moved 4 times in those 3 years. Currently we are in an unwinterized large one-room cabin as a family of 5. I work at home when my husband gets the kids out of the house. I have been known to borrow friend’s houses when they are not at home. I sometimes go to my husband’s office “after hours” and work there. Starbucks knows me well, as does the downtown cafe and library. I have been forced to be rather nomadic in my work spaces.

With regards to tools and computer: I work from a hard copy for brainstorming and then get it all down in Word on my laptop. I have learned to keep my camera and USB cable with me at all times in order to demonstrate ideas more clearly.

Can you give us a preview of a project you’re working on for Year Two? Something that you’re especially excited about?

I am excited about the Ten Lepers rhyme I came up with (Luke 17:11-19), which my very talented mother selflessly edited for me because I can rhyme, but I seriously lack talent in meter!

Thanks to Alia, for sharing her expertise with us.

To find out more about our books, visit olivebranchbooks.net.

 

Quotations in Context, Part III: God and the Flood

In parts I and II of this series we demonstrated how quotations from Telling God’s Story have been used to misrepresent the curriculum. We’ll cover one more today, and then we’ll return to more interesting topics.

One recent “review” (really, more a collection of scare-quotes) posted on Facebook uses the following quote to condemn our curriculum.

 “The Flood was an attempt by God to set it right, but it didn’t work.” (Page 70)

This quote, from Page 70 of Telling God’s Story: A Parents’ Guide to Teaching the Bible, has not only been taken out of context, but a footnote following the sentence has been eliminated.  The footnote explains that this is not a mature theological understanding of the Flood.  It is the understanding that one might have, if one only had read the Genesis Flood story, and not the rest of Scripture. But the goal of the curriculum is to bring students into a full knowledge of the whole of Scripture.

Here is the text of the footnote to that sentence, found on the same page (70):

One important side note. I know that referring to God as “attempting” some­thing that “doesn’t work” doesn’t sound all that good, but that is how God is presented in this stage of the biblical story. Not every bit of mature theology is downloaded onto the opening chapters of Genesis, and it is very important that we allow the biblical story to be told the way God wants to tell it. There is a purpose to all this. The Bible is heading in a certain direction, and we need to allow the story to unfold as it does.

As always, if you have questions about the book, we encourage you to read it for yourself. Free samples of all the books in the curriculum can be read at the Olive Branch Books site.