Congratulations on starting this journey!

Every weekly lesson of this package will open up once you have completed the previous part. You can go as fast, or as slow, as you like. Read through all the documentation, and you are set to go!

Your access allows you to use all of our materials for one student for 13 months. We trust our members to keep this amanah and not share this access with others.

Materials

The History Connections Book 1 – Ancients digital program includes the following:

• History Connections Book 1 – Ancients
• History Connections Book 1 – Ancients Maps &Worksheets (Needs to be printed)
• World Wall Map & Wall Icons (Needs to be printed)
• Path of Prophets Poster (Needs to be printed)
• Usborne Internet Linked History Encyclopedia, abbreviated as UILE throughout this book
• Super Servants Stories

Elements

All lessons have scripted discussion questions and detailed instructions. The digital program us broken up into 30 weeks.. Every week will list the material needed for that week. All resources are included. You would need to prepare the materials for the activities, which are listed separately every week for your convenience. In every lesson there are several elements:

The Task Card on the first page of every weekly lesson lists an overview of the topic and the materials needed.

Materials: The teaching materials needed are listed in the first column. Usually these are pages from either the UILE or the History Intersections, as well as the Location Map that needs to be traced, worksheets needed for the activity and of course the World Wall Map and the Wall Icon Sheet.

Time: This time indication is based upon twice a block of 45 minutes. Below we have explained the scheduling and proposed an alternative schedule.

Inquiry: throughout this curriculum, the parent is modeling asking questions. Students learn how to ask questions and extract information from images and maps. This is a pre- research skill.

Discussion: Discussion questions help students recap the major events in a story and practices comprehension. Remind the child to use full sentences in his/her answers, even though, in light of brevity, the example answers provided are short answers.

This is not an exam or a drill. These questions are intended to consolidate what the child learned from the text. The child can look at images in the book when answering the questions. If it seems difficult to answer all of these questions, ask the child to tell you what happened. Sometimes this facilitates consolidating the information easier.

Narration: Narration is intended to practice recalling and retaining information from a story. Should your child have much difficulty with narrating two things from the story, simply ask the child to tell you what happened. If this proves to be too difficult, practice a few stories with the questions only, and then try narration again.

Activities: Every week the child will complete an activity that relates to the topic of the week. This will help students internalize the information covered. Activities are varied and alternated, in order to keep students engaged. We recommend doing all activities as best as possible, as they teach young children different skills and abilities, such as fine motor skills, strategic thinking, hand-eye coordination, and deduction. A week-by-week overview of all materials needed for the activities is given below.

Tracing a Map: The program asks the child to trace the Location Maps (provided).

The action of physically tracing a map assures the information is integrated into memory.

Please assure you have tracing paper available. The mapping activity allows students to get familiar with geography and teaches them to pay attention to certain geographical landmarks, such as rivers and seas, mountain ranges and oceans.

World Wall Map & Wall Icons: Every week, the child will cut out and stick small icons on the World Wall Map to remember the events that have been discussed. It also gives a sense of where most of the events are happening on a global scale. The World Wall Map can be assembled from the pages in the Maps & Worksheets book. The icons are provided in the Maps & Worksheets book as well. The Lesson Plan book will have the icon placed in the Overview Box at the start of each week. When using the World Wall Map, always show what part the child will be tracing on the Location Map. You can do this by making a ‘photographer’s bracket’ with your hands: simply hold your hands together so they form a rectangle. Then show the child on the World Wall Map, where the Location Map is located.

Path of Prophets: The Path of Prophets element is only used in combination with the prophet stories. This curriculum covers 12 prophets and their stories. A selection has been made, to highlight important stories and integrate these into the historical context. For a full set of the stories, please see our Super Servant Series. This series can be used in conjunction with the historical curriculum as well as with the A Day with the Prophets Series.

It is essential for young children to be able to visualize information. Sticking the prophets’ names and images of the stories in chronological order is a pre-time lining skill and tangible activities help in the consolidation of information.

Extra Resources: At the end of every lesson, there are extra resources listed. We recommend that if your child expresses a particular interest in a topic, you allow extra time for the extra resources. Extra resources are optional and not part of this curriculum. We have added a QR code. Download a QR scanning app and scan the QR code. This will open a page with all the links of the extra resources, organized by week.

Visual Elements

Every lesson also has visual elements to help guide you through the lesson. There are several approaches to using this book. The easiest is to simply follow all of the instructions. The lessons are set up to be repeating the information. However, should you feel your child is simply not responding to a certain element, there are ways to differentiate the teaching method.

Highlighted text contain instructions to the parent. Normal text is supposed to be read out to the student.

Bold text are the questions asked, and these should be read aloud to the student.

Text in Italics should be read to the student as well, as it explains the images. This is often a repeat of what was mentioned in the stories.

Fun Facts & Did You Know... boxes are meant to be shared with the student, but are not an integral part of the lesson.

Dashed Text Circles are alternative suggestions for parents.

Different Types of Learners

The lessons are written in a such a way that they cater to different types of learners. Ideally you will take the lesson as is, and your child will learn several different skills. However, some children are not auditory learners and they struggle with listening to a story. On the other hand, some children are not visual learners and they need to hear a story to get a sense of structure. In our program we cater to both.

If you do the entire lesson, your child will practice both skills, which we recommend. Despite this, we do recognize that for some kids this may prove difficult and may lead to less engagement. As a parent, you know your child best, so if you feel a certain element does not work well for your child, here is what we recommend:

You can read the stories and look at the images in the resource texts to reinforce what was mentioned in the story. Often, having the child look at the image while reading the story will greatly help. After this, you can continue with the questions in bold, and skip the lines in Italics. On the other hand, if you child is not engaged when hearing the short stories, but enjoys the images instead, you could skip the stories and focus on the questions in bold and explain the image with the lines in Italics.