The Mystery of History
Linda Lacour Hobar
Bright Ideas Press
Volume I: Creation to the Resurrection
Volume II: The Early Church and the Middle Ages

    I wholeheartedly recommend the Mystery of History series. The first two volumes have been written and published with others to follow, and we have used both volumes. They each follow the same format although the second volume covers a shorter time span in a little bit deeper fashion. The first volume covers Creation to the the Resurrection in 108 lessons. The second volume covers the early church to the Middle Ages in 84 lessons. The series can serve as a complete history program in and of itself, or it can easily be supplemented with historical literature (which we have done).

    Mrs. Hobar writes each lesson with an engaging tone that speaks directly to the students. I read the lessons out loud to our boys, but to tell the truth, my oldest has read both volumes on his own as well.

    Each lesson has suggested activities that correspond to it; these activities are ranked according to difficulty (younger, middle, older students). We have done many of these along the way and include the project or at least a picture of it in our Mystery of History notebook.

    Some of the activities are extremely easy and require no extra materials. For example, in lesson 21 of Volume 1 on Joshua, Jericho, and Rahab, one of the activities suggests that we read Joshua 3:13-15 about the Commander of the Army of the Lord and discuss the passage. All that required of us was our Bible, and we (Mom included) learned more about Joshua from the activity. 

    Mrs. Hobar includes lots of paper-folding or bookmaking activities that just require paper or construction paper, markers or crayons, and sometimes glue. We have completed most of those types of activities. For example, in Lesson 24 of Volume 1 on Ramses the Great, we made a “kingdom folder” that categorized the four major kingdom periods of Ancient Egypt.

    A few of the suggested activities are more complicated, but well worth the effort. For example, after Lesson 17 in Volume 1 on the Israelites in Slavery, we made sun-dried “bricks” from straw and salt dough.

    After every third lesson, Mrs. Hobar gives both timeline and mapwork exercises as well as a review exercise or quiz. We complete all of the timeline work, most of the mapwork, and most of the review exercises.

    For our timeline work, we have made two types of timelines. The first is a large wall timeline using pre-drawn figures from Homeschool in the Woods’ “History through the Ages” CD (also highly recommended; the CD is expensive, but well worth the money). We followed Mrs. Hobar’s instructions for setting up this timeline on the wall. 

When we began Volume II, we followed her idea for using a sewing board for the large timeline. Now it hangs on top of the BC timeline. When we first began, I colored in the timeline figures, but after about a year and a half, I realized I was not going to be able to keep up with our pace. So now I print out the figures on nice parchment paper. Although I miss the personalized color, it is much easier on me!

    Jake also makes his own small timeline book (Ben will start one when he is in 2nd grade). He has really enjoyed making these books. His first timeline book covered the BC years and his second will cover AD to the Reformation. I bought artists’ drawing pads from Walmart, drew a basic male and female figure on the computer, and he embellishes them and glues them in his book. Mrs. Hobar gives ideas for decorating the homemade figures like this one of Cleopatra.

    The mapwork exercises are probably Jake’s favorite part of Mystery of History. After every third lesson, Mrs. Hobar gives instructions for mapwork that corresponds to the previous three lessons. Sometimes the mapwork is very easy (like tracing a route on a globe), and sometimes it requires different colored markers and various atlases. Mystery of History provides blank maps in the back for us to copy and use for the mapwork. For example, on this map Jake marked the routes of Paul’s three missionary journeys.

We file all of his mapwork in his Mystery of History notebook under the appropriate continents. But sometimes we can just include a picture because the mapwork takes a creative turn like forming a salt-dough map of Israel or this “cake map” of Egypt.

    Jake’s least favorite part of Mystery of History is making “memory cards”, but I think they are worthwhile, so we continue to make them. After every three lessons, Mrs. Hobar recommends writing 2-3 sentences about each of those lessons on individual index cards with the titles and the dates. After filing them chronologically in an index card binder, we can go back over them periodically to review. Jake finds it difficult to narrow the lessons down to 2-3 sentences, but I tell him that it is good practice for note taking in the future! Here is his notecard from Lesson 71 on the Battle of Marathon.

    Finally, Mrs. Hobar includes review exercises and quizzes after every third lesson as well as longer comprehensive reviews at the end of “quarters” and “semesters”. Because we are required to turn grades in quarterly to our umbrella school, I grade some of these to help me determine a grade for Jake’s work.

    Overall, the Mystery of History program is thorough, well-written, and appeals to a wide range of ages and learning styles. We look forward to Volume III!