Quote from Forum Archives on September 9, 2001, 4:32 pm

Posted by: homenews <homenews@...>

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THE HOPE CHEST: Ideas and Inspiration for Home Education
Issue #44 part 1 / September 2001
The Roman Empire and the Early Church
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WELCOME TO THE HOPE CHEST!

The Hope Chest Home School News is a free bi-monthly e-mail
newsletter with encouragement and practical teaching tips. The
editor is Virginia Knowles, wife of Thad, and mother of eight, ages
baby to teen. Virginia is also the publisher of five books: The Real
Life Home School Mom, three volumes of The Best of the Hope
Chest, the Learner’s Journal lesson planner and record keeping log.

If you like this newsletter, please forward it to your friends!
THANKS!!

Hope Chest contact information:
Web site:
www.hopechest.homestead.com/welcome.html
Resource descriptions:
www.hopechest.homestead.com/resourceorders.html
Personal e-mail:
mailto:[email protected]
Subscription address:
mailto:[email protected]
Unsubscription address:
mailto:[email protected]

This newsletter is currently sent out in a few parts per issue. This is
part 1 of 2.

SURPRISE! I had a lot of “stuff” on my computer for our last unit on
the Roman Empire and the Early Church, so I decided to squeeze in
an extra mini-edition before the October issue on Justice and Mercy.
Hope you don’t mind! ~~ Virginia

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part 1
FROM MY HEART TO YOURS:
My Exhausting Weekend by Virginia Knowles
AN EVENING AT THE CATACOMBS by Virginia Knowles
MT. VESUVIUS VOLCANO CAKE by Virginia Knowles

Part 2
RESOURCES AND IDEAS FOR A UNIT STUDY
ON ANCIENT ROME AND THE EARLY CHURCH
by Virginia Knowles
THE HOME HAVEN: Declutter Now!
HOME HEALTH: Handwashing
WHAT’S UP IN THE NEXT ISSUE?
ON OUR HOMEFRONT
RESOURCE ORDERING INFORMATION
REPRINT PERMISSION

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FROM MY HEART TO YOURS:
My Exhausting Weekend
by Virginia Knowles
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I mentioned recently that school has been going pretty smoothly
since I had spent a lot of time planning our unit study on Rome and
the early church. We ARE making some good progress this year,
but we still do hit the snags frequently. I try to have a good attitude
about this. My husband Thad tells me he is so encouraged when I
tell him every day what terrific kids we have. We really do. That
doesn’t mean they are perfect at all. Each one of them manages to
frustrate me at least once a day. (Multiply that a few times for the
preschool age boys.) I’m not a particularly patient person, so this is
a real trial at times. But then I just start reminding myself how
terrific
they are and give them hugs and kisses. It calms me down and
helps me face the rest of the day.

Thad has been out of town since Thursday. I made grand plans for
getting the house really really clean while he was gone. Ha! First, I
got to bed really late Friday night because the girls wanted to watch
a rented movie for the second time. That was a big mistake. So
Saturday morning I woke up major time groggy. I spent the
morning with a little paperwork and lazy reading. After lunch, I took
Joanna (8), Lydia (6), Andrew (4) and Micah (2) to the library to get
books for our unit study on the Dark Ages. I don’t know WHY I took
my two year old when my three older girls were staying home...
Then we went to Sam’s Club for enough groceries to tide us over
until I can get to our regular grocery store for the week’s full
shopping trip. They didn’t have the contact lenses I had ordered for
Mary (14) and the checkout line was long. By the time we got home,
all I wanted to do was plop on the bed and stay there.

Howsobeit, the girls wanted to go to Long’s Christian Bookstores to
get autographs from Nicole C. Mullen, a singer. One of them also
needed to get a gift for a friend. It was raining heavily by the time we
were halfway there. Micah had a smelly diaper. We had bolted out
the house so fast that I hadn’t put size 4 in the diaper bag, so he had
to wear one of baby Naomi’s size 3. By then I was already totally
frazzled, but it got worse from there. (I’ll spare you the more
aggravating details, but at least we got the autographs and bought
what we needed.) By the time we left the bookstore nearly two
hours later, I was grumbling loudly and fit to be tied. “It was a dark
and rainy night,” as Snoopy would say. I told them I wasn’t making
dinner. We ate cereal. Joanna gave the boys a bath and Julia got
them ready for bed. I nursed the baby, and then put the boys to bed.
I felt like falling fast asleep myself, but Mary needed help on an
essay on The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin which is due at
her classical school class on Monday. Even though she gets most
of her assignments at this weekly class, I’m glad that she still
includes me! Neither of us were thinking straight enough to make
sense out of Franklin’s attempts at moral perfection, so around 10 I
finally stumbled to bed.

I woke at 4:30 to nurse the baby and put her back in her crib. I woke
again around 8. We had to leave by 8:45 to get to Sunday School
on time. I normally don’t go, but Thad, who normally takes the girls
there, isn’t here! This was the last week of Walk Thru the Bible and
we didn’t want to miss it. So Julia (12) and Rachel (10) managed to
hustle everyone out the door. It was truly a miracle, considering
that we couldn’t find Micah’s shoes and Naomi spit up all over both
of us. I never did get to take a shower either.

We got to the corner of our street when the van ran out of gas. Mind
you, I know how distracted I get and had bought an emergency
container of gas which can be stored in a car. Unfortunately, my
husband gave it away to a stranded motorist three weeks ago.
Fortunately, my next door neighbor had a gas can with a gallon in it,
and we were so close to home. But I was still quite uptight. My
sister-in-law Sue had asked us to pick her up and take her to church
with us, and I was worried that she would think we had forgotten her.
I knew she would be waiting at the tennis courts in her complex, and
wouldn’t be near her phone. Fortunately, while I was putting gas in
the van, she called and said she had overslept. By the time we filled
the tank at the gas station and went to pick her up, she was just
walking out of her apartment. It was good timing after all, even if we
were quite late for Sunday School!

About this time it hit me that we COULD have run out of gas the
night before, on a dark and rainy night, on the highway, with 8
children. God’s mercy became so real to me at that moment. As
bad as I felt my weekend was going, the Lord’s tender care became
evident as I looked back at it.

While I was contemplating God’s graciousness to me, my friend Lisa
handed me a pizza-sized chocolate chip cookie that she had made
for us. That is sweet grace! Also, Micah wouldn’t sit still in the
service and fussed about staying in his class, so I stood out in the
hall with him during the sermon. There I met a new lady, Claire, who
is a veteran home school mama of 8 children, ages toddler to 24. I
plan to pick her brain often! Usually I don’t like to have to leave the
worship service, but even this “inconvenience” turned out to be
providential. While I was standing in the hall, the nursery
worker came out and told me that Naomi (7 months old) had been
kissing with baby Jonathan, and when he crawled away, she
followed him for more! Oh dear, I think I’d better start talking to her
about courtship...

What I want to share from my heart is that life will always throw us
curve ball circumstances. Sometimes they are very “light and
momentary” like the ones I had this weekend. Sometimes they are
heavy and traumatic. I know that many of you are suffering from
really oppressive situations. If you know Jesus in your heart, he is
with you through it all.

As Nicole C. Mullins sings in the chorus of her song Call on Jesus:
“But when I call on Jesus
All things are possible
I can mount on wings like eagles and soar
When I call on Jesus
Mountains are gonna fall.
‘Cause he’ll move heaven and earth to
Come rescue me when I call.”

That’s even better than 911! Take courage, sisters!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AN EVENING IN THE CATACOMBS
by Virginia Knowles
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This year for history, we are covering from the time of Christ until the
Renaissance. We have just finished our unit study on The Fall of
the Roman Empire and the Rise of the Church. One morning, one of
my daughters complained that I wasn’t making history FUN. As I
opened our Famous Men of Rome book to that day’s chapter on
Nero, a very wicked emperor, I had to remind her that history isn’t
always FUN! Sometimes it is quite sobering -- at least if we do it
justice and don’t try to trivialize it for the sake of entertainment.

However, a few days later I had a brainstorm to plan an evening in
the “catacombs” to commemorate the Roman Christians who were
persecuted for their faith. The catacombs are a labyrinth of
manmade tunnels and rooms carved out underneath the city of
Rome. Reportedly, several million martyred Christians are buried
there, and countless others went into hiding, living and worshipping
together in such dark, dank quarters.

When I presented the idea to Mary (14) and Julia (12) we agreed to
set it up as a surprise for the younger children. They immediately
started making a special cassette tape with dripping water and
footsteps sound effects. That Sunday evening, after baby Naomi
went to bed, Dad took Rachel (10), Joanna (8), Lydia (6), Andrew
(4), and Micah (2), into the living room and dressed them in
bedsheets to look like Romans. Mary, Julia and I scrambled around
in the dining room to get ready. We moved the table against the
doorway (so everyone would have to crawl under to get in!),
arranged the chairs in a semi-circle, covered them with tablecloths
to simulate catacomb walls, turned off the lights and lit several
candles. Of course, we also had to shoo away the other ones who
were trying to peek!

After we called them in, we explained what we were doing, turned on
the sound effects tape, and sang the doxology and a few worship
choruses. Julia snuck in with a bowl of ginger snaps, saying she
had brought food from up above in the city of Rome. We pretended
that we hadn’t had food in days. I turned on the All Glory, Laud and
Honor CD, which has two 4th century hymns on it. (It is produced by
Diana Waring in conjunction with her Romans, Reformers and
Revolutionaries history curriculum.) I read aloud a description of the
catacombs from the book Martyr of the Catacombs, and Dad said a
prayer. About this time, Mary snuck out through the door to the
garage and banged on the front door. When we opened it, she (now
a Roman soldier) came in to arrest Julia, who appropriately had a
heart attack and died on the spot. We said a eulogy over her, and
Rachel and Lydia inscribed a memorial to her on the wall (actually,
posterboard) as they would have done in the real catacombs. We
tried to drag her over to the chairs for burial, but we didn’t get too
far.
She was, as they say, dead weight.

Andrew is still talking about the night we turned out the lights and ate
cookies on the floor by candlelight!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MT. VESUVIUS VOLCANO CAKE
by Virginia Knowles
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Mt. Vesuvius Volcano Cake is what we had for my birthday dessert
the last week of our Rome unit study. (For those who haven’t
studied Roman history lately, think of the city of Pompeii...) We
prepared three boxes of brownies and cut them into pieces. Then
we piled them in concentric circles into a mountain shape, leaving
the top layers hollow in the middle. Next we poured a can of cherry
pie filling into the hollow spot and drizzled it down the sides of Mt.
Vesuvius for lava. A large mound of fat free whipped topping came
next, serving as clouds of steam. Finally, chocolate chips (ashes
and debris) were sprinkled liberally over the whole thing. Yum!
There’s something about the combination of cherry and chocolate to
turn my tastebuds to full throttle.