Apologia iWitness Bible Series #hsreviews

As school is in full swing here, we’re trying out so new things to see how they fit into our routine.  Our latest review from the TOS Crew is from Apologia Educational Ministries.  If you’ve been following us long, we love Apologia products and couldn’t wait for a chance to try this one out.  We received a series of three physical books for this review.  They are the iWitness Bible series.  These books are: iWitness Biblical Archaeology,  New Testament iWitness, and Old Testament iWitness.  

 

The iWitness series can be used for a variety of ages but works best for ages 11 and up.  I used this book with my 9-year-old daughter.  While she is not within the states age range, she is an avid reader and loves to learn new things.  I felt she would do well with this and she loved the chance to try something new.  There are three books in the series and each book is available for purchase for $14.  So, if you were to purchase all three of the books we received it would be $42.  While you could use them separately, we really enjoyed using them as a combination as it seems to more fully cover the subject.

 

Let’s talk a bit about the series now.  The iWitness Bible series is designed to make your child think and determine for themselves where the Bible came from and who wrote it as well as share how some discoveries coincide with the Bible.  The entire series is designed as a scrapbook type book with articles for your child to read and discuss.  With this series you will begin on a journey of discovery to draw your child(and you) to a better understanding of the Bible.  These books are easy to read and follow and are highly engaging so there is no being bored while studying these.  

Let’s start with the first book we checked out.  The iWitness Biblical Archaeology was the first book we picked up.  All three books are written and designed by Doug Powell.  I have to mention here that one of the things we loved the most about this series are the pictures!  They make you feel as you are really there at the places.  They are wonderful!  Just thought we’d share that little highlight here.  Back to the book now.  It takes you through the Bible in chronological order giving you tidbits of information.  You’ll learn about battles of the Old Testament as well as where they have found important artifacts.  It then moves to the New Testament.  With the old important facts of the Bible we use the pieces we have found to date and collaborate the stories of the Bible.  The Bible after all is not a history book but it does give us a lot of history and helps us prove things through its words.

 

Next came the Old Testament iWitness.  Most ways of studying the Old Testament do not hold the attention of a child.  Especially a nine-year old that just wants to read books and go outside with her horse.  But this book did hold her attention.  The style that it is written in I think is a key factor.  It goes through the Old Testament and breaks the books up comparing them to the Jewish Bible and the Hebrew Bible.  You learn how the books are grouped and why, which were considered more important and which not.  And again you have wonderful pictures that really engage you and make you want to learn more.  We spend at least one day a week so looking up some of the happenings in the photos and learning more about them. 

 

In our family we celebrate some of the Jewish holidays and we are trying to learn more about the people behind the holidays.  Not just the holidays themselves but what the Jewish people were like who lived during the Bible times.  This was a wonderful way for us to learn more and have more avenues to talk about.

Lastly, we worked on the Old Testament iWitness.  This is the last book we studied due to wanting to go in chronological order.  But the New Testament is probably the most important book.  This book was really quite a fun book to read but also a challenging book.  We did a lot of digging and studying to go along with this one.  Especially when it came to the rejected books of the Bible.  As you may or may not know different religions have added books to the Bible that we do not use.  Our family use the King James Version, non revised.  So, we like to think we have one of the closest to originals Bibles there are.  But to go through a list of all the books that were not added we also decided to study different religions and how their Bibles differ form ours.  Different versions of Christianity all study the Bible but some of them have added books and we wanted to know which ones and where they came from.  This is definitely a wonderful book to challenge your kids and you to study more and learn more.

 

Because there are no reproducibles this set of books can be used over and over with your children.  My nine-year old and I have gone through them together.  Next, it will be a study that our soon to be eight year old boy can do with his daddy for school.  Then again with the next child until all nine of the kids have gone through the series.  This will be an asset to our school and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to have a deeper knowledge of history and the Bible or to just  be challenged to look and learn more.  Would do well for an adult even.

The iWitness Bible Series has earned high marks in our school.  Make sure to read the other review you check out the Main TOS Crew Blog Page for the list of reviewers.  You can also find Apologia on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google +.  We all reviewed the same iWitness Bible series but everyone will have a different take of the product as we are all different and have different children.