I was thrilled to get a chance to review
Drive Thru History® "Acts to Revelation" from
Drive Thru History®.
The set is really nice and includes a full-color study guide booklet and 3 discs. It's an amazing combination of Bible study devotion time and historical, archeological finds. The DVDs are geared toward Christian families who want to teach their kids about history from a Christian worldview. The DVD set is packed with 9 hours of video - 18 episodes that are 30-minutes each. There is also an accompanying study guide which is part of the set and presented as an absolutely gorgeous book.
The recommended age range is approximately 6th grade to adult, but it would be appropriate for younger children as well. The older children will simply be able to dig deeper spiritually and academically with the DVDs and study guide.
Part of how Acts to Revelation is presented is to explain who the author of each book was. For instance, who was Luke, the author of Acts, or Peter leading the rag-tag alliance? Who was Paul, one of the boldest evangelists in the history of the church? Who was John the Baptist, and what happened to people like Stephan? What was the beginning of the Christian church, and how did this new covenant change things?
The videos are presented in an intriguing manner, with state-of-the-art videography and Dave Stotts as the narrator presenting each segment in an interesting, engaging manner with the setting in the Mediterranean, the island of Patmos, and Asia Minor, including the water where Jesus and Peter walked on top.
The study guide adds to the experience. It is actually part of the DVD case insert as a beautiful, full-color booklet filled with questions and topics of discussion along with amazing photos. The answers to the discussion questions are at the back as well. Each section includes a brief summary of the DVD lesson, a set of questions, and then there are "side-road" tabs along the edge of the page that include interesting tidbits of information such as findings of archeologists and how they relate to the timeframe of the Bible account.
How Did We Use It?
Since this DVD study could be used as a weekly Bible study program, for family devotion time, as part of a history course, or all of the above, I was stoked! I am always excited when I get ahold of solid historic event teaching that approaches it from a biblical perspective, and when it is in DVD format, popcorn is usually part of the deal as it's movie-watching time for the family. So, that's always an added perk.
While we all appreciate and absolutely love Dave Stotts' style and quality of video presentation - even my two biggest movie critics loved this - one of my favorite things about this series was the scenes and coverage of the day of Pentecost. My oldest daughter and I have had many conversations recently surrounding speaking in tongues, so I was anxious to dig deeper on this topic and was not disappointed with how Dave Stotts covered it.
I also love, love, love, coverage on Revelation, which I obviously had to fast forward to a bit since it's the last part of the episodes. Revelation holds a lot of powerful life-changing content for me as when I was seeking who I was and what I believed in college, I sat down and read Revelation, highlighting all of the verses that described Jesus. What I discovered was amazing and was fully covered in this series as well as the study guide.
What Did We Think?
Dave Stotts is always engaging, informative, and an entertaining tour guide and as an added bonus, as I mentioned previously, DVDs usually come complete with popcorn at our house, so my kids are always willing to watch as a family event. These particular DVDs are so fun while they deliver biblical facts and spur discussions with the study guide. I also love how he goes into detail about the facts about the authors of each book, such as who Luke, Stephan, Paul, Timothy, and John the Baptist were. All three of my kids liked the narrator's enthusiastic style along with the on-location type of presenation. If youa re like us, you will probably find it hard to stop watching to limit it to one lesson at a time as each episode draws you in to want to see more. I think that this series is great to simply watch as a movie night kind of thing, broken up into segments as well as using them to dig deeper, watching one video at a time and digging deep into the discussion questions. These make a great video launching pad for deep spiritual as well as historical discussions, and we HIGHLY recommend them!
Read what other members of the Homeschool Review Crew thought by clicking on the picture below:
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