Drive Thru History® is our all-time favorite history curriculum, so we were super excited when Drive Thru History® “Acts to Revelation” showed up in our mailbox!
For the past year, we’ve been following the release of this new venture. It’s been hard to hear so many great things about it without the ability to watch it for ourselves! We started watching as soon as it arrived.
I really love the way that the Drive Thru History® series tell the whole story of history. In school as a kid, I got facts and dates and figures, but faith was rarely mentioned, even though whole movements and kingdoms and wars were fought and won and lost because of it. Drive Thru History® includes those stories, so you get a more complete picture of the cause and effect flow of history.
With that said, though, some of the series are fairly stand-alone, meaning that you don’t need to watch every episode that they’ve ever produced in order to understand them (though they’re really good, so you’ll want to). It’s important to note that “Acts to Revelation” is a bit different, though, because it picks up immediately where “The Gospels” end. If you know your Bible really well, I’m sure you can jump right in with this series, but the flow between the two is really great, and so you may want to watch that one first, no matter how much background information you have.
The biggest difference from their other series is that it’s very clear that this series was just created. It’s been filmed very recently and, unlike the other episodes that take place in the Middle East, the host Dave Stotts references some of the political instability in the episodes. That as really refreshing to me. It’s very clear that Israel, Turkey, and the other locations being filmed are beautiful, and I love being able to see what these important locations in Biblical history look like, but I’ve often wondered what it’s really like over there now. Not just how it looks, but what the Drive Thru History® crew’s take on current events are. I enjoyed the brief references they made.
They are brief – the Drive Thru History® crew doesn’t let current events detract from their show, and there’s a lot happening in this series. It’s hard to watch just a single episode, but we’ve really enjoyed watching them as a family after dinner.
One feature I particularly enjoyed was the timeline and people review. I love when Stotts will reference something important because it fits and explain that it will be talked about in more depth later – or that we should remember this important information because it connects with information already taught. He then goes back to review what you learned first, usually with neat visuals, and it really helps me fit all the pieces together. In one episode, he talks about how Herod the Great built Caesarea Maritima and then reviews Herod’s family tree so that you can connect the four generations of office-holding Herods. That was very helpful for me as I’m not good with names, and I found myself wanting to sketch his family tree and hang it on the wall for reference.
Another great feature of this DVD series is the accompanying study guide. I love that this is included right in the DVD case, where you don’t have to worry about losing it – it’s always right with your discs! The study guide consists of four parts: a scripture passage, a main verse, a summary of the episode, and a few comprehension/recall questions. We’ve mainly been using the questions, and My Little Man loves them! He tries to answer correctly before I’ve finished reading the question, and he usually does.
While these are all great things about Drive Thru History®, the absolute best is just how much you learn simply by watching them. Last week after a confirmation class My Big Helper remarked that she hadn’t realized just how much she had learned from Drive Thru History® until she encountered the same story or passage in that class – and she immediately remembered everything from the video and was able to answer the questions.
I encountered the same thing today: in Sunday School the passage we studied was one that was explained in a Drive Thru History® episode that I watched last week, and as the class discussed it, I was picturing the place where it happened, considering how the location and layout might have affected the event itself. Being able to picture the scene as it really looks is a valuable thing, and it has helped me to understand scripture in a whole new way. As a visual learner, this helps me to add context to scripture in a way that I couldn’t otherwise.
Drive Thru History® really builds that context carefully. The visuals and cinematography used in each episode are absolutely amazing, but it’s much more than that: the writers are very careful to follow scripture carefully, working in chronological order to tell a story, and building the facts of that story as the episodes progress through the series. By referencing items both forward and back, and by attaching known dates whenever possible, you’re given a frame of reference to help you connect the important people and events you’re learning about with the locations that you’re seeing on screen. Because scripture is always floating around on the screen when it’s being read, that visual element is also added to the mix. It’s a great way for audio and visual learners to gain new information.
Drive Thru History® “Acts to Revelation” is another fantastic series, and it’s one that we’ll watch over and over. It’s a great way to learn and a conduit for conversation. This is definitely a resource you’ll want to have in your own personal library.
Don’t take my word for it, though – click on the graphic below to read more reviews from the Homeschool Review Crew.
