Scripture, Tradition, and Rome, Part 1

John MacArthur

This tendency to view tradition as supreme authority is not unique to pagan religions.The tendency to venerate tradition is very strong in religion. The world is filled with religions that have been following set traditions for hundreds--even thousands--of years. Cultures come and go, but religious tradition shows an amazing continuity.

In fact, many ancient religions--including Druidism, Native American religions, and several of the oriental cults--eschewed written records of their faith, preferring to pass down their legends and rituals and dogmas via word-of-mouth. Such religions usually treat their body of traditions as a de facto authority equal to other religions' sacred writings.

Even among the world's religions that revere sacred writings, however, tradition and Scripture are often blended. This is true in Hinduism, for example, where the ancient Vedas are the Scriptures, and traditions handed down by gurus round out the faith of most followers. Tradition in effect becomes a lens through which the written word is interpreted. Tradition therefore stands as the highest of all authorities, because it renders the only authoritative interpretation of the sacred writings.

This tendency to view tradition as supreme authority is not unique to pagan religions.

To read the article in it's entirety, please go here:

http://www.gty.org/Resources/Articles/A244_Scripture-Tradition-and-Rome-Part-1?q=Scripture++Tradition++and+Rome

Review of Expedition Australia

Expedition Australia

Expedition Australia is part of a new E-book series by Amanda Bennett, and the Old Schoolhouse, called Download N Go.

With this new Download N Go series, all you have to do is pick your favorite topic, download it, and your ready to go! Nothing but a few simple labpbooking supplies are needed to complete this study.

This series is intended for K-4^th grade, but can easily be adapted for an older child.

What makes this series different than other unit studies, is the fact that it is interactive. Rather than using a book, you will be clicking your way to the information.

This study is 5 days in length, and includes a Geographic feature of the day, an Australian word of the day, and an Australian animal of the day.

Your child will track the time and temperature each day for his location, and compare it with the days location in Australia. Your child will also be making a map that he will add to each day. By the end of the week he will have a wonderful map of Australia.

Each day's section has links for you to follow that will take you to all of the information you will need. Some of these links will take you to beautiful videos that will show you Australia up close and personal. This is a really great feature, and one of our favorite parts of this truly interactive unit study.

The provided notebooking pages are extremely cute, and very creative. Your K-4^th grader will love them.

When your child has completed this study, he will have a beautiful notebook of all that he has learned about Australia.

At the end of each days lesson, your child will complete the lapbooking activities. At the end of the week, your child will have everything completed to put together his own Australia lapbook.

If you do not know how to lapbook, there is information  included to help you along.

Each days lesson includes spelling and vocabulary words that your child will add to his lapbook.

In between each days lesson, Amanda has included a beautiful photograph with an Australian verse on it, that could easily be used for copy work.

I did this study with my 12 year old daughter, and I have to admit, that not having done one of these units before, it was a little confusing to navigate.

Now that I have completed an entire unit, I have a much better understanding of how one works. There are some things that I would have done differently.

For instance, I would have printed out all of the necessary pages before starting the study, instead of having to stop the lesson to go print off a page, and then try to get back to the lesson. This was very disruptive.

Of course this had nothing to do with the study itself, it was my lack of knowledge of the how the study worked that caused this.

Once we got a little further along into the study, we really got the hang of it, and began to enjoy it.

My daughter really had fun doing this study, but wished that there would have been notebooking pages for her age included. This study can be adapted for an older child without them, as we did it, but it sure would make it a lot easier if there were notebooking pages for an older child included.

It would be so easy to add these to this study.

We did this study a little differently than called for, since the included pages are more suited for the K-4^th grader.

We answered all of the same questions, we just did it notebook style on our own paper. We did not do the included lapbook, because she had already notebooked in greater detail all that was included in the lapbook.

Ultimately, my daughter really liked doing this study, and actually wants to do it again, now that we understand how it works a little better.

She would like to go into more detail this time.

An older child can very easily do this study by their selves, and notebook in a lot more detail than a younger child would.

The next time we do one of these studies, I will let her do it by herself, so that she can notebook what she wants to. 
This unit study is so easy to do, that your children can do it on their own, and the parent doesn't have to be there the entire time. You can be working with one child, while another is working  independently on this study.

If you are looking for something safe that your child can work on independently, this series is definitely worth checking out.

You can find the Download N Go series at Amanda Bennett's website www.unitstudy.com and at The Old Schoolhouse at www.thehomeschoolmagazine.com

You can purchase Expedition Australia, or any book in the series for $7.95, or you have the option to purchase a subscription.

You can purchase a one month subscription for $30.00, with a savings of $1.80.

If you would like to incorporate these studies into your everyday homeschool, you can also purchase a semester subscription for $114.00, with a savings of $37.05, or you can even purchase an entire years subscription for $190.00. Wow! That's a savings of over $112.00.

Any option that you choose for your child will be time and money well invested, and remember that these studies can be used again and again with younger siblings.

If your child loves to do his or her work on line, they will definitely

love this series.

Have fun on your next Expedition!