Love, Honor, and Virtue: Gaining or Regaining a Biblical Attitude Toward Sexuality -- my REVIEW

I have a teenage son.  I love my teenage son!  He is so different from my daughters! Having a son  really brings a depth of joy and excitement (and sometimes craziness too!) to our family. I grew up in a family with all girls (except my dad) and so although I had lots of friends and schoolmates who were boys, there is a lot that comes with having a son which has come as a surprise to me (like--even though we don't do "toy guns" -- how is it that a little boy can play with just about anything as a gun? sticks, baseball bats, rakes, you know what I mean!)

As parents of a son, we are responsible to him and to God to help him prepare to avoid and repel temptations in every arena, and his temptations are and will be different than those our daughters experience.  This great book from Great Waters Press which I just received to review, Love, Honor, and Virtue: Gaining or Regaining a Biblical Attitude Toward Sexuality  is written by parents of eight children (!!) including six sons, and they are familiar with the temptations which young men of today encounter.  They have written a book for young men to help them understand and withstand sin in the sexual or sexually-related sphere.



The husband/wife team of authors begin the book by explaining that the methods of war usually reflect the methods and tactics and equipment used in the last war, which don't necessarily fit the current scenario.  They have written this book to give teen boys "all the help you can get" -- understanding that even the previous generation's experience is not necessarily all-encompassing.  They have written this book as a tool for young men to read and become more informed and prepared for maintaining purity in their own life.

The authors jump right in with chapter one, "Sex was God's Idea" -- discussing gender, purposes of sex, passion, marriage, and more.  Want to hear a good quote?  Here's one from the summary of chapter 1:  "Our sexuality is part of our purpose in life, and God blesses it to carry out His plans for individuals and all of mankind."  Nice! The chapter uses Biblical references, not only Adam and Eve and God's command to fill the earth, but also Paul's New Testament statements about purposes of marriage.

Chapter 2, "It's All Connected" is basically a sex-education chapter, though they differentiate and expand it to a "marriage education" which is realy cool--even including a section on baby, breastfeeding, and beyond.  It's not just a clinical talk about the reproductive processes, but expands it to marriage, procreation, and more.

Chapter 3 is entitled "The Enemy Perverts God's Design" and includes discussions about sin, hook-ups, gender-bending, and porn.  I really appreciated the lengthy discussions about why porn actually is wrong,  not simply from a Biblical standpoint, but also what kinds of physical changes it can cause in your body and brain which will negatively affect you in the future. It is written in a very straightforward way, easy to understand as well as to read through without embarrasment.

Chapter 4, "How Can a Young Man Keep His Way Pure?" gives tools and techniques for withstanding temptation.  These are concrete, practical things which a young man can practice and understand.  Chapter 5, "Recovering From a Fall" gives hope to those who may find themselves already in sexual sin or addicted to pornography and shows them how to set their way back to God's way. It's not hopeless!

Chapter 6, "Guys and Girls" discusses friendships, dating, families, intentions, purity, and more.  Once again, it is written in an easy to read and easy to implement way.  I really like how the authors discussed this topic, not really extreme, very real-life.  Want another good quote?  "There is no definitive pattern in Scripture for how we find our mates--which means we give each other grace about the patterns we choose."

So how did we use this book?  I read it -- and handed it to my teenage son with the instruction that I want him to read it.  Now.  He is currently reading it and says it's not too bad :) It's a short-ish book, not really intimidating-looking-- and I think that it will certainly be helpful to him and reinforce other talks and etc that we have had.

I definitely recommend this book for any family with young men (it's good for older men as well!)

To read some review by other readers, please click on the links below:

HISTORY Through the Ages Project Passport World History Study: Ancient Greece my REVIEW of this Homeschool Curriculum

When I was in school, I don't remember learning much ancient history--American history, yes, but ancient history? not so much. This means as I am teaching my kids ancient history, I'm always on the lookout for good curriculum to help me out; I was happy to get the chance to REVIEW this product by Home School in the Woods entitled HISTORY Through the Ages Project Passport World History Study: Ancient Greece.



The "passport" in the title gives you a clue as to the theme of this study. It is as if you are a passenger traveling into ancient Greece. Different lessons are your different "stops" along the way. Each stop features different learning opportunities such as maps, timeline/timeline figures, readings, listening, lapbooks, and more!

Each day has an itinerary which lays out that day's fun adventures:



The student can do all or some of the events listed on the itinerary, all of which play into/reinforce the topic of the stop. (to give you an example of what I mean by the topics of the stops, for instance: Stop 3: The Archaic Movement, Stop 4: Greek Government, Stop 5: Athens, and so on).

Some of the activities for the stops are things such as:

Adding to snapshot moments (timeline): 

Audio Tour :  (8 great "audio tour" mp3's are included)

"Wish you were here" postcard greetings:  with a greeting on one side for them to read and a blank other side for them to illustrate said greeting:

The postcards actually have a cute border but I messed up in printing them :) 

Filling in locations on maps: 

Add to the newspaper Greek Weekly:

And many other activities, including lapbook projects, modeling projects, and more! 


In our family, this product was used with my 12 year old daughter.  She is quite creative and enjoyed the variety of projects that accompanied each stop.  She is old enough that she worked quite independently with the materials, doing the work and finding the information as well as keeping her materials organized.

This Home School in the Woods Ancient History curriculum  comes as a .pdf download or on a CD.  You will find what you need in these files.  The text, the itineraries, the instructions, all the masters for the activities:  pictures (timeline, etc), newspaper templates, maps, models, and more. There are instructions and parts to make lapbooks of this information as well.   You can also view photos of finished works of some of these projects.

The timeline figures are nice -- just color and glue onto their identified spots!

SO...now that my daughter has used the materials, what do we think of them? Okay, I have to first of all qualify my remarks by explaining off the bat that we are not lapbook homeschoolers.  I have never made a lapbook, I actually had to look up and see what exactly a lapbook is.  It seems there are a great number of homeschoolers who do enjoy this way of teaching/learning.  We did not use this aspect of this Ancient Greece study--I just am not familiar with that so we didn't use it.  Suffice it to say that it appears that there is an opportunity for doing some pretty cool-looking lapbooking (from the pictures given with the lessons)

Don't be too impressed with me -- this is just a sample from the curriculum, we didn't make it :) 

I will also say that our "style" of homeschooling, and the materials we usually use are books and notebooks with the occasional print-out thrown in.  This curriculum is quite different than what I'm used to.  I was quite intimidated by all the printing that needed to occur and with all the papers and projects that were to be generated.

I also had a difficult time figuring out the directions at first -- how to even use the materials.

My daughter enjoyed the lessons.  She got a little frustrated with the maps, trying to find the places on the ancient maps, but we were able to google most of them (and later on I learned that in the image files on the .pdfs there were answer sheets!)  Some of her favorite parts were the postcards and the newspapers, and she loved the audio mp3's!

I felt like the information taught through this study was great, complex in parts, fun and engaging. There are such a variety of ways that information is learned that it can appeal to a large swathe of different learning styles as well.  I think it will hold a child's interest and help them to really think about what they are learning as well.  It is not just learning the facts, but interpreting them in ways (for instance, for the newspaper ads -- they have to use their creativity to express the information in terms of an advertisement).

So as far as a recommendation:  it's definitely not for me--give me a textbook any day!  I will bet a lot of you are cringing at that -- YOU are the people that this curriculum is written for!  I do like the material covered, and if you are not like me (self-admittedly basic me!) then I think you will enjoy teaching your students using HISTORY Through the Ages Project Passport World History Study: Ancient Greece brought to you by


AND guess what?  They not only have this great Ancient Greece study, they also have Passport studies for Ancient Egypt, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance--and there is an Ancient Rome study coming soon!