Heirloom Audio Review

My son has been enjoying listening to For The Temple from Heirloom Audio. Though my son prefers to listen to audiobooks, he agreed to listen to this as a break from his regularly scheduled favorites. I downloaded the tracks on to his phone, and he listened to it during the day as part of his school.

The scene opens with Mr. George at Cafe Landtmann writing a letter where he hopes to have an audience with Emperor Franz. Mr. George is working on a story based on the Roman Empire.

Caesar gives Vespasian a set of orders. John and Mary are working in the vineyard. Martha is John's mother, who trusts her son to take care of the farm. Martha promised Mary's parents that she and John would one day marry. Mary and John decide to take a walk along the shore of the sea. Martha agrees to escort them. Mary mischievously climbs into a boat and rows away from shore. John swims out to rescue her, which is quite a struggle for him. During their time on the boat, they discuss their arranged marriage and the story that John's father always tells--stories from the Bible. A storm blows up unexpectedly, their ship begins to take on water, until they are rescued by a galley ship, which just happens to be the ship of the governor Josephus. John is recruited to join the military. The story continues to grow in excitement as it follows the lives of these young people. I'm not giving away any spoilers. You will have to listen to this production to find out what happens to John and Mary.

Now let's talk about the PDF study guide that we received. The introduction to the study guide suggests that this item is to be used as a guide to help parents talk through the production with their younger children. Older children can use the study guide as writing prompts. The questions follow the story of each segment and cover about 4-8 minutes of the drama. The questions are further divided into difficulty levels titled listening well, thinking further, and defining words. Dispersed throughout the study guide are also pictures and details further explaining events or depicting specific scenes.

The listening well questions are relatively short and appear to also have answers based on comprehension of the storyline. These differ from the thinking further questions, which focus on geography type map work, compare/contrast, defining characters, and biblical themes. Defining words is about developing vocabulary. For example in segment two titled "The Storm", students study the following words: hail, sedition, clement, Messiah, pacify, pacification, escort, proper, unseemly, patriarchs, galley. This is also a great opportunity to learn how to spell these higher level vocabulary words.

Curious what other reviewers had to say about this product? Head on over to the Homeschool Review Crew blog to read all the reviews.

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