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About 8 years ago, I received a free sample tape from Nest Entertainment's Animated Stories of the New Testament--and that was the beginning of our wonderful collection of Nest videos from the following series:
The Animated Stories of the Bible [Old Testament]
The Animated Stories of the New Testament
The Animated Hero Classics [the Maccabees to the Wright Brothers]
For a variety of reasons, I do not like most modern children's videos and have a special dislike for most BIBLE videos. An accurate presentation of the Biblical record, the history, and the culture of the times is often sacrificed in an attempt to make the Bible "relevant" to children by such devices as importing 20th century time travelers or making the disciples look like overgrown toddlers.
These videos, however, I do enjoy! Our family watches them over and over again with great pleasure! The music is delightfully reverent and cheerful, the animation is beautiful, and the stories are accurate to the Scriptural and historical record while subtly incorporating geographical and cultural information and creating full, realistic, human characters! This is historical fiction at its very best!
Each of the Animated Hero Classics focuses on a historical figure who is an example of an admirable character quality. This is not done in a contrived or artificial way, but as a natural part of the true story of the character. These tapes DRAW children into sympathy with the character and have put my children on a quest to know more, read more, learn more, and understand more!
After watching these tapes, my children have been provoked, as their own response, to read the Bible stories again and to work their way through one children's biography after another, comparing, discerning--and asking a historian's questions. I'm delighted, again and again, to see their responses!
"Christopher Columbus is the first one you need to watch! It's the best; my favorite! I thought he was a boring person until I watched the video! And I like the Bible tapes about miracles--how they show them so real!" (Heather, age 10)
"I love the funny parts--and the videos are so interesting--and I love the song on the George Washington tape! Maccabees is great--how they escape from the Romans!" (Kristen, age 8)
"I learned to be nice from Helen Keller!" (Kelsey, age 7)
"I like the song on the William Bradford tape about Squanto! And I like Leonardo because I like painting! I have a lot of favorites! Remember The Righteous Judge?" (Katie, age 5)
"I like them because I like Joseph when he says, 'I knew it! I knew it! Didn't I, didn't I, know it?' And I like it because it does sing!" (Heidi, age 4)
"I like PocTAhontas!!!" (Alicia, age 2)
I myself so enjoyed Florence Nightingale! I am a former RN so this tape was of special interest to me, but the reminder of her tremendous compassion for dying soldiers in need of mercy touched my heart and convicted me to be more compassionate with my own family!
Special bonus video segments--
the Leonardo tape ends with a series of photographs of his paintings
the only known photograph of Harriet Tubman ends the tape of her life
The
Animated Stories of the Bible
Daniel~Moses~David and Goliath~Elijah~Elisha~Samuel~Esther~Ruth~Joseph in Egypt~Abraham
and Isaac~Solomon~Joseph's Reunion
The
Animated Stories of the New Testament
The King is Born~He is Risen~The Miracles of Jesus~John the Baptist~Saul of
Tarsus~The Ministry of Paul~The Prodigal Son~The Kingdom of Heaven~Forgive Us
Our Debts~The Good Samaritan~Treasures in Heaven~The Righteous Judge~Jesus,
the Son of God~Bread from Heaven~The Greatest is the Least~The Lost is Found~Lazarus
Lives
The
Animated Hero Classics
Thomas Edison~George Washington~Abraham Lincoln~Christopher Columbus~Benjamin
Franklin~Florence Nightingale~William Bradford~Pocahontas~Harriet Tubman~Louis
Pasteur~Alexander Graham Bell~The Wright Brothers~Maccabees~Helen Keller~Leonardo
da Vinci~Joan of Arc~Marco Polo~Galileo~Marie Curie~and in production--Beethoven
Each video comes with an accompanying reproducible activity book. I don't use many workbooks in my children's education so I confess that I did not even open the activity books for several weeks after receiving them. When I finally did take the time to review them, I was impressed and have been since! Each book is the backbone of a unit study for all ages with outstanding reading lists (including many of the out-of-print treasures featured here on my site), lovely pictures to color, and science, art, geography, grammar, writing, and history projects for a variety of ages!
To order NEST products, click here!
Nest
Entertainment also offers the outstanding Visual Bible videos, audios, and books!
(I will be writing a web page on these eventually! They are wonderful!)
Nest
offers other video sets as well:
Devine
Entertainment Inventors & Artists Collection (live action dramas)
Yello Dyno-The Kid's Safety Champion,
The Adventures from the Book of Virtues, and
JayJay, the Jet Plane!
Any Questions? E-Mail valerie@valerieslivingbooks.com!
