St. Bartholowmew's Eve Audio Drama {Review}

Are you looking for excellent audio drama's that are family safe, combine inspiring stories and historical accuracy all rolled in one?  Our family favourite resource is produced by Heirloom Audio.

As a family we were first introduced to The Extraordinary Adventures of G.A. Henty when we were given In Freedom's Cause for Christmas a few years ago.   That was the beginning of our personal collection and we have thoroughly enjoyed every single episode as they have been released. The latest release is St. Bartholowmew's Eve and I think this one has become my favourite to date.

What we received

• A down loadable copy of St. Bartholowmew's Eve. (115 MB MP3 version)
• The music score is an original and written by Emmy Award Winning Composer John Campbell.
• Listening time: 2 + hours
• Recommended ages: 6 to Adult. (IF listening with younger children please be aware that some scenes are intense listening!)
• Featuring: Brian Blessed, Elizabeth Counsell, David Shaw-Parker, Brian Deacon, Andy Harrison and Hugo Docking.

How we used it
We were gifted a digital copy of St. Bartholowmew's Eve . After downloading it, I extracted it from it's zip file (114 MB).

We burned it to two CD's in the mp3 format to listen to in our old car stereo.  We LOVE listening to audio drama's when we are travelling to our multiple weekly commitments OR on long holiday journey's.  It's become a family tradition to take along our Henty Adventures!

About St. Bartholomew's Eve 
This audio drama has been adapted from the book, St Bartholomew's Eve by G.A. Henty. George Alfred Henty was an English novelist and war correspondent and is best known for his accurate historical adventure stories. He wrote 122 works of historical fiction.

The story of St.Bartholomew's Eve takes place during the Reformation period in 1580 and is a tale of the Huguenot Wars. The story opens with Sir George finding his two young friends Ned and Sebastian skipping first service at church in favour of other exploits. He then shares with them the story of the Huguenot Wars and how their freedom to worship was obtained for them through the faithfulness of the Saints.

The story follows the life of 16-year-old Philip Fletcher an English lad, who finds himself living in France at the home of Henry of Nacarre. Henry and Philip side with the Protestants and join the service of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny who are standing up for the freedom to worship as they believe God has called them to do. Philip is an accomplished swordsman who quickly learns to use a hand gun and distinguishes himself in various battles, receiving recognition and promotion for his bravery.

Catherine de Medicis, the mother of Charles IX the French King had a growing fear of the influence that Admiral Coligny had over her son. In response to this she gives approval of a plot by the Roman Catholic house of Guise to assassinate Coligny. Due to the failed assassination attempt she plots with a group of nobles to kill the Huguenot leaders who were still in Paris for the wedding festivities of Catherine's daughter Margaret of France and the Huguenot Henry of Navarre. Just before dawn on August 24, 1572, the bell of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois began to toll and the Parisian mobs massacred more than 2,000 Protestant men, women, and children, and this in turn triggered further persecutions across France.

In response, soldiers of the Reformed Church took up arms against the slaughter. Philip found himself behind the battle lines of the Roman Catholic House of Guise, and he leads a squad of veteran soldiers as they fight for family and land. Philip's swordsmanship and wit take him through harrowing struggles, where he finds himself rescuing a woman of nobility.

Many of the surviving French Calvinists, known as Huguenots, flea from their land to various European countries, where they learn to overcome the great price they have paid for their religious freedom, and Phillip returns to England a hero.
Other Available Audio Drama's

• Captain Bayley's Heir
• In the Reign of Terror
• The Cat of Bubastes
• Beric The Briton
• The Dragon & The Raven
• With Lee In Virginia
• In Freedom's Cause
• Under Drakes Flag 
• Wulf the Saxon

Connect on Social Media
Facebook - Heirloom Audio Productions
Twitter - @HeirloomStories
Google+ - +HeirloomAudioProductions
Instagram - @HeirloomAudioOfficial

80 other crew members reviewed St. Bartholomew's Eve, visit the Homeschool Review Crew to read their reviews or click on the image below.

This production has by far been our favourite story.  It has encouraged our faith and enriched our understanding of the freedom we have to worship God.  If you are looking for a wonderful gift for Christmas or want to add to your families listening library I highly recommend St. Bartholowmew's Eve by Heirloom Audio Production.s

Drawing Techniques {Virtual Fridge}

This Week
"Drawing, properly taught, is the best way of developing intelligence and forming judgement, for one learns to see, and seeing is knowledge." (Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc 1883: p.305)

I enrolled in a new drawing course which sounded really interesting and would help with learning to draw for Nature Journaling.  The course is called Drawing Nature, Science and Culture: Natural History Illustration 101 and is presented by edX and is open for participants world wide.  This course is FREE unless you would like a certification. I have been blown away by the content and highly recommend it.

Week one's homework asked us to invest in H and B pencils which prompted us to find out more about the numerical graphite scale.   I discovered that there is no industry standard so different brand pencils can have different intensities even though the scale numbers are the same, so if you like a pencil stick with that brand!

Crey pencils are actually a mixture of graphite and clay binder.  The H and B ranking systems denote the quantities of graphite and clay within a pencil which in turn affects the intensity of colour and hardness of the pencil.


This weeks Feature

This weeks feature is a tutorial from over at Imaginative Homeschool where you can see a step by step tutorial on creating summer and fall tree artwork using paint and q-tips.
Your Turn

I invite you to take some photo's of your children's artistic pursuits put them in a post and link up with me I would love to come over and see the wonderful art your children have enjoyed doing.

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Blessings
Chareen

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Brinkman Adventures Season 6 {Review}

Audio drama's are one of the best additions to our homeschool that we have had. Our first audio drama was Season 2 from The Brinkman Adventures in 2014 it took one episode to hook us as a family. In fact we so enjoyed listening to the Brinkman adventures we were thrilled to review Season 3 in 2015.

We love listening to audio drama's and books whenever we travel and quite often when we are travelling around locally. We were thrilled to be given a digital copy of Brinkman Adventures Season 6 - Underground Rising to review.

The vision for Brinkman Adventures was birthed in 2009 by Ian Bultman to 'create a missionary radio show that will inspire future missionaries'. He penned the first three episodes and each of his children volunteered as voice actors (there are 9 children in his family). Each of the children's names have been changed in the production but they all play themselves. Over the years the show has grown and incorporates sound effects, foley, music and acting along with voice actors from the Milwaukee area and the rest of the world.

The goal of Brinkman Adventures is to reach people with the incredible life changing stories. Each episode tells a true, modern, missionary story. The aim of the series is changing lives and encouraging young people to become missionaries.

Brinkmand Adventures Season 6 - Underground Rising

Season 6 covers episodes 55 to 60. Each episode is around 25 minutes in length which can be used on short car trips, afternoon rest times for your family or family devotional times. Underground Rising is available for purchase as a physical or digital download. Brinkman Adventures have recently moved to a six episode release structure making this release approximately two hours in duration.

Episodes in Season 6

• 55 - Dutch Underground Part 1 - Reng and Lynn VanKesteren are Ian Bultman’s (Jack Brinkman’s) grandparents. This episode is based on the true story of their experiences during World War 2. The details of the episode is drawn from Lyn's book: Great is Thy Faithfulness.
• 56 - Dutch Underground Part 2 - This is part two of Reng's involvement with the Dutch Underground.
• 57 - Twice Born Fly - This episode is based on a dream of Ian’s that occurred while serving at Alaska Bible Institute in Homer, Alaska. This episode took its name from a true story in Joey's life.
• 58 - I Wonder Why? - the true story of the Wonder family (some names were changed for security),highlighting the experience of a girl leaving home and accompanying her parents to a foreign country to minister to different people groups, health and healing of hearts and bodies.
• 59 - Free Burma Rangers Part 1 - This episode is based on the true story of Dave Eubank and his journey from boyhood into a career as a Green Beret in the Special Forces. It especially touched us as we (my husband and I) both grew up in military families during deployment in war zones.
• 60 - Free Burma Rangers Part 2 - This episode is based upon the events in the life of Dave and Karen Eubank and their family in Burma bringing aid to people within the attack zones and sharing the love of Jesus with the Burmese nationals while working alongside them.

Each story has scripture and prayer in them and real every day life conversations. The family pray together and do bible studies together demonstrating how to apply christian principles in daily living.

Digital episodes may be played on portable devices (phones/tablets) but must first be downloaded onto computer, and then synced with device. (Portable devices are unable to extract zipped files). We burned them to CD's and listened to them in the car on our local journey's. Paul so enjoyed the stories we had to pause Free Burma Rangers and wait till he was in the car with us to continue the story!

The dramatisations are excellent and you feel as though you are actually in the country where the story is taking place. For example in episodes 55 and 56 due to the difficult nature of imitating the Dutch accent, God provided actors in the Netherlands to help portray members of the Dutch Underground from the Dekker family. By God's providence Omie's niece Hieke Hoekstra portrayed her aunt Lyn in the story.


Spoiler Alert! My favourite part about each of the episodes of the Brinkman Adventures are the real stories that each of the episodes are based on.You can find the background stories, photographs, podcasts of interviews with the missionaries, YouTube clips, maps and history for each season under the Real Stories tab (I suggest you listen to each episode before popping over to read more about the real stories, the people and the places.).

The stories have been designed for family or youth group listening.  Some of the stories are quite dramatic and may be a little frightening for younger audiences.  Should an episode be intense or have slightly more mature themes it will start with an introduction with a recommendation that younger children listen to the episode with their parents present.

If you are looking for family safe listening that is encouraging, inspiring and safe to listen to be sure to head on over to Brinkman Adventures and explore the seasons which have been thus far released.  Be warned though, once you start to listen to the Brinkman Family adventures you will not want to stop!

You can connect with the Brinkman Adventures team on Facebook.

70 other crew members reviewed Season 6: Underground Rising, visit the Homeschool Review Crew to read their reviews or click on the image below.