Imaginative Homeschool: June 2017

Monday, June 26, 2017

Story of the World Guides

VOLUME II

Loving Learning as We Go Guide
(Scroll down for Volume II guides. This one also is still being added to. I imagine eventually she'll have guides for Volumes III and IV too)

Magic Treehouse and SOTW (Aligned Reading Guide for Vol 2)

Volume III

Songs for Story of the World - Early Modern Times - By Chapter

General History Resources

Massive Homeschool History Guide

History Art Projects

Monday, June 19, 2017

Story of the World - Ancient Times: Chap 9 Indus Valley

The Mojenjo-Daro artifact photo above is licensed by World66 under the

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 1.0 Generic license

Post contains some affiliate links, through which I can earn commission.
I suggest looking for the books mentioned at your local library.

Below is our lesson on the Indus Valley civilization of Mojenjo- Dar for Story of the World (Vol 1 Chap 9)...along with some additional resources. This was a fun section on a period of history that is important, but often overlooked.

SOTW READING NOTES
and Image Supplements

PART 1 - Indus Valley Civilization

The first section is on the Indus Valley Civilization. There are a couple of neat videos out there showing mock-ups of Mohenjo-daro...I choose one of them to show BEFORE reading this chapter. I thought the chapter would be more interesting if my son could SEE the place where this takes place before he read about it. I also showed him some artifacts from the Indus River Valley civilization from DK Eyewitness Books India*. And I think it worked, because he listened very attentively to this section.

I actually found some much better pictures of Mojenjo Daro in a general "Ancient Civilization" book at our library later (doh!)....

The Kingfisher Book of the Ancient World

I love love the beautiful illustrations in this book...and WISH I had found it before doing this chapter. It has become one of my favorite books for supplementing story of the world (the writing is well done too, though since we are using SOTW we didn't read a lot of it, just mostly looked at the pictures)

DK Eyewitness Books India

This is the book we actually used, but it's illustrations of the Indus Valley Civilization was a little lacking. The "Look Inside" preview on Amazon actually includes the pages we looked at (Page 8-9...click link above) if you want to see. All of the pictures on those pages were Indus Valley artifacts EXCEPT the painting in the lower right corner that shows the Aryan people, who came later.

PART 2 - The Hunter and the Quail

The second section is a folk tale about a Hunter and a Quail. You could do these two sections on different days, though I thought the historical info and the story flow together more than in some other chapters with folk tales, so we did read this on the same day. We took a snack break between the first part and the story though.

Recently in a free sample Unit by Glimmercat* on the Indus Valley I found this neat cut out illustration that you could use in a hands on way with the story. Originally though we used a picture of some Indian Rock Quail which I showed my son at the beginning of the story, and another picture which actually illustrated this tale which I showed him later. You could also illustrate with a video I found, that tells this same tale in another language. You could turn the sound down and just tell the story over it (though it has some differences: the hunter doesn't throw the net on the quail, he lays seeds on it to catch them, and the ending part where the quail don't work together isn't clearly shown). You'ld want to practice it while the kids aren't looking first, if you tried this.

(Side note on the Glimmercat Unit...It has some other cool activities, but I would save the "mandala" activity for Chap 30 on ancient Hinduism, since it has ties to Hinduism. An image of a mandala and use of the term first appear in India via the Hindu text known as the Rig Veda c. 1500 - c. 500 BCE.)

ACTIVITIES

At home for our activity we played the Professor Indus Game on the BBC website. He liked some of it, but some of the game was really repetitive and we ended before it finished.

At co-op, a teen member made a minecraft simulation of Mojenjo Daro which all the kids added to. They had a lot of fun with that.

I also found a great hands-on Mojenjo-Daro model activity on the blog Satori Smiles (and she gave me permission to share a picture with you all)..

We didn't do this since we were already covering this lesson in co-op, but I can see where this would be a fun activity. There's some prep involved but those little bricks could be kept and used in other lessons too. Lots of mud brick structures in the ancient world you can recreate.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

We also read another Indian fable, Once A Mouse, a story of a mouse that was turned into various animals to save him from being eaten, but forgot to be grateful. My son really enjoyed this one...he even asked to read it again several times before we had to take it back to the library!

MORE SUPPLEMENTAL RESOURCES

Mojenjo Daro Animated Walk-through

Indus Valley Civilization Video (4.03 min)

Crash Course World History Video (9.35 min)
This video is fun, fast paced, and full cartoonish illustrations...but as it's for adults too also has some bigger vocabulary that's not explained. The beginning part goes over what makes a civilization, before they get to the Indus Valley part, but there's also a shortened version without that part or the very end (which doesn't directly pertain either).

Indus Valley Civilization Website
This website has info, pictures, videos and some interactive content. I was not able to get the videos to work on my linux computer.

Story of the Quail Video (not in English)
You could turn the sound down and tell the story on top of it....though it has some differences (the hunter doesn't throw the net on the quail, he lays it out, and the ending part where the quail don't work together isn't shown well).

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Saturday, June 17, 2017

Books from My Childhood: Ocean Tales

Post contains some affiliate links, through which I can earn commission.
I suggest looking for the books mentioned at your local library.

I love being able to read the books of my childhood to my children. Since I grew up on a boat many of my favorite stories involved the sea. Here are three of my childhood favorites. All are set in and around the ocean, and in all of them the main characters take a long journey filled with adventure and wonder.

Serendipity
by Stephen Cosgrove

Serendipity was on of my favorite stories as a child...and it became one of my child's favorite stories. It's a book about a pink sea monster who has various adventures while trying to find out who she is. Reading it as an adult was different though. While I still loved the beautiful illustrations and poetic writing style, it seemed "preachier" than I remember in its message about taking care of our oceans. But my son didn't seem to be bothered by that and asked me to read it again, and again, and again.

There's two versions of this story...one with older illustrations (which I prefer), and one with newer illustrations made to look more like a cartoon that was based on this (which I never, until recently, even knew about). This is a first in a series this author wrote, all having fantasy elements, a moral at the end, and the same style of illustration. At least one of the other stories also features Serendipity: Cap'n Smudge. It also was a favorite of mine as a child.

Swimmy
by Leo Lionni

Swimmy is a story about a little fish, and his adventures in the ocean. I love the beautiful charming "stamped" illustrations. The story starts out with a tragedy...Swimmy is the only one of a large school of fish that escapes being eaten by a bigger fish. The book quickly moves on to Swimmy's exploring the ocean and discovering wonderous things until he finds another school of fish, and figures out a way to help them explore the ocean too without being eaten.

I wondered if that would upset my son but it didn't. Like me as a child, he loved the story and asked to read it many times.

Scuffy the Tugboat
by Gertrude Crampton

This is a story of a little toy tugboat which wants to do bigger things than just float in a bath-tub, and gets a chance when he's lost in a little stream that turns into a giant river taking him all the way to the ocean, where he is found once again.

I'm sure my mom bought it for me as a child because it featured a tug-boat, and we lived on a boat very nearly like it (if colored differently). I even had a little, similar, tug-boat for my bath.

My children, unfortunately, didn't like this one as much as I did as a child.

Our "Scuffy"

Our family lived here until I was 10.

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Story of the World - Ancient Times - Chap 9: The River Road of India

I hadn't been able to get to the library before starting this chapter, so I didn't supplement with any books, only videos. But really, the main supplement this section needed was a map, which the Activity Book provided. And since this section has SO MANY questions, my child actually did fine with it even without more visuals or other supplements, and when we were finished he was interested to learn more about India.

Now, you should know that the Indus River, and the Indus Valley civilization are actually in Pakistan, not India.   It USED to be part of India but now it's not. So, if you're looking to study the modern countries where these ancient places are located, that's where you'll want to look.

Paragraph 1
I had my son point to all the rivers mentioned on a world map...he's getting pretty good at spotting them.

Paragraph 2 - 6
For these paragraphs I used the map for this chapter from the activity pages (which lacks the city of Ur and Assur that are in the smaller version in the main book, so I added those).    When the imaginary trader from Ur in the book asked "How will you get from Ur to Assyria?" (p 3), I had my son draw a line from Ur to Assur. When it asked "Can you think of another way to get from Ur to Assur?" my son's first thought wasn't routs, but vehicles...he suggested camels because their feet spread out and wouldn't sink in the sand (thank you Wildcrats for that...LOL). I told him that was a great idea and many ancient traders did use camels because of that....but in this case there was an EVEN easier way they could go. I pointed that both Ur and Assur were next to rivers, and traced out the route the book suggested the trader could take by water.

Paragraphs 7 - 8
While I read these paragraphs, I showed my son this aerial video of the Indus River. The video is just aerial video and middle eastern instrumental music...and I sort of felt like one of those documentary narrators with the video and music playing in the background as I read (I have to admit, that is a fun way to read this...I might look for more instrumental photography videos to read with with future texts).

I interrupted the text only to point out the Indus river in the video, and ask "Can you see why they call it The Indus Valley?   Look at the mountains around it!"

Paragraph 9 - 10
I switched to a different video for this section...one showing a boat with lateen sails navigating the Arabian sea.   I told my son that this was a ship that might have been like what they had back then...but I should have done my research, because those sails, while they did originate in the near east (possibly Persia or Arabia), were not used until much later. If I were doing it again, I might use this video in stead (with the sound turned down).

Videos

Aerial View of Indus (Video We Used)

Arabian Sea - Lateen Sails (Video We Used - Not Period)

Arabian Sea (suggested)

Indus River From Space
- Has narration about the area.

Roadtrip by Indus River (by Wild India)
-This video is taken from a car while driving (but is still very smooth...not shakey video)..only a short amount shows the Indus river before the road then goes inland...but it also shows mud brick houses (still in use TODAY in this area), which might be interesting. There are no words, just techo music in the background.

More Indus River Videos from Wild India

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Thursday, June 15, 2017

Story of the World - Vol 1 - Ch 8 - The Assyrians

Post contains some affiliate links, through which I can earn commission.
I suggest looking for the books mentioned at your local library.

For this chapter we supplemented by looking at pictures about Assyria from DK Mesopotamia. I split up the first section, Shamshi-Adad, King of the Whole World, in two, reading paragraphs 1-8 on one day, and 9 -14 the next day.

We also watched the rest of this video on ancient Mesopotamia that we first started when we were reading about Sumer in chapter 5. It has a lot on the Assyrians as well, and is just an excellent video for kids (it comes from a Christian perspective).

For the section on The Story of Gilgamesh, I found a beautifully illustrated series of children's books telling the expanded story.

Gilgamesh the King

The Revenge of Ishtar

The Last Quest of Gilgamesh

I decided to only read the first one, Gilgamesh the King, because my son doesn't do extremely well with sad endings and it left off on a more positive note than the other two (and the Story of the World retelling) .

ACTIVITY

Make an Assyrian Recipe
These were recipes they've found in
cuneiform tablets which modern food historians
have recreated using more modern cooking tools.

Assyrian Beef Stew (2nd Recipe)

Lamb with Barley and Mint

Many kids don't like lamb, but if yours
do, this might be a fun one.

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Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Story of the Worl - Vol 1 - Ch 7 - Hammurabi's Code

We first started reading Story of the World when my child was 7. For Chapters 1-6 we went very slowly, doing only one sub-chapter, maybe two a week, and often breaking the sub-chapters into smaller parts over several days. When we got to chapter 6 we took a long break to study a number of old testament Bible stories that take place between Abraham and Joseph, and while we were doing that I learned that our co-op would be working through Story of the World Volume 1 the following year, so I decided to hold off and wait to cover the rest of the book until then.

This was the first chapter we read the following year. Though we had participated in activities for our co-op over the chapters we'd already read, we hadn't gone back and read them. My son had grown a lot in reading patience at that time, so I decided to try all of Chapter 7 in one day...but I wish we hadn't. It was a little much for him...especially all those laws. So if I were doing it over I'd read over all the paragraphs UNTIL we got to the list of Hammurabi's laws on one day, and then done the laws the next.

We looked at the carving of Hammurabi and his laws in a library book, but you can also find these pictures at the wikipedia page on Hammurabi.

I talked with my son about how, though some of the laws seemed very harsh, they were much better than no law. For instance, the "eye for an eye" law was not just giving a punishment, but LIMITING a punishment (so that someone who had lost an eye might not try to do something even worse, like kill the person, in revenge).

Other than that we didn't do a lot on this chapter. We are covering Bible stories too, so when we got to The 10 Commandments (which we studied along with the stories of Moses and the Exodus) then we looked at some of these again and compared Hammurabi's Laws and the 10 Commandments. That could be done here too.

(Yep, this was a rather uneventful chapter for us. As we began to work at a faster pace we started doing less as far as projects, though we did still do some creative stuff along the way.)

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Monday, June 12, 2017

Story of the World - Vol 1 - Ch 6 - The Jewish People

Image above incorporates picture from Distant Shores Media/Sweet Publishing

licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Post contains some affiliate links, through which I can earn commission.
I suggest looking for the books mentioned at your local library.

Usually I do separate posts for each sub-chapter, but since we used mostly the same resources for all the sub-sections of this chapter I'm combining them into one post. We took a long break at this time to not just study the two Bible stories covered in Story of the World, but many other old testament Bible stories not covered here (you can see how we integrated those with Story of the World here). And we ended up doing some of the stories twice because I went over them a second time when we did these with our co-op our second year covering Volume 1 (in fact, this was the last chapter we did our first year, by ourselves, not with our co-op...so the rest of the chapters will be at a little different pace, as my son was able to handle more reading with less adjustments to hold his attention the second year we did this). We didn't do all the activities listed, but I listed a few others that also looked interesting for your use.

I love the writing in Story of the World. However you should know it incorporate some extra-Biblical information (SOTW pulled in some information contained elsewhere about Abrams father's worship of other Gods, and used that as a way to talk about some of the religious practices in Ur)

The SOTW version story of Joseph left out some of the story of Joseph, including the tests with his brothers...which I understand as they could be confusing and make the story longer. But I wanted to include that and talk about why he might not have trusted his brothers...how he wanted to make sure his little brother Benjamin was safe and this was a way to make sure of that. So, on both counts I used text from other Bible stories below to teach these passages in stead of Story of the World.

Books We Used:

The Jesus Storybook Bible

My mother bought this book and CD set for us years ago....and I love it. It's a beautiful collection of Bible stories that show how all the stories are really ONE story...a Love story about how God rescued his people. It's gentle and perfect for younger children, but brings out aspects of the stories that even adults can learn from. I suggest buying the version with the audio CD, as David Suchet's reading of this story is really amazing (my oldest listened to these tapes over and over...he couldn't get enough of them). You can also purchase just the book by itself or get it with the animated movie version of this on DVDS too (which I haven't seen so can't comment on).

Children's Illustrated Bible
This book has faithful retellings of the Bible stories along with beautiful illustrations, and sidebars with helpful maps, pictures of artifacts and places, and historical and cultural information related to the text. It's really a perfect book if you want to connect the Bible stories with other aspects of history.

General Bible Story Activities
(For All Bible Stories)

Story Telling in Sand Box
I had planned to tell the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob using printable Abraham and Sarah on cardboard in a sand box like I had seen on a video (which I can't find now...doh). But I left the sand I bought outside and it got rained on, and I didn't want to wait or go out and get more.

Wooden Spoon Puppets
These would be another cute way to illustrate these stories

Abraham Activities

Stars Activity
When we studied Abraham and the story about his decendants being like the uncountable stars and sand, we did a simple craft drawing all over a black piece of construction paper with a glue stick and then sprikling glitter on it with stars. I had bought sand to make sandpaper hills the same way (only on brown paper, cut like hills to paste over the stars), but my sand got rained on the day before so we didn't do that. You could also cut up sandpaper to do that like this blogger did. She also used sticker stars, but those were too countable for me.

Here's some more Abraham activities you can do...

Printable Abraham and Sarah Tent and Figures

Abraham and Sarah Lift the Flap Tent

3D Tent Craft

Lapbook Pages/Tent Book

Abraham and Sarah Games

Abraham Character Traits, Tracing, and More

UR Activities
This chapter mentions Ziggurats. If you haven't done any activities on them for previous chapters, you might consider making a ziggurat, since it was mentioned here. You could make one out of legos (if you haven't already made a pyramid this way, because it would be very similar), out of sugar cubes, or cardboard, or even a pop up card.

Isaac and Jacob Activities

Sacrifice of Isaac

Isaac and Rebecca

Isaac, Jacob and Esau (various)

Jacob and Esau

Jacobs Sons

Joseph Activites

Joseph Puppets

Joseph Coat Activity

Grain Bundle Craft

Creative Commons Illustrations of Joseph Story

While we went on and covered many more Bible stories, we didn't really do any crafts for those, as my son began to be less interested in doing crafts related to the stories. Again, you can see what we read between various Story of the World chapters to integrate the Bible stories chronologically here.

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Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Story of the World Bible Integration

As we are Christians, I wanted to teach more of the Bible stories than were included in Story of the World. I thought teaching them alongside the history would be helpful to give context to the stories. It was hard to know where to place some of the stories, as placing some of these precisely in history is not possible. I'm not attempting to list all the stories here, just most of the major ones. I will list only the chapter EXCEPT where it makes sense to insert the Bible stories between sub-chapters. Here's the order for our Old Testament reading...I will post a New Testament chronology later.

OLD TESTAMENT CHRONOLOGY

SOTW Introduction: How Do We Know What Happened

Creation Story
Adam and Eve
Cane and Able

Ch 1 - The Earliest People

Noahs Ark

Ch 2 - Egyptians Live on the Nile River

Ch 3 - The First Writing

Tower of Babel
(Also goes nicely around Chap 5)

Ch 4 - The Old Kingdom of Egypt

Ch 5 - The First Sumerian Dictator

Ch 6 - The Jewish People

God Speaks to Abraham

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

Joseph Goes to Egypt

The longer story of Joseph
(the SOTW version skips some parts)

Ch 7 - Hammurabi and the Babylonians

(Comparing Hammurabi's code to the 10 Commandments can go here,
even though the 10 Commandments Come Later)

Ch 8 - The Assyrians

Job
(Job is hard to date but considered very old...could go anywhere really. There was space here.)

Ch 9 - India (River Valley People)

Ch 10 - Ancient China

Ch 11 - Ancient Africa

Ch 12 - Middle Kingdom of Egypt

Ch 13 - New Kingdom of Egypt

Ch 14 - Isrealites Leave Egypt

Isreal in the Wilderness
10 Commandments
Walls of Jericho
Isreal Enters Promise Land (Joshua)
Judges:
Samson
Deborah
Gideon
Samuel
Saul
David
Solomon

Ch 15 - The Phonicians

Ruth (could be put anywhere after David/Solomon)
Elijah/Elisha
Story of Namaan
Hosea

Ch 16 - The Return of Assyria

Jonah
Jeremiah

Ch 17 - Babylon Takes Over Again

For this one, some of the Bible stories take place mid-chapter, so...

Nebuchadnezzar's Madness - Paragraph 1 - 3

Daniel Captured/Eating Restrictions
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego

Nebuchadnezzar's Madness - Paragraph 4 to End

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

NOTE ABOUT CHAPTER ORDER: At this point, we decided to skip ahead to Chap 21, so I could do the whole story of Daniel in one place, then go back and read all the chapters on the Greeks. That also makes it easy to do all the rest of the Old Testament stories before starting Ancient Greece. But you wouldn't have to do that. All the chapters I skipped to do later are grayed out below.

Ch 18: Life in Early Crete

Ch 19: The Early Greeks

Ch 20: Greece Gets Civilized Again

Daniel and Beltshazar - Writing on the Wall

Ch 21: The Medes and the Persians

Daniel and the Lions Den

(Note, who "King Darius" is debated, but it's thought

that Cyrus the great put people over areas of his kingdom,

and that King Darius was who he placed over Babylon)

Rebuilding of Jerusalem (described in Nehemiah)

Esther

ISREAL BETWEEN THE TESTAMENTS

That's the end of the Old Testament stories, but between the old and new testament, Alexander the Great took over the area where Isreal was. He gave them a lot of freedom to practice their religion, but one of the Seleucids did not, and oppressed the Jews greatly (the Seleucids were descendants of Seleucus, one of the four generals who ruled the areas conquered by Alexander the Great after his death). This lead to the Maccabean revolt, which made Isreal an independant nation for a few hundred years. The story of Hanukkah (outside the Bible) directly relates to this. If you want to add some study of this, a good place to do it is after Chapter 25.

NEW TESTAMENT

Story of the World puts both the birth of Jesus, a brief summary of his ministry, and his death, in Chapter 37. You could use their retelling, adding some of the stories from his ministry in the middle, and stories from acts between chapter 37-38.

Or you could replace this section completely, and take time out from SOTW to do a more thorough study of the New Testament at this point. This would be the simplest way to do things, without changing the order of the SOTW chapters.

So, that's the simple version. Below is the more complex version with some supplemental history that's not in SOTW.

I wanted my child to learn more about the first 5 Roman Emperors, making connections with Bible stories as we learned about them, so that meant changing up the order of SOTW chapters at this point to be more chronological. If you would like to do this too, below is the order I used (and some other useful dates). SOTW also introduced Diocletian before Constantine, and while that is after the period of Biblical stories, I wanted to add some church history about the persecution of Christians under Diocletian, so I changed the order there as well (and added/changed some material in the chapters) to make that make more sense. I'm still editing that text but I'll add it soon.

The first five Caesars reigns are listed in purple below, and some other later Caesars mentioned in SOTW, in case like me you would like to add more info about them.

Augustus (REIGN 27 BC – AD 14)

-Augustus is covered by SOTW. Jesus' birth/childhood happened during his reign
Ch 36: The First Roman Prince
Ch 37 Section 1: The Birth of Jesus

Tiberius (REIGN 14 - 37 AD)
Tiberius is not mentioned in SOTW. Most of Jesus ministry, and his death and resurrection, happened during this period, as well as some of the early events in Acts.
Ch 37 Section 2: Jesus Crucified and Resurrected

Caligula (REIGN 37 - 41 AD)

He is not mentioned in SOTW. His reign was short because he was paranoid, ruthless, and insane, and was soon assassinated.

Claudius (REIGN 41 - 54 AD)
He is not mentioned in SOTW. The grandnephew of Augustus, he was left with a limp and partial deafness from a childhood illness. He probably survived Caligula's reign because he wasn't considered a threat. He was chosen by the assassins of Caligula to be the next Caesar, and ruled fairly well.   A large part of the book of Acts took place under his reign.

Nero (REIGN 41 - 54 AD)
Nero is covered in SOTW. It was only 3 years into Nero's reign when the Apostle Paul "appealed to Caesar" when charges were made against him in Jerusalem (Nero's persecutions of Christians had not begun yet then). That persecution would start shortly after Paul was sent to Rome, and he would be killed there. It's important to note that persecution of Christians didn't stay at this level after Nero.   For the period between Nero and Diocletian, Christianity, while not embraced, was not attacked to the same degree (though it differed under various emperors).   Because of this and that archeologists/historians no longer believe Christians hid in the catacombs (silverware found there the believe was for Funerary feasts, not because they were living there),I rewrote the "Christians in the Catacombs" section.

Ch 39: Section 1 "Nero, The evil emperor" (Nero, Christian Persecution - Reign 54-68, Fire 64 Ad)
Ch 40 (Celts, Boadicea, 60-61 BC) - moved here because this happened during Nero's reign
Ch 39: Section 2. "Christians in the Catacombs" (My rewrite "Christians in Rome").

Though I only covered the first five emperors with my kids, I'm including some others just for place markers here.

Year of 4 Emperors (68-69 AD)

Vespasian (REIGN 69-79 AD)
Ch 38 (Jerusalem Destroyed - AD 70)
Masada (AD 66 - 73)
Pompeii, Vesuvius erupts (AD 79, not long after the death of Vespasian)

Various Emperors

Diocletian (REIGN 284-305)
While persecution of Christians waned after Nero, it was reignited under Diocletian.   His reign was the worst and most widespread period of persecution of Christians after Nero (though, since he divided the empire, it mainly only affected his section of the empire). I felt it was important to have his story listed before Constantine, to give more weight to the changes that Constantine brought.
I included some info about Diocletian's persecution of Christians and re-wrote the chapters a bit to work

Ch 40 B (Diocletian Divides Roman Empire - 286 AD)

Constantine (REIGN 306-312)

Ch 39 C (Constantine, Reign 306 - 312)
Ch 41 Barbarians Attack (Attila the Hun came between Visigoths and Vandals)
Ch 42 Fall of Rome

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