Unbreakable Faith (A Homeschool Crew Review)

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.

As a Christian parent of three, I find myself constantly being asked questions regarding God that I personally find difficult to answer.  This is especially true in regards to questions asked my by adult daughter, who still has many questions that would fall under the category of apologetics.

This is why I was very happy to learn I would be reviewing a course that handles many of these types of questions. For this review, I was given 2 year access to The Unbreakable Faith Course from Pilgrim's Rock, LLC. This is an online apologetics course created by Craig Biehl. In addition to the course, I was also given physical copies of the textbooks required for the course - The Box and God The Reason: How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith, both written by Craig Biehl.

Text Books, Online Lectures and even a nice note from the company

The Unbreakable Faith course aims to expose the hypocrisy of those who declare that God does not exist and demonstrates the impossibility that life could exist without God creating it.  Students build a comprehensive understanding of who God is, using scripture to help really understand who God is and our relationship with him while simplifying theological and worldview truths for a better understanding.   The course is suitable for homeschool students (to earn credit) as well as individuals, families, church and college ministries (without credit).

The course is broken down into six parts.  The first 5 parts consist of video lessons as well as reading lessons from the provided textbooks while the 6th part consists of the Final Exam for the course.

Covered Topics for each Part: 

Part One: Introduction to Apologetics; The Implications of God Having No Beginning or Needs.

Part Two:  The Implications of God as Unable to Be Known Unless He Reveals Himself, Infinite, and Unchanging.

Part Three: The Implications of God as an Undivided Unity, Spirit, Perfect in Knowledge, and Perfectly Wise.

Part Four: The Implications of God as True and Truthful, Good and Love, Holy, and Righteous.

Part Five: The Implications of God as Infinitely Powerful and Sovereign; The Unbelieving and Believing Worldview.


A course syllabus is provided by Dr Biehl where it explains that the course itself is self paced. However, once the course is started, it must be completed within 36 weeks  or less. The course sections must be taken in order - course material will not be unlocked until the previous section is completed.  Dr Biehl also offers office hours that can be arranged by the student if they have questions or do not understand something in the assignment.

Upon logging into the website, the student is presented with the dashboard where they can see what they have completed and where they are in the lesson.  In the image below, under part 1, it says my progress is 12/12, meaning I have already completed the twelve objectives needed to complete that part of the course. I have completed 1 out of 4 objectives for Part 2, so I will go to that section and work on the next objective for that part.

Clicking on the Part that you are currently working on, you are taken to the page for that portion of the course.  This is where you will find the list of videos for that section, as well as the reading assignments needed to be completed before taking the quiz for that portion of the course. The books should be read as suggested by the schedule, as the reading assignment both corresponds as well as explains further and clarifies the material covered in the videos.

One all assignments have been completed for the section, the student must complete a quiz for that portion of the class.  You have only one attempt at taking the quiz and the quiz is timed.  I did find that the time was sufficient (I believe it was 25 minutes to answer 30 questions for Part 1) to have enough time to thoroughly read the questions and answers without feeling rushed.  Quizzes count for 75% of the grade of the course while the Final Exam counts for 25%.

You can keep track of your grade by looking at the grade report, which shows our grades on each exam as well as your your class average.  This report bases your grade based on how many points you have out of a total of 104, as it shows empty grades - those quizzes you haven't taken yet are also counted.

My Thoughts

I am extremely grateful for the fact this course is a self paced course and that I have 36 weeks to complete it, because there is a ton of information presented.  For a rushed mother of three who's involved with both the women's and church ministry, as well as other family and military functions, it's been very appreciative to be able to not feel overwhelmed by trying to meet a timeframe that doesn't work with my hectic life in order to complete this course.

What has worked for me is sitting in my bedroom before the rest of the household is awake and include a portion of the reading with my morning Bible Studies.  Depending on where I am with each of my studies, I will dedicated 15-20 minutes to each book.   With the completion of Part 1, I am now finished with The Box so I will have more time time to dedicate to the main text, God The Reason.

As mention, I have my highlighter handy.  I'm big on highlighting and note taking - I'm the type who has to bring my own paper to chapel service to take notes.  The books present plenty of material to ponder over and really think about.  Each chapter also includes notations with endnotes providing more understanding or a reference for information presented.

The course videos correspond with the information presented in the book, giving an audio/visual presentation of the material.  I found the videos very well done.  Each video begins and ends with a hymn and then the material, taught by Dr. Biehl, is presented.  Biehl uses various graphics and scriptures to explain the concepts being covered.  Videos are roughly 12-18 minutes in length in Part 1 (they may be longer in other portions of the course).  Unlike many other theologian speakers, Dr Biehl does not present the material is the typical monotonous way, making the videos easy to watch and listen to.

Overall, I have been extremely pleased with what I am learning in the course. I have no doubt that this course will prepare me to be able to answer those questions my children will ask that are apologetic in nature, as well as prepare me to present the Argument for Faith to those unbelievers I may encounter.

For more information about Pilgrim's Rock, LLC  and The Unbreakable Faith Course, be sure to visit their website.  You can also find them on the following social media sites:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PilgrimsRockLLC/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PilgrimsRockLLC
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/pilgrimsrock/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWwPS9K7Roo-TdegNHP_Pzg?view_as=subscriber

Self Paced Courses mean that my fellow Crew members are all at different portions of the course.  Be sure to click the banner below and go read their reviews and see what they have learned and shared.

Pathway To Liberty (A Homeschool Crew Review)

For the last few weeks, the kids and I have been using the Pathway to Liberty's History Curriculum  from Pathway to Liberty Homeschool Curriculum in our homeschool.

The Pathway to Liberty curriculum is a complete history curriculum for grades K-12 that bring students through the different periods of history over four years of coursework.    This curriculum is written by Jayme MacCullough, founder of Pathway to Liberty and is designed to present history in an engaging format using a Christian worldview.

Each year of coursework is also broken down into one of four levels, depending on the grade level of the student.  Startling with Level 1 which encompasses K5-3rd grade, Level 2 for 4th-6th Grade, Level 3 for 7th-9th grade and finishing with Level 4 for 10th-12th Grade.  To teach each level only requires the purchase of both the Teacher's Guide and the Student's Guide for that level. Lessons are designed so that multiple levels can be taught at the same time to multiple students.

Members of the crew were each given their choice of both Year and Level to use in their homeschool.  For this review, I opted to use the Year 3 - US History curriculum at Level 2 with both Ashleigh and Garrett.  We were given a digital download of the Teacher's Guide, Student's Guide as well as a digital download of the book Chain of Liberty that is used with the curriculum.

How We Used It

Each Monday, I would simply print out the handouts needed for the week from the student's workbook.  Each week, the teacher's manual would lay out what the lessons would be about as well as the scripture and main ideas that are stressed during the week.  The weeks reading lessons are laid out and are completed over the course of 4 days.   For the weeks that we have been using the curriculum, we used the book The Light & The Glory for Children by Peter Marshall and David Manual as well as Chain of Liberty, also written by Jayme MacCullough, the author of the Pathway to Liberty curriculum.  Later lessons use the book From Sea to Shining Sea for Children, also written by Peter Marshall and David Manuel.

Both the Teacher's Guide as well as the Student's Guide are both very user friendly. The Student's Guide allows for super easy printing of all the necessary work for the week.  With the Teacher's Guide,  everything is planned out - what you will read, what questions you will ask, the answers to those questions.  There is also suggested writing assignments, additional reading

Each day, we would read the selection together and go over the questions included with the study guide.  If a video was required for the week, we would typically watch it on Fridays.

The first day of the lesson, the kids and I would go over the Scripture, Principal and leading idea for the week together.

For this particular week, we read about the different hardships that the pilgrims faced, including running out of food.  The one part that stuck out with the kids was that at one point, they only had 5 kernels of corn as a ration to eat each day.  To really drive this home with the kids, we grabbed some corn kernels so they could put into perspective the exact amount they had to eat each day.

Some exercises included each week included map work and charts.

Most exercises were questions that required the kids to think about and apply what they read.

My Opinion

So, here's the hard part.  What do I think of this curriculum.  I REALLY wanted to like this curriculum and I was super excited when I was given this review.  So far, part of me really likes it, and the other part of me doesn't like it much at all. 

Let me explain...

Based on the first 7 weeks of these lessons - As far as as an actual US History curriculum, I don't like it.  I just feel that there's not enough meat to this to really teach history itself.  Granted, we're doing Level 2 studies, but Nine weeks into it and the kids have learned a few tidbits here and there in regards to the early settlers of America.  However, those tidbits do not equate to a solid learning of the topic.   I also questioned how much of the material covered within the stories were factual or if they were fictional fluff.   There are stories that are read in this curriculum that I can't verify if they have any factual basis to them and that bothers me.  I do not like to "rewrite" history to serve an agenda and I do feel that this curriculum might do that to some degree.

Another reason I don't necessarily like this curriculum is the amount of writing that is needed.   Between copy work, word studies, and answering questions, I felt we were spending WAY too much time writing things that weren't really necessarily history related.  Garrett absolutely hated the writing portions and I'll be honest and say I don't think the kids got much as far as educational value from these assignments.  For example, while the reading mentioned where Plymouth, Cape Code, Roanoke and Jameston were located, these facts aren't asked for the kids to remember or recall, but instead questions focus on a more spiritual nature and answering questions in regards to how Biblical principles were showing by a figure in the reading. I don't necessarily mind a Christian worldview of history, but I want the main focus to be the actual history.

However, I did really like the video recommendations that were given for a few of the lessons, usually for the 4th day.   I think the kids got much more of their learning each week from these.  One video that was included with the lesson on Jamestown showed them excavating an old well and the kids really liked seeing what was brought up out of it. Another video was a virtual field trip to the  Plimoth Plantation that had actors portraying people who lived in that time period, both settlers and Native Americans.   Both of these videos were well received by the kids.

One thing we did have an issue with was that the reading plan for Chain of Liberty did not meet up with what the lesson plan suggested for the day.  For example, for one lesson we were suppose to read a portion of the chapter entitled "The First Colonies" . We were told to read pages 78-82a.   However, that particular chapter started on page 83 and we had no idea where to stop and just had to guess to the best of our knowledge.

With that said,  I do think this particular course ranks better as maybe a character building curriculum that could be used in conjunction with a more solid U.S. history course.   Much of the reading is about relying on God and how when one ground of people (the settles of Jamestown) had the wrong intentions (finding Gold instead of spreading God's Word), they failed yet when the Puritans came to spread the word, they found favor with God and were provided for.   These types of lessons are great for character building and Bible study, and while I do appreciate the Christian based theme of the lessons, I personally want more when learning history.    That's why I feel that this might work better in conjunction with another curriculum where the lessons could be used along side to provide a more spiritual look at what was going on.

One final thing that I really do appreciate about this company is that they offer a 20% discount to all Active Duty Military families.

Overall, I don't think this is a curriculum that I will continue as a sole US history course but will use as a supplement with my other US curriculum. I think together, they would create a really well rounded curriculum.

To find out more about Pathway to Liberty and their different history curriculum, be sure to visit their website.  You can also find them on the following social media sites:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PathwaytoLiberty/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Pathway2Liberty

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/pathwaytoliberty/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClVQD1kM1KnthMBWFTQ_AbQ/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pathwaytoliberty/

While my personal opinion of this curriculum might not be 100% positive, there are other members of the Crew who have used the Pathway to Liberty curriculum so be sure to click the banner below and read their reviews.