A Living History of Our World

Thank you, Heather for linking up to the AO page; it said what I wanted to much better than I would have myself.

My3boys, I am so sorry you’re frustrated by all this; I most certainly did not mean to cause confusion and aggravation! I hope the AO post clarified your question about how to tell if a book is living or not; sometimes it just takes some time though, if you’re retraining yourself in this area.

These are my thoughts:

just because a book is conversational doesn’t make it a living book and even if the author is passionate about their subject doesn’t qualify it either, IMO. It’s a matter of quality; the illustrations included in my perspective. My opinion is, from the sample I read at Queen’s, that ” A Living History…” is written down to the child (I’m not doubting the love for her subject, though), and it doesn’t rise to the level of a Pratt’s and Marshall; which have stood the test of time as being valuable material and though having a similar concept as ALHoOW in being an “overview”, Pratt and Marshall are written with a much higher literary quality. As for Guerber, she was an actual historian; so no comparison there at all. To me, using Guerber (mid-Elem. to Middle), Marshall (late elem to middle and in audio), and/or Pratt (mainly for the youngest or as an audio for all) are “A Living History” already in whichever one you choose and then you apply CM principles to reading these; inlcuding drawings, coloring pages, written narrations, projects, etc., done by the child (and costs less). I don’t mean to sound redundant or argumentative on this; just don’t understand the neccessity of this as a spine when there are good ones already; but that’s my opinion.

For your question about notebooking; yes and no, it depends on how strict you are about CM’s methods and your own preferences. I think more accurately that it’s a way to document chunks of information picked up by the child. Barring the written narrations, it’s not really CM. Doesn’t mean you don’t have to do it though. If your children enjoy it then do it!However, for young children who are artsy, have learning disabilities, or are on the youngish side and new to oral narrations, then drawing what they heard is valuable, just like coloring pages. The way “professional” journals like this (those predesigned which info. will be recorded by someone else), break the info. down for the child instead of letting the mind do it through oral narration.  I would just encourage you that the power of developing the mind through oral narrations is very important and necessary to using CM long term because it’s foundational. There is a reason for them and IMO, drawing isn’t a replacement for them, just something to add to it; oral narrations are the foundation of written narrations and much of LA later.

Please don’t let your decisions discourage you; if you like the materials and they help you, then use them. Just because you’ve made this choice, doesn’t mean it’s a “mis-choice” and that your children can’t get anything from it (or you can sell and get your money back!). No really, if you’re new to CM, then this could be a good starting point. Just tweak it by adding in rich bios and historical fiction, the high literary quality of a Guerber history on audio (they’re free!) and require oral narrations, either from this book or from the bios and/or HF. If your 10 yr. old hasn’t been doing oral narrations, then written ones may be very difficult. Is this his first year? Then this may be your starting pint as you work on implementing more CM; I don’t know since I don’t know you or the details and HS’ling history well enough. I am just now transitioning my son into written narrations using short accounts of myths; he did his first on the Myth of the Narcissus. He didn’t know what to do either. I didn’t have a prompt, just the story; but he does have 3 years of oral narration behind him. So I told him to read one paragraph at a time (to help him distinguish when a paragraph should begin and end) and do an oral narration on paper. We did an example using the first paragraph and I let him go from there. I told him that whatever he would tell me about the story, to write it down; that I should know what the story is about without reading the original by just reading his account of it.

Feel free to PM me if you want regrading your 10 yr. old if you’re still unsure. Perhaps I can help; but please seek the L-rd as He has given you wisdom to teach this child and we can be swayed too much by others by second-guessing, if not careful.

It’s okay if ya’ll don’t like the Foster books; you’re not going to always like others’ suggestions. With using a timeline they will get a grasp of the parallel nature of history (at least that’s what I call it).

This may have been more than you asked for and I don’t really know if I clarified or made things worse.I certainly hope you all will rest in the confidence of your own choices that you think are best for your family’s situation.

Rachel

Well, I guess you would call this a re-telling, but what I liked about it is how the author makes it relavant to you.  She draws the child into the story.  She also is big on telling when things are part legend and part history or when things are portrayed different ways in different other sources – like Columbus taking his trip more as a missionary vs. more for gold.  Or Pocohantas being a legendized (is that a word?) story.   There were a few other book suggestions to use, but mostly you would be on your own to come up with these.  I personally didn’t think it would be too hard to do that.  Maybe someone would need another resource.  The author’s intent was to make this history story a “meandering pleasant tale about people” like CM said (the quote isn’t exact there, but you get what I mean, I hope.)

Like any resource, it’s not for everyone.  I thought it a bit more story like and engaging than other tellings – like SOTW for instance.  It’s not “just the facts.” 

HTH.

Rachel,

I just wanted to thank you for your words of advice and insight…it is such a blessing to be supported!

I have been praying and running different scenarios past my hubby and guys, and this is what we came to: 

World History Together= Diana Waring RRR as a family ( I know it’s not CM, but it gets them excited and it’s been AMAZING how everything came together after we started this! ) the Foster books will be read aloud and narrated for a good running “spine” of World and American history; our last 2 read alouds will be Johnny Tremain and Carry On Mr Bowditch so we’ll get some history in with our literature!

ds15 is reading the Albert Marrin books for American History–he loves these and he doesn’t even consider it school! ; he’ll probably read either Franklin’s Autobiography or Poor Richard as well;

ds10 is reading a list of books (Sign of the Beaver, Ben and Me (since he already read a book on Franklin earlier, this one’s just for fun), Mr Revere and I, Guns for Gen Washington, and either John Paul Jones Pirate Patriot or something on Daniel Boone) We may have to add more, he reads pretty quickly!

We are only covering up to around the year 1800 this year.  Next year is 1800-1900 with Government for my older; the year after will be 1900-now with Economics for my older.  What I’d like to do is listen to the Marshall book This Country of Ours from Librivox as a “review” this summer for all of us.

How does that sound?