History Modules

Christine, for good sized books, a more CM way, what she recommended, was to read the books slowly over time. She had good reasons for this, and I once “tested” this and discovered that there are, indeed, reasons to read slowly. So many of our bigger books, I do indeed schedule slowly, which sometimes mean we read several at a time. However, for very short books, I find that the “benefit factor” of reading slowly is reduced. So those, I often just schedule sequentially.

One thing I might do, when looking at a module’s booklist, is to choose a “spine” type book, or a larger biography, and schedule those slowly, and then just slot in a general “history reading” slot where we read smaller books without deliberately spreading them over the year.

Does this help? Do you need some specific examples?

OK. I’ll use Module 4 which I am preparing for next year for some of my children.

We will have two “spines” going: The Story of the Middle Ages by Guerber/Miller, and the shorter Streams of Civilization book on the Middle Ages. I’ll spread those two books out for part of the year. I also have a list of biographies that we’ll be reading fairly slowly: this will include The World of Columbus and Sons (we always read Foster books sloooowwwwllllyyy!) We will also do some literature slowly–the Howard Pyle Robin Hood and King Arthur books are good for this. However, we’ll also just be slotting in a time to read shorter books, and we’ll just pick the books up and read them without any worry about spreading them out. Just as an example, books on this list of mine include Cathedral, Castle, Sword in the Tree, Castle Diary, and The Minstrel in the Tower.