History studies that Mom can't handle

The Winged Watchman and The Chestry Oak are favorites at my house.

This is slightly off the topic — One of the things I am enjoying SO MUCH with the Module 6 history studies is how the spines (Stories of the Nations v.2 and Stories of America v.2) deal with these hard topics.  I LOVE how the spines spend most of the time talking about the hardships — that’s what most people dealt with.  And a bit of talking about the truly nasty stuff.  The spines are G-rated enough for my 4yo.  And written in such a way that as an adult, I am reminded of the truly nasty things people do to other people.  The book recommendations in Mod. 6 are also perfect, doing the same thing.  I just can’t say enough about how the spines bring out how bad some of this stuff is, and yet it’s gently done.

When my girls are older, they will naturally bring more mature minds to the same curriculum and (I hope) because of the gentleness, yet truthfulness, in which the history is presented they will have a sense of the horror of war, but not the scariness.  That probably doesn’t make sense. It’s hard to put it all into words.

I do plan to shield my girls from certain movies – until they are mature enough to deal with the topics.

I personally, think “Nazi” whenever I go to the dr.’s office.  All those people behind all those computers keeping all those records.  And the nurse taking the chart from my bed after she saw me reading it (my own chart! for pity’s sake – it was my own body that chart was talking about!!!).  And then I read the newspaper.  And I think that history is probably going to repeat itself – mostly because a whole lot of people were never taught how wars got started and how the “little, normal” people are affected.  If every bureaucat had read these books, and been impacted by them, they would understand the effect their actions have on everyone. 

Rant over. 

Oh, another resource — the Your Story Hour CD’s.  We listened to their story of Irena Sendler and it was very well done.