Living History Books

Kathi,

If it helps, our family has taken a middle-of-the-road approach to Story of the World as it is a useful, living book for us. It is not our main history study book, but we are utilizing volume 1 as a supplement to Sonya’s Genesis through Deuteronomy, Joshua through Malachi, and Matthew through Acts studies. Our children are still young elementary age and there are some lessons in Sonya’s books which she recommends skipping for the younger children(due to violence or sexual matters). On those days I pick chapters from Story of the World volume 1 which I think are interesting (such as “Hammurabi’s Code”) and will add to our overall understanding of the surrounding cultures of the ancient world(we skip stories of extreme violence, or gods and goddesses to avoid confusion and curiosity).

Most of all, we want our children to be grounded in the Bible first and then add points of interest as to what else was going on in the world. Sonya’s books are perfect for this biblical foundation-laying of history. I was taught the bible completely separately from World History and it took many years for the two to come together later on, I don’t want to do that to our children! Rather, I want them to see the peculiarity of God’s people as compared with the world around them. This, of course, has implications for how we are to live as God’s peculiar people now.

I appreciate how Susan Bauer titled the books ‘The Story of the World’ because all the horrible wars and conflicts which make up the major framework of human history do indeed belong to the WORLD (I can’t say if this was her purpose in choosing the title, just my perspective). God’s kingdom is at work within this framework and we ought to teach our children the lessons of human history, but always within the context of God’s plan for humanity. Uh-oh, I’m starting to sound preachy! Anyway, that’s just the way we’ve decided to do things, a little tweak here and there to fit what we’ve decided is important for our children to learn.

Rachel 😀