Name: Great Homeschool Conventions (Columbus)
Start: 2025-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-04-26T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Columbus, OH

Tagged: TQH Truth Quest History

This topic has 26 replies, 11 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 10 months ago by HiddenJewel.

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May 10, 2012 at 1:26 am
tonyam196
Participant
I am trying to decide which way to go. I have used the Module 2 guide this year and we enjoyed it. After doing some research, for a friend actually, I came across Truthquest. I know that they have been mentioned here and some of you wonderful ladies use them. What are the pros and cons of both in your opinion? One day away from the bookfair and now I am researching again! Ha!
May 10, 2012 at 1:54 am
momto2blessings
Participant
I’ve use TQ for 2 years….SCM guides weren’t completed yet for the time periods we needed them. Love TQ, but am also planning on buying the SCM Mod. One guide next year. Both may sound crazy:) But I’m drawn to SCM to have it laid out for me. The TQ commentary is wonderful and I want to keep it. The TQ booklist can be overwhelming, so I narrow by using mostly SCM books. The SCM guide does not look too hefty for Module One, so my plan is to use it as my guide, add in a few more TQ books, and jot notes in my SCM guide as to when to read what pages in my TQ guide. Clear as mud? 🙂 Hopefully trying to get the best of both worlds won’t be too confusing! Blessings, Gina
P.S. I haven’t used the SCM guides yet, so can’t adequately give a pro/con list! The main neg. of TQ vs. SCM that I see is that you have to plan it all yourself. I tried winging it one year and it didn’t go very well…crammed at the end, the guides are so full. But this year I made out a day-by-day plan w/TQ and it went great. I love the biblical commentary. I’d just like SCM to do the planning for me next year…for $11 I figure it’s worth a shot:) And I’ll just add a bit to it.
May 10, 2012 at 2:56 am
yoliemiller
Participant
I agree with Gina. The SCM guide is so nice for the day-by-day plan. The Truthquest books are nice for the commentary. I really want to have both. If I couldn’t have both, I would pick SCM at this point because I really need the day by day plan to keep my thoughts together and things moving along.
May 10, 2012 at 9:44 am
jeaninpa
Participant
I also think that combining the two is a nice option. The SCM guide alone didn’t give me enough options for further books to read. I have some voracious readers! I like to have literature selections that go along with our history studies, but don’t have time to pre-read everything, so I appreciate the TQ guide. Also the commentary in TQ helps me to see the ‘thread’ of history.

May 10, 2012 at 11:12 am
RobinP
Participant
I’ve used TQ since they were hot off the press (literally) many years ago. I will never use anything else because TQ gives my children (and me) what I was looking for in studying history – a worldview focus. Every person, culture, time period is studied looking at what Michelle calls “the Big 2 Beliefs.” Who is God? Who, then, is mankind? The way those questions are answered have serious consequences for good or bad. That is the foundation for all study in TQ and it’s exactly what I want my children to leave with. My oldest is almost 22 and in college. He enjoyed history well enough while we were studying it but is a math/science guy and (didn’t think) he had paid that much attention. He came in from classes one day last year and told me some things he had been confronted with and said if it had not been for the way he learned history and his ability to see things based on the core beliefs, he would not have been able to stand against them and be a witness to boot. It’s happened several times since then as well. THAT’s what I’m after and I credit God and TQ for it. We’re living in hard times and being able to discern the forces behind it all will be critical for our children.
Sorry…I’ll step down now. I haven’t used or even seen the SCM modules and I’m sure they’re fabulous. Love everything else they do. This is just one area I won’t give up. Plus since I have the lending library, most of the books in the TQ guides are at my fingertips so that’s not a challenge as it is with some.
May 10, 2012 at 11:38 am
momto2blessings
Participant
Robin, that’s so neat to hear! That’s what I really love about TQ. Just this week we’ve been talking about evolution, socialism, Hitler, etc. and how turning from God and the value of human life and from believing God created us shaped the worldviews of leaders….even disguised under the guise of a better ‘democracy’ because people don’t like the word socialism. And this was in the elementary guides. I can’t wait to read Francis Schaeffer’s works, etc. and delve into this more in high school! This is great education for me as well as my kids:)
TQ can be used stand alone, but I appreciate the work put into the SCM guides to narrow my choices to have a good feel for the amount of books to schedule for a year. And I like the flexibility to be able to add my own book choices (usually from AO/TQ) and don’t think it will be too difficult to add to the SCM list or occasionally make a substitution, if needed. HTH some:) Gina
May 10, 2012 at 12:19 pm
Fiveflymom
Participant
Robin, could you share how you use the TQ guides? Every time I pick one up, I get overwhelmed! So many choices! Do you do a lesson a day or come up with a schedule at the beginning of the year? I will be using SCM Module 6 guide in the fall, but am looking at TQ ancients for the next year, since my oldest will be in high school and I want to do a four year rotation. Thanks!
May 10, 2012 at 1:02 pm
jeaninpa
Participant
I’m not Robin, but I can tell you how I’ve done it. I try to decide how much I’d like to cover in a year. For instance, next school year we’ll cover the Middle Ages first semester and then Renaissance and Reformation in the second semester. I think that each of those guides are divided into about 50 sections. I page through the guide and decide how many sections I need to cover in a week to get it done in the allotted time. Now, some sections are much deeper than others, so I plan to adjust as we go along. Then I pencil in the readings from the spine that I want to use (usually the spine listed in the TQ guide) and check to see what other resources I own and what looks good to me that I want to include. My goal is to have a history reading that we do all together that will work for my younger readers, a history reading for my independent readers, a literature book for all the different levels of readers and then a family read-aloud. We usually do the together reading time as one of the first things in our day going over the TQ commentary as it fits, then I assign the independent reading for the different levels and have them come and narrate to me from time to time.
If you join the HIStory questors yahoo group, there are some files of schedules that others have done. Those can really help as a starting point and can be adjusted to use with your own resources.
May 10, 2012 at 1:10 pm
Evergreen
Member
I joined that group hoping to find a schedule to do just what Jean is doing, with MA and R&R, but so far haven’t found one. If you develop something and feel led to share details, please let us know! I’m so glad to see this discussion, as this is what we’re planning to do next year – thanks for the unintentional encouragement!
Blessings,
Aimee
May 10, 2012 at 1:19 pm
tonyam196
Participant
Thank you ladies for all your responses. I am leaning towards using them together. I agree with a couple of you I like the day to day to be all worked out for me. That is why I would continue using the SCM modules. Why repeat the hard work if I don’t need to right? I did read a few reviews that said the content was not great as far as language used. I read that she uses slang words in her writing. In this review it also said that the punctuation was an issue. I don’t know that is is a big deal since I would be the one reading it. This still makes me a little nervous. Any thoughts on that? I am hoping to be able to find one that I can hold in my hands and thumb through before buying. Again thank you for your responses it is helping me in this final hour of researching!
May 10, 2012 at 1:26 pm
TailorMade
Participant
Content in SCM, or TQH? Have you looked at the samples of each.
I’m assuming “slang” would be in TQH after looking at samples. But, it looks to me as if it’s written in such a way as to keep the interest of today’s readers/listeners.
Becca<><
May 10, 2012 at 1:42 pm
tonyam196
Participant
Sorry the content in TQ. I have been using SCM and we have enjoyed it.
May 10, 2012 at 2:00 pm
jeaninpa
Participant
Aimee,
Did you check the ‘files’ section of that yahoo group? That is where I found schedules for both MA and RR. They were very nice as I could use them in Open Office and change them to my specifications.

As far as “slang”… she uses a somewhat chatty tone and is VERY enthusiastic, ie passionate. She also uses words like Kerblooey!, and I don’t usually do the commentary verbatim, but read it ahead of time and put it into my own words. I really appreciate her insights though even if the tone may be somewhat less formal than others prefer.
May 10, 2012 at 2:05 pm
momto2blessings
Participant
Yes, I’ve heard that critique of TQ, too. The style of writing is very personal and could come off as maybe a little too much w/ the exclamation points and some slang. But the overall content is SO good, that I’m fine w/that. I’m on the TQ yahoo group and Michelle Miller (author) is on there all the time and is a very personal, warm, Godly woman and I think that personal touch in the guides is just part of her personality. The guides are very rich and deep. I’m very thankful to have these to guide our biblical worldview of history. AO also rec. them as a supplement. And I believe it was Karen Glass who said that if CM used history guides these would be it:) Gina
P.S. As I’m typing my nearly 10yo commented out of the blue that Obama wants to let a man marry a man and how it’s still going on since the World War (yesterday we’d talked about liberal views in Europe at the time of WWII creeped into America because of Immigrants coming here….and bad beliefs make for bad trouble).
May 10, 2012 at 2:29 pm
RobinP
Participant
As for how I plan, I’m afraid I’m not much help there. I don’t. (My dh calls me the visionary and that I have a hard time seeing the trees for the forest.) Right now we’re going throuhgh AHYS and are about half way through the 2nd vol. I know I want to begin the older guides when my nearly 9yo is 5th grade so I adjust from there. When we get to a topic I go down to the library and choose which book(s) we’ll use. Some things we leave out entirely. If there is a don’t miss book that is longer, I allow extra time to get through it. Sometimes we’ll use a nice picture book to get a feel for something and move on. I read the commentary (ish…I usually paraphrase and often add my own 2 cents ) and we read the book, narrate and that’s about it. As this group of my boys gets older, we’ll spend more time really digging into what drove each person/culture to do what they did.
I wouldn’t be able to handle a day by day guide…at all. I would end up ignoring it anyway and doing my own thing. But that’s me.