so few books

Hi, Cindy –

Though Charlotte advocated taking your time and “soaking” in a time period, please know that you have freedom to do what works best for your family. Not every family will progress at the same pace, and that’s the beauty of homeschooling. You can adjust and tweak and customize.

If you want to try to combine a couple of modules, go ahead. If you want to use different books, that’s fine. If you want to use the books listed in the modules as starting points and add to that list, that’s great.

For example, it sounds like you have maybe five years left for your boys before graduation (approximately). You could probably combine the Ancient Egypt books and Ancient Greece books into one year if you wanted to. Then you would still have four years left to do the remaining four modules. Or you could combine all the ancients into one year, then do modules 4 and 5 in two years, and spend 2 years on modern age history.

Another possible source for you, if you decide you want to combine all the ancients into one year, is the Beautiful Feet Ancient History Guide. You could even get the whole package from them with all the books included.

I hope these suggestions help rather than add to the confusion. Remember that the study of history is to teach us about people’s lives and what we can learn from them. And that type of study can be beneficial no matter which time period you cover when. Keep a love for learning alive in your boys and they’ll continue to be interested in history (that never-ending subject) for the rest of their lives.

I think my problem was that when I looked at the prepared guides I didn’t factor in the Bible as one of the listed books.

Yes, for especially those first three modules, the Bible has a key place in the history readings. If you wanted to combine all the ancients into one year you would probably have to scale way back on the Bible readings.

If you could, would you please clarify how you suggest using some of the following books:

Famous Men of the Renaissance and Reformation (just one chapter a week until it’s done?)

The World of Columbus and Sons (this book is huge!)

World of Capt John Smith (same thing, yikes!)

We used the Famous Men as our read-aloud/spine and added the individual biographies as they fit in the chronology. Some of the biographies we read together (one chapter each day during breakfast), but most I assigned as independent reading. We saved out Robin Hood and Adam of the Road as family read-alouds (one chapter each day during snack time) because those are two of my favorites for that time period and I didn’t want to miss them! The two Genevieve Foster books were assigned as independent reading. Yes, they are huge, so consider them as optionals for a student who loves to read and wants more books on her/his list.

I wish that you already had the guide I need done. Any idea of a projected completion date for future volumes? Feel like jumping ahead to modules 5 & 6? or 4??

I’m trying to crank out one guide per year. Spring 2009 is the target date for the Matthew through Acts & Ancient Rome module. Maybe if I get all these other books on my to-write list finished, I can double-up on the history guides. 🙂