heartofdakota.com

I am thinking down the road a year from now. We are Loving HOD. I really like what I am seeing in the materials we use, and my children seem much more relaxed and peaceful during school time.

So the book Child's History of the World, by Hiller, came through our home with another company at one point. They did not assign the first four chapters, but I did read them. I also read the 5th chapter. He is a very imaginative writer, but the five chapters I read were not a good fit for our family. We have every intention of one day discussing both sides of controversial issues, but right now we are trying to lay a strong Biblical foundation with them. We both have science degrees, so we do have reasons of why we have not wanted certain topics introduced in the way they are introduced at the beginning of CHOW. For now we are focusing on creation and the Biblical account in Genesis for our children.

So now I have not read the rest of the book. The reason I returned it to the company was the fact that my oldest can easily read when I am busy, so things are not always discussed. Thus, I am discerning about what books I have around for what I consider the laying the foundation years before the many 'why questions' surface around age 10 - 11 - or 12.

So I would love to hear how this book has worked for people. Why you like it for Preparing? What you perhaps don't like? Has anyone ever replaced it?

This is down the road. My ds8 is currently at the beginning of Bigger, and won't be using Preparing until next January - or later.

FYI: This is the ONLY book I saw in HOD that I wasn't interested in using. I was a very happy mom the night I found HOD to only find one book that didn't interest me. It has been in the back of my head though as a possible concern for Preparing. I welcome input.

Blessings,

The first chapters of CHOW are not used in preparing. I have read the book although we are not in Preparing yet, and it really gets better after those chapters. I believe there may be another chapter or so that is not used. Here is a thread in which this is discussed and Carrie gives input and it has several other links to other threads discussing this that I think you will find helpful.
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8151&p=59271&hilit=CHOW#p59271
Edited to add that in our home all schoolbooks are put away and used for school only, so that would take care of the problem of the child reading other parts. This has worked well for us as it keeps the books special just for school.

As the pp said you don't read the first 3 chapters of CHOW. Instead they are reading Life in the Great Ice Age, The Great Dinosaur Mystery and The True Story of Noah's Ark. These plus Grandpa's Box lay a very solid foundation for Creation from the biblical perspective. These are all fantastic books that really gave my ds who was 10 when we did Preparing a great understanding of Creation and the Flood. In fact it is a foundation that then was built upon with the books in CTC. Last night we started watching a documentary on birds and the first episode was full of evolution and millions of years statements and my ds caught every one of them and was able to dispute them all with information he learned in HOD books. He then made the choice to turn that episode off because of all the fallacies. I was pretty impressed. That is exactly where I want him to be with the topic now that he is 12.
Grandpa's Box is such a perfect compliment to CHOW it really fills in more of the biblical history. CHOW covers some, but Grandpa's Box presents it in a very clear way. You will also find with all the HOD programs that if there is anything that might be of concern in a book Carrie will give you a warning ahead of time in the guide. I also agree with the pp that CHOW is meant to be read by you to the dc so I would just make it a rule that school books are for school time.