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Hello, ladies. I'm just starting CTC with my 11yo son. We're thrilled to be starting our new guide! But I have a question already. Carrie recommends in the introduction having one or more comprehensive history encyclopedias in print form, on CD, or on the internet for use in Reading About History Day 1 research. Any specific recommendations? What have you used and liked?

I'm sure I'll be back with more questions over the next few days. Thanks in advance for your help!

Kelley

Actually, we do not have any printed encyclopedias. I am not against them but I can't afford to have a set and I can't take out a whole years worth from the library. For my dd when she does her research, we just use the internet. I know HOD has recommended using a site like Wikipedia to help start the kids off in learning how to search for useful information within a website. For us though, my oldest has had a hard time with skimming through all the data. She just googles the individual questions listed in the research area and she finds the answers that way. I don't think this is the proper way but with her age and difficulty with skimming, it works for us.

We also just use the internet. We use wikipedia for most of them and just google for the ones that we can't find on wikipedia.

We own a Bible Encyclopedia so we used that for some questions, Wikipedia for others and also our library has subscriptions to a few online Encyclopedia sites and if you log in with your library card number you can access them for free so we have done that also. My ds also can struggle with wading thru all the information on something like Wikipedia, but after talking to Carrie I realized that was one of the skills the research is trying to teach was to look for subtitle headings that apply to the question and then look through the subsection to find key words etc. I just guided him as he learned to do this.

reference.com is a good free encyclopedia.

We have a couple of history encyclopedias on the shelf here, but they hardly ever had what my son was looking for when he did CTC last year. He did use Wikipedia a lot, but this particular son has no problem skimming quickly for info. Some of my other kids do struggle with this and need more help. Like Lynn, we found that a Bible encyclopedia was very helpful for some of the questions.

I was just having the conversation with another HOD mom the other day on how to make research a little easier. When having to use Wikipedia, a great little tip that helps is to use the Control + F key. It will pull up a search bar on the bottom of your screen. It will help you locate the info you're looking for within Wikipedia and will save a lot of time. It really helps my son find the answers to the questions. He is in RtR now, and research is much easier for him. I'm thankful for this little portion of each guide as I see now how helpful it will be for the future to know how to research when writing papers.

A great book to have on hand for CtC is The Victor Journey through the Bible. We were able to find some topics in there to answer the research questions.

waterandclay wrote:I was just having the conversation with another HOD mom the other day on how to make research a little easier. When having to use Wikipedia, a great little tip that helps is to use the Control + F key. It will pull up a search bar on the bottom of your screen. It will help you locate the info you're looking for within Wikipedia and will save a lot of time. It really helps my son find the answers to the questions. He is in RtR now, and research is much easier for him. I'm thankful for this little portion of each guide as I see now how helpful it will be for the future to know how to research when writing papers.

A great book to have on hand for CtC is The Victor Journey through the Bible. We were able to find some topics in there to answer the research questions.

You know, I do this all the time myself (the Control +F feature) but it never occurred to me to teach my kids to do this with their research... sometimes I am so silly. Thanks for mentioning this, it's a great idea.

Thanks so much, ladies, for your helpful responses. We used Wikipedia for Preparing last year as instructed in the guide. I feel much more confident now knowing we can continue to use that and maybe just add a Bible encyclopedia. Thanks again for your help.

Kelley