heartofdakota.com

Hello!
We are looking at coming back to HOD after many years away. Over the last few years I have done a lot of research and learning about many things. One thing God has opened my eyes to is the fact that many things we were taught in mainstream education were lies, or at best, half truths. I have been struggling for a while now with how to move forward teaching history, and certain science topics, to my kids. There is no easy way to go about this. Being completely honest here, there is not one Christian homeschool publisher we feel that we can trust 100% anymore as many of them teach much the same way as what we were taught growing up in public schools. They just throw Bible verses in with the lessons. We don't care for most textbooks anyway and we love a more Charlotte Mason inspired curriculum that uses mostly living books. Enter, again for us, HOD. What I am wondering is how did Mrs. Austin go about choosing the books she did for history and how can one determine "accuracy"? I am concerned mostly with mainly the middle and high school years. I realize that there is probably not one book out there that I will agree with 100%, with the exception of the Bible, and we will need to share alternate viewpoints with our kids as the need arises. That being said, I am exhausted in trying to find what will work for us and with trying to piece together our own course of study. I have wasted much time, years, searching when I should have actually been DOING more with my kids.

At least for the high school guides, there are Sneak Peek posts where Carrie has discussed her choices for each subject. I don't know how low those go (I don't know if she did this for the middle school guides), but they offer lots of insights into her choices.

You can also do searches about some of the main books (like A Child's History of the World) to see insights into the reasons Carrie has for choosing them and how she treats them within the guides.

Blessings,

I feel that way about not doing enough with the kids and too much searching/ planning. I guess for me I find it easier to liberalize something that veers too far to the right than to make something far left more conservative. I don’t think there is such a thing as accurate history (every history book has bias). I believe it was Plutarch who emphasized the story was more important than the facts. I tell my kids we don’t know what really happened. I know I fall short daily so I can’t really judge. I just want to spend time with them and prepare them for life. I do like that my kids won’t be exposed to certain topics through heart of Dakota unless I choose to (Nothing will sneak up on us/ catch us by surprise). Since it’s books there’s lots of viewpoints, and if it’s lacking the library is overflowing with more.