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I know that with Sonlight there can arise some questionable language or material that may not be age appropriate that I may need to screen out. Is the same true with HOD? I was told with Sonlight, that I would have to pre-read many of the books ahead of time for that reason. That is something that although I wish I had time to do, I do not. I may read through some of them here and there, but do not have the free time to go through them all in that way. Really trying to make a decision here on what programs to use for my dc, I have a lot of ideas floating around in my mind, Sonlight, MFW, Mystery of History, HOD, or pulling something together on my own, but for some reason, I keep coming back to HOD's site.
Thanks!

Hi Playschool! This is a good question, and one that we should all be considering as we try to homeschool our dc in a Christian manner. HOD makes every effort to choose Christ-centered, quality, living books to use as resources. Carrie also tries to choose materials that have an appropriate level of maturity within the target age ranges of a guide. The reason HOD's philosophy is to beef up a core by adding extensions so olders can learn along with youngers is for the exact reason you've raised this question. Teaching the core to the younger dc and extending for the olders allows the core to be safe for all listening ears, which is why HOD has chosen this route. In contrast, teaching a core program to the older and assuming the younger can just listen can often cause the need for screening out things little ears should not hear.

So, once HOD has carefully considered all of the above standards, and the titles have been narrowed down to final choices, Carrie tries to take care to omit anything that may need to be screened. She also notes in the plans if a certain paragraph may be more graphic, and suggests you may want to omit it for sensitive listeners (i.e. topics such as martyrs). We do not have a sensitive child, and have not needed to omit anything "graphic" for our ds from LHTH to CTC as of yet, but if I did have a sensitive child, I'd simply follow the suggestions in the HOD guide and omit those portions.

We are very careful about what our dc read and about what we read to our dc. We want history to be portrayed accurately, but always with God's hand in it, and always with an appropriate bent for the maturity level of our dc. We've been thrilled with HOD's choices, especially last year, as we did CTC for the ancients time period. I was very thankful that HOD waited to schedule the ancients until those ages, and also very glad that while history was accurately portrayed, "gods" and "goddesses" were seen in their proper light - as a sign of the depravity of man, as a confirmation that we were created to worship - and not just to worship anything or anyone - but to worship our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ/ the one and only living God.

In Christ,
Julie