How important to correlate history books?

[Cynful]

I'm putting together my own history curriculum with several different books: MOH, Augustus Caesar's World, Story of the Greeks, Story of the Romans, and other books. I can go through all and figure out what pages correlate with each other book but is it worth the time? Or is it fine to just spread out the reading as I'd like, keeping it within the same time period but not trying to make sure that each book is covering the exact same or similar subjects?

 

Thanks,

[mumto2]

I have used SL some of the time but I always tweak. I have also done a couple of years of British and European history on my own. I don't work overly hard to completely coordinate. If I add something in" too late" it is reveiw. Too early a preview. I no longer stress. It is impossible to cooridinate perfectly. I used to stall horribly because of my fear of not having things aligned perfectly. My son thrives on review and overlap. It does not hurt my daughter either!

[masaki]

I don't think it has to be perfect. At times you'll find small discrepancies among resources could maybe be confusing for your student if they are reading things...not out of context exactly, but pieced off from the rest of the story. I think your idea of spreading out the readings within the time periods they cover makes a lot of sense.

[Cynful]

Well, one of the things I was wondering about was lining up MOH with SoTW. I know they line up differently and I'm not sure if I should worry about correlating them or not. I hate jumping around in any book but since these are so different, I'm not sure what to do. Any opinions?

[yvonne]

I used to try to sync everything. Now I've concluded that not only is doing that a big time sink, but there are actually huge benefits to not syncing.

 

It's like a spiral approach. The more times you come around and hit a topic or concept, the more it seems to stick. The first time, you might just get familiar with it. The next time it comes up, more info sticks. The next time it comes up, you might make some connection to something else you've read in the meantime, further along.

 

It's also just plain more fun when you come across something you're already a little familiar with. "Oh, yeah, I know him." "I know about that. What does it say here about it?" Even if you've only heard of something before, that exposure makes it more likely for you to assimilate more info about it the second time around. Or so it seems to me. :)

[missmoe]

I also use to try to correlate everything. It just isn't worth the effort. I've also figured out that reading about the same thing at several different times in different ways ups the chances of my kids remembering what we learned.

[besroma]

I also use to try to correlate everything. It just isn't worth the effort. I've also figured out that reading about the same thing at several different times in different ways ups the chances of my kids remembering what we learned.

 

:iagree:

[VaKim]

I have done it both ways, and we find that when you sync everything, it gets boring really soon reading about the exact same thing back to back. The more books you use, the worse it gets. We ended up just dropping books when we did it that way. I like what the others have said about coming back to something a bit later. Makes it much more interesting, and I'd venture to say, it probably sticks better, too.

[Cynful]

Now I'm wondering if I should go in and purposefully scramble up the books order. :lol: But that would be too much work too. So I'll just keep it as I have it - read the next thing and not worry if it's not exact.

 

Thanks for everyone's replies. It's always nice to have other opinions when your not sure of something.