Teaching History with Living Books

Ditching the History Curriculum

When I first started homeschooling, I was captivated by the idea that I could actually study history all the way through, from beginning to end. As a product of the public school system myself, I had very little knowledge of history and the knowledge I did have was quite scattered. Some of the names rang a bell, but what they did or when they lived? No idea.

For this reason, my first big homeschool purchase was Volume 1 of the Mystery of History series. This curriculum is very thorough and beautifully written from a biblical perspective. I was so eager to get started!

As we began to move through the lessons I couldn’t believe how much I was learning, how much there was to know that I’d been clueless about for all these years. However I also had this frantic feeling, like I just couldn’t capture it all in my brain. I wanted to keep this information forever, but somehow it seemed to slip right out of my grasp. I wished that I had time to reread every lesson.

Meanwhile, as each week passed my small children were becoming more and more difficult to corral. They started to fuss and whine and ask “Are we done yeeeeeeet?” just moments after starting a new lesson. This slowed us down considerably and I realized that making it through to the end of this book by the end of the year was going to be a huge challenge. But I wanted to know history! So I persevered, dragging my children along behind me.

As much as I had loved MOH, I knew by the end of that year that I just couldn’t do it again. If I did, my children would end up hating history and though I LOVED getting to take in so much information myself, it wasn’t really sticking. I’d have been hard-pressed to tell you at any given point what we had studied just two weeks prior, let alone give a proper narration of ancient history. So I let it go.

For our second year, I purchased The Story of the World, a much shorter and more engaging history spine. It was indeed both of those things and overall we enjoyed it much more than MOH. However, I felt that the brief selections went by so quickly that they also were easily forgotten. One topic, then another, then another, by the time a month had passed I couldn’t have even made a list of what we covered, let alone give much detail.

At this point I was well aware of Charlotte Mason and the concept of living books. I began adding in living books here and there to give more depth to our SOTW study. For instance, as we read about Martin Luther in SOTW we also read a living book or two about Martin Luther. This was the best of both worlds I thought, but I soon realized we had a problem. Many of the best living books were quite long and took many days to finish. There was no way I could fit them in and still stay on track with SOTW.

After several months of this, it was becoming quite obvious that the knowledge we had gained from our living books was knowledge we would keep forever, while the many chapters of SOTW that I had tried to cram in were, for the most part, lost to us.

I decided then, that I would rather:

have children who LOVE history and desire to learn as much as they can, just for the joy of it
cover fewer people and events, but have a greater understanding and memory of what we do cover
enjoy these precious years with my children instead of fighting them over “How much longer?” and “Do we have to do history today?”

So I made the leap. From that moment on, it has been living books or bust!

Best homeschooling decision we’ve ever made. No regrets. At all.

What are Living Books?

The Charlotte Mason Institute defines a living book as one which has:

Literary Power – excellent use of language that creates pictures in the mind’s eye
Ideas – that capture the imagination
Virtue – inspires a love of truth, beauty, and goodness
Inspiration – the author’s own passion for the subject fosters a desire for ever-increasing knowledge in the student
Narrative Language – vivid language, often (but not always) in story form that draws the reader in
Generational Appeal – As our good friend C.S. Lewis has said, “A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story.”

In short, these are life-giving books.

These are books that make us want to read “just one more chapter… please!”

The ideas and stories from these books stay in our minds long after we’ve finished reading and are often played out with legos, or in backyard forts.

Living books make an impact.

These books change how we think about ourselves and others.

These are books that change who we are and who we want to become.

A living books education is not about filling a child’s mind with facts and information that will soon be forgotten.

It’s about providing children with a feast of ideas that they will think over, discuss, act out in play, and carry with them all their days.

Using Living Books to Teach History

Less Stress

Since making the switch to living books for our history study, the amount of squabbling, whining, sulking, and other boredom-behaviors have been remarkably reduced in our school day. Of course we still fuss over who sits next to mom on the couch.. but once that’s settled, we are all quite excited to find out “what happens next” in our readings and equally disappointed when we must close the book and move on with our day.

More Learning

Bare facts have a way of slipping through the mind when you’re not looking.

But story? Not so with story!

Since making the switch to living books, I find that thinking of people and places we’ve studied is like remembering an old friend or a family vacation. They are pleasant, familiar memories.

Creating a Living Book List

I enjoy choosing my own books for each new term and prefer to pick and choose, mix and match from each of the following sources. If this seems stressful to you, by all means, use the complete book lists and schedules provided by these (or many other) Charlotte Mason curriculums.

Ambleside Online – You will never be led astray by AO. The only trouble here is that the website is a bit of a maze and quite a few of the recommended books are out of print. Do not be dismayed. Most of them can still be found without too much difficulty.
Simply Charlotte Mason – SCM has great book lists for many subjects. I find that they are a bit short, but usually contain some great options.
Truth Quest History – If SCM has too limited a selection, TQH has the opposite problem. The books on these lists are chosen from a biblical perspective and include (as far as I know) every possible living book known to mankind. The trouble is trying to figure out which books you actually have time to read.
Read for the Heart by Sarah Clarkson – This book is a treasure. I reference it often for all subjects.

Also:

Simple Google Searches such as, “Living Books About the Chicago Fire” (though this generally produces less than one might hope).
Asking for specific recommendations on Charlotte Mason Facebook group pages, like Charlotte Mason Homeschoolers and Mere Motherhood. These are such valuable resources!

And last, but certainly not least:

Scavenging on Amazon! No, really. Amazon is a fantastic tool for building a book list. Start by looking up the title of a living book that you already know of on a specific topic. Then, scroll down to the “customers who bought this item also bought…” feature and see if anything there catches your eye. I have found many, many of my favorite living books this way.

Amazon is very clever… somehow they know which books I’ll like even before I do! We’ll not take time just now to consider the larger implications of this! 😳

Reading the reviews on unfamiliar books is helpful, but not foolproof. Unless I know for sure that a book is worth owning, I usually take my book list to the library. That way, there’s no harm done if I end up with a dud.

Discerning Living Books

Over time you will learn how to find the treasures in a sea of textbooks and twaddle. You’ll learn to recognize authors, series, publishers, even styles and illustrators. You’ll be able to spot a living book at the top of a stack at the library sale, or open a book, read just a few sentences, and know right away whether the book in hand is worth your time.

The best way to build this kind of discernment is to read living books every day!

How does one best learn to spot a counterfeit? By studying the real thing, right? So read, read, read! – And by the way, your kids will be learning to discern great books in exactly the same way.

One warning – once you realize just how precious and obscure many of these books really are, you may develop a strong desire to purchase every sing one you happen to find. I cannot be held responsible for this, as I have my own book-buying compulsion to regulate. Remember, if you can, that there is such a thing as a library and though it’s not quite as pleasant as seeing these precious books spilling off your own bookshelves, it is indeed a fine way to provide an education for your children.

The Library Haul

We are blessed to have access to a phenomenal public library system. Not only does our library carry a huge selection of books, they also have a special “custom collection” feature for teachers (and homeschool moms too!) All I have to do is go online to my library’s website and enter a list of specific titles that I would like to have pulled off the shelves and set aside for me to pick up later.

For each term, I gather a book list, copy/paste it into the custom collection feature and then wait about a week before sending my dear husband into town to pick up the 50 pound bucket (or two) of books. 😂

Even with an excellent public library to pull from, I still only receive 40-60% of the titles I’ve requested. The idea here is to cast a wide net! I order all the books that I think we might possibly like to read. Once I’ve got them in hand, I sort through them, filtering any that don’t look like a good fit for our family and trying to discern how many we will actually have time to read. If there are any books missing that I feel I simply must have (this usually has more to do with my delight in a certain book, rather than its absolute necessity) then I will check online to see if I can find it used for a good price (or a high price if I’m particularly obsessed, though this is rare).

At this point, I sort the books into stacks:

Picture Book Stack These are the picture books that I want to make sure we enjoy all together.
Read Aloud Stack – These are the longer chapter books that I read aloud (usually at lunch time).
Independent Reading Stack – I make two of these stacks actually: one stack that both girls must read and a second that my oldest will read in addition to the first stack. The girls have at least 20 minutes of independent history reading each school day. My boys are not yet reading independently.
Audio Stack – If we are able to get any of the books on audio, this is a huge win! We keep them in the car and listen on our drives to and from town.

Obviously, my organizational skills are quite… visual. 😂 Out of sight is indeed far out of mind for me! It is possible that you have the super-power to be able to put books away on shelves and still remember to read them. I do not.

From here on out, we simply read from each stack every day until the end of the term. By “every day” you understand that I don’t mean EVERY day… because, life. But this is the goal.

Sometimes we get to the end of a term and have books left over. If they are important to me, we will take the time to finish them before beginning our next term. If I feel we’ve had enough, we’ll move on.

Narration

We have a few opportunities for history narrations each day:

The kids take turns narrating after each read aloud time. We also take time to discuss what’s been read.
Dinner time is a great chance to get in a second narration and discussion on the day’s history readings because they all want a chance to tell Daddy every detail of “what happened to Sacagawea today”.
My girls are reading independently, and so, are responsible for narrating those readings as well. My oldest has started written narration for this (2-3 sentences for each day’s reading). My second daughter will not begin written narrations until next fall. For now, she comes to tell me her oral narration for each independent history reading.

I hope to write more about narration in the future, but in the meantime, this book will tell you everything you need to know.

History Notebooks

I love these small, spiral-bound notebooks for keeping history timelines. For each new topic, person, or event we cover, each child draws a picture, writes the title and date, and any other information they can remember. Obviously, the older the child, the more detailed the entry will be.

This is not something that we do daily. We may read about Abraham Lincoln for two weeks, for instance, but only make one or two entries during that time.

Strewing

I often receive more books on a particular topic than I suspect we will have enough time to read together. Instead of sending the extra books right back to the library, I stick them in the library bucket that sits in the corner of our living room. This is called “strewing” and it works marvelously! My kids almost always end up reading these leftover books just out of curiosity during their free time – without me having to overload their independent reading stacks! Sneaky, I know.