Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 9:03 am
Be encouraged; as you go through the TM, you will find notes by the author as to content and some sections that you may want to pre-read or skip altogether. Just make sure you're reading the author's notes and not just following the schedule in the grid, because those notes will give you the heads-up you need.
Another thing we do with this book is that *I* do all the reading aloud so that I can skip the parts I feel necessary. Sometimes there's just one line that pops up in context, especially when dealing with Antony and Cleopatra, that I personally feel is a little too "explanatory." Thus, I do the reading aloud so that I scan ahead and skip here and there.
Unfortunately, there are some tough subjects to deal with during this time period, and I don't know how to get away from it completely without losing that full understanding of what was going on in the world, how Herod came to power, etc. Keep in the back of your mind as you're going through this that God sets up kingdoms and causes them to fall. You really do see this while reading through ACW. Christ came "in the fullness of time", and the history of Rome was a big part of it. (Eventually, you'll also get a good understanding of the Apostle Paul's background, which enabled him to be "the man" that God chose to write so much of the New Testament.)
And lastly, but most importantly, I have *repeated* certain scriptures to the girls throughout this study, as a constant reminder to all of us: Deut. 12:30 and Isaiah 45:22. The author will mention more in the TM, as well.
Posted by 4Truth » Sun Feb 08, 2009 5:54 pm
We liked ACW, too.

We did get bored with parts of it at the time we were doing it, but we continued to plug away and got soooo much out of it! It really gave us a clear picture of how so many of our traditions, holidays, lifestyles, architecture, etc. came to be here in America, and it also helped us to understand Scripture teaching so much better. We have two pastors who alternate preaching/teaching, and one is going through the book of Matthew while the other is going through Acts. They're expository preachers, so between that (going slowly verse by verse) and taking turns, it's taken them a LONG time to get through those books. They started while we were still doing RTR at home, and my girls get giggly as they hear so much of the same teaching that we got from our curriculum at home, both in history and Bible. They actually know what the pastors are talking about! They know the names of the characters, the places, events... Just this morning our pastor referred to Romans 12 and spoke from there quite a bit... Well, that's one of the passages memorized in RTR, so again, my girls were thrilled to have the reminder.
Oh btw, Matthew is read through in ECC, not RTR. But since we learned about the birth, death and resurrection of Christ in RTR (because that took place at the same time as ACW), those connections were made between secular history and biblical teaching.
The only thing I will say about ACW is that *I* did the reading aloud in order to screen for objectionable content. There's not a LOT of it, but there is some simply by virtue of the time period (Cleopatra was NOT a nice woman, you know.) I think that's what makes ACW so hard for a lot of people... it was just a hard time period because of the magnitude of their worship of false gods, and the founding, growing, and ultimate fall of the power of Rome... and also how that impacted the Jews and the early church... there were SO many people involved. It covers a time span of what, 500-600 years? So a LOT happened. Yes, it can get heavy. But Marie does a wonderful job of giving us a heads-up in the TM to help us "censor" the material. I appreciate that. It saves me having to pre-read everything.
With my little gal, when we were doing ACW, she really didn't hang around much. Too boring for her. LOL. It didn't matter. She wouldn't have understood it anyway. But Marie instructs in the TM to copy several two-page spreads out of ACW to use for coloring pages, and that helped my older girls quite a bit in keeping track of who's who. My little gal colored those pages, too.... it gave her something to do while we worked. Every year that we've done MFW, I've allowed my little one to have her own smaller (1-inch) 3-ring binder to insert her pages, too.

But I pretty much let her do as much or as little as she has patience for. She'll get it all again later.
Sorry, I guess we didn't answer a particular question... You do read *most* of the book. Marie has you skip some parts either because of inappropriate content, or because it simply isn't accurate. For example, when the author retells some bits about the Old Testament Law, her perspective in the retelling is that much of religion is "just another god".
Genevieve Foster is a wonderful author and I love how she's put together the whole picture from a historical perspective. But it isn't Christian, and that's where Marie's teacher notes come in.
