Need help for middle school history!

[Grits]

So far I have been using Story of the World 1-4. What comes next?  I know that History of the World series is for high school,but I need a text for grades 5-8. Suggestions?

[alisha]

Notgrass?

[Grits]

Notgrass?

I have no idea what that means. 

[3girls4me]

https://history.notgrass.com

[Grits]

https://history.notgrass.com

That makes more sense! I was trying to figure out what kind of crazy anachronism it might be! Thanks you both for the recommendation, I'll check into it right away. 

[happypamama]

My 7th grader is using Notgrass’s America the Beautiful this year. He likes it pretty well. I think the text is a little on the easy side for him, but it’s pretty in depth. He used k12’s Human Odyssey books the last two years (with plans from Human Odyssey by Pandia Press) and loved them. (We only didn’t use them this year because I wanted American, and the US-specific chapters from k12 ended up sounding very disjointed and just the basics.)

Edited January 11, 2018 by happypamama

[TheAttachedMama]

K-12 Human Odyssey, or Hakim's The Story of Us for US history.

 

Several homeschool publishers have syllabus for the Hakim series, if you don't want to wing it.

There's also Pandia Press' History Odyysey series.

 

Just wanted to mention that Build Your Own Library also has plans for Hakim's The Story of US.   They are really nice and very reasonably priced.  They have scheduled readers (for the student), scheduled read alouds (for the family), a 50 state study that coordinates, timeline and map work, etc.   They even have an American artist study and poetry study.   

 

Sonlight/Bookshark also uses The Story of US and has plans.  

 

(ETA:   There is also an excellent audiobook to The Story of US available on audible.)  

Edited January 11, 2018 by TheAttachedMama

[Grits]

Thanks everyone for the recommendations! Looks like I have some research to do but at least I have time since I won't need a new text until fall. I'm looking for something that maintains a secular backbone, but gives reference to different world religions because they are a strong driving force all throughout history. I prefer to put our own religious studies in myself. But at least I have some to research! I was hoping that Bauer and Wise had created a middle school series, but that's okay.  :) 

[Creekside5]

I really like the Oxford university press books.  Simple with lots of really great details. https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Egyptian-World-Times/dp/0195173910/ref=pd_sim_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0195173910&pd_rd_r=TZF8D837CKY45ETZ06WX&pd_rd_w=93pqW&pd_rd_wg=1VdtJ&psc=1&refRID=TZF8D837CKY45ETZ06WX

 

[ScoutTN]

K12 Human Odyssey fits what you want. Narrative, like SOTW, but written for older kids. Nice layout and art. Inexpensive used on Amazon. We supplement with literature for my reader-girl. K12 HO has 3 volumes for world history. We have used them in a 4 year cycle, so my kids are doing the same period of history. I find them easier to read, less choppy, than the OUP books and less ideological (also less thorough) than Hakim. We do a simple, homemade timeline too.

Edited January 12, 2018 by ScoutTN

[2_girls_mommy]

Have you thought about just doing the Well Trained Mind logic stage work with a history encyclopedia as your spine and lots of library books? Similar to Story of the World for elementary, but stepping it up a notch. After years of doing SOTW and the AG work and narrations and summaries, the step into logic stage work on our own from WTM logic stage history section was pretty easy without a specific curriculum or text.

 

We set up notebooks with the multiple dividers just like in WTM logic stage history. We use the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia as the spine and bought blank timeline books from Miller's Pads and Paper, one for each child, and a copy of the Geography Coloring Book. Each child reads a section of the KHE and puts dates on their timeline, color coding the entries (one color for political dates, one for birth and death dates, one for scientific discoveries, one for things relating to the arts, etc.) Then they outline a section from KHE. We adapt this. Time does not allow us to outline every section or even once a week. We aim for 1 a month to keep up the skill in later middle school. In earlier years we did it more often and together to build the skill. Then a topic is chosen from the reading selections to research further. The goal here again is once a month in our home. Reading on a topic of interest is done on their own time and then a summary written and filed in their folder. We often do a bigger project in lieu of the written summary. So if in November we do a big presentation at co-op where they create a poster, give a speech, and dress in costume, then that would be that month's history summary. I would save a copy of any written work (speech or whatever,) and clasp in the binder under the appropriate heading. Sometimes we still do projects from the SOTW vol that goes with our history topic for fun, just beefing them up to a higher level of artwork. 

 

Then we keep up read alouds and projects similar to SOTW extra readings and projects but step them up to a higher level. Examples, my kids are in medieval history this year. Today we covered multiple streams of history - we reviewed the English language and its roots, going over each wave of invaders into England that we have covered this year. We did the demonstration with the playdough from SOTWvol. 2. We looked at a Dover coloring book on Vikings as we talked about them.  Each dd read a section of their history book (high schooler reading and taking notes from the upper level Bauer series, middle schooler read a section from the KHE.) We then read a book on Haiku poetry since we were in Japan in the middle ages last week, and my books from my library search just came in. We learned more about how haiku originated from an adult book on haiku. We learned way more than just the 5,7,5 rule that we learned the first time we went through history and stopped to study Samurai and Haiku when we went through SOTW2 when they were younger. So I have found keeping the AG around helps me a lot with ideas for what to study. We then composed a haiku as a family following some of the rules we learned about their construction and read a nice collection and looked at the Japanese art. Since tomorrow we will be getting into the Crusades we read a few stories from a Robin Hood book I had picked up and then we finished with a chapter from our family read aloud, Son of Charlemagne. It is our read aloud day. We don't always do quite so much together and cover quite so much at once, but I also don't line up all of our books to exactly the section of history they are reading from. I have stacks that we go through. We always discuss and review as we start something. We covered Charlemagne and the Franks months ago, but are just now getting to this read aloud that I had planned for the year. It reviews things we had already gone over. The Haiku comes from last week's readings on Japan, and the Robin Hood goes with tomorrow's readings. I can't even tell you what chapter the high schooler is on in her text. She reads and takes notes from that. And when I assign her written paper, she will decide from what she has been reading on her own, what to research further and write about. Plus she does the history papers from the rhetoric stage WTM section on Great Books. So she goes deeper quite a bit. But I still include her in our middle school read alouds and discussions and projects because that is why I homeschool, so we can all learn together!  Another day, we would do less read alouds and the middle schooler would do more of the written work. 

[lmrich]

I really like Hakim's Story of US - I did the whole series in a year. 

 

I also like the Dorothy Mills, History of the Middle Ages. Memoria Press has a study guide to go along with it. 

 

For Ancients, my favorite was to use the WTM advice with a tweak - I had my dd (and her class of friends that I taught) to make scrapbook pages for each encyclopedia spread, or a few spreads, each week. It was amazing and something she would look back at often without realizing that she was reviewing. 

[homemommy83]

I vote for NotgrassðŸ˜. I just love their program!

 

Brenda