A history question (notgrass)

[mommagruber]

ok, this may be a silly question, but....

I have been looking at Notgrass history and it seems like it would be perfect for my son (7th grade) . I want to get the America the Beautiful pack, which is a one year study for grades 5-8. My question, if we use it this year, (I would like to use it with my ds 7th grade and dd 6th grade), what will we use next year in 8th grade, while waiting to go in to the Notgrass high school series? Or should I just wait and use America the Beautiful in 8th grade? If so, what do we use this year? Thanks for any help!

[iamrachelle]

I've looked at Notgrass for 7th grade too... It looks pretty meaty to me. I would probably spread it out over two years and take our time with some of the suggested writing assignments.

[5LittleMonkeys]

Dd14 is using it this year. In my opinion it is not meaty enough to spread over two years unless you only did history 2 days a week. The additional literature selections are light and the writing assignments are mostly of the creative type and not difficult at all. Including the literature it only takes dd about 45 minutes 4 days a week.

 

Have you thought about doing a year of World Geography next year and then in 9th your ds could jump into the Notgrass World History? That may not work for your 6th grader though. Perhaps your dd's 8th grade year could be just a focus on Ancient Civilizations since not as much time gets spent on those in a typical one year study of highschool World History. I know my dd loved being able to spend a whole year on just Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.

[carlychan]

:bigear:I am no help, but was looking at the same Notgrass for my 7th grader for later this year (into next year). I just don't know where to go after MOH 3 and need to do a good American History course. I will be following this thread to help with my decisions, too.

[plansrme]

I agree that there is not nearly enough meat to Notgrass to stretch it over two years. You could use it as an outline and add in a lot of additional reading and writing, but you would be using so much additional stuff that it would defeat the whole purpose of using Notgrass.

 

I am using Notgrass with my 6th and 2nd graders this year, and it is almost exactly what I wanted at this stage in their education: a one year overview of American history. But it is not what I would recommend if this will be the only American history your student will ever get, as it is too shallow. The Civil War, for instance, is covered in a couple of (short) chapters. There is so much more to American history, and I believe it needs to be covered for two solid years during middle school. My current plan is to finish Notgrass this year with my 6th grader and then to use parts of Hakim's The History of US next year, focusing on the wars: the American Revolution, Civil War, WWI and WWII, with some additional reading.

 

I do like Notgrass for what it is; I just think there is too much good stuff in American history to squeeze into a single school year.

 

Terri