All American History

[sweetTN]

Has anyone used this? We have been using SOTW, but I would like to go more in depth for US history next year. I've looked at sample pages and it looks interesting. I like the way it talks about "the atmosphere in which the event occurred, the event itself, and the impact the event had on the future of our nation". Any insight on this curriculum would be greatly appreciated!

[Carol in Cal.]

However, I don't really know of a better alternative, except maybe piecing together the Steward Ship American history unit studies and interspersing them with SOTW.

 

AAH sounded more engaging on the website than it turned out to be. This was because they spend a long time at the beginning of each section setting the scene and telling the bios of all of the main characters. If you were paraphrasing this in a coop as a teacher, I think that this would be really effective; but to assign the book makes it deadly dull. By the time DD got to the action of the chapter, she was already frustrated and bored.

 

The vocabulary is at a much higher level than SOTW, which is good, but you might have to keep an eye on whether your children really understand what they are reading.

 

The workbook is good--fill in the blanks, matching, and essay questions. I liked these as DD had not really done them before and they were truly meaningful study helps, so I thought that they were good experience for her. But we ended up not finishing this book, because it demanded far too much of my time to make it interesting and I preferred to put my focus elsewhere. So what I ended up doing was SOTW with a LOT of living fiction and non-fiction books, and assigning some AAH chapters for things that were not covered well at all; in addition to some use of Steward Ship unit studies and some other history books here and there. I'm starting to use Critical Thinking in US History a bit this year, and I really like it; but it really is more of a teaching of how to 'do' history than of history itself.

 

I wish that there was a SOTW for US history!

[senunk]

For the most part, I like it. I was excited about it when I first found it, but when I finally got it and looked through it, I didn't like. When we started using it, I liked it again. I am using it with my almost 13yodd with two of her friends in our co-op. The small class size makes it fun. There hasn't been any complaints about the text from the students. My dd does her reading and workbook stuff independently. We do the review page in class, along with discussion or a hands-on activity or a game. The kids seem to be retaining quite a bit.

[sandra in va]

We used the first half of the book when my oldest two were in 5th and 3rd. We studied the explorers and colonies units. Sometimes it was more detail than what I needed, but overall we enjoyed it. We switched to winter promise's American Story 1 for the second semester.

 

I think AAH is a very good program, and I would highly recommend it. The main reason we switched was to accomodate my 3rd and 1st graders better. A couple more notes: I liked the student activity sheets, but I did make my own tests as I wasn't completely pleased with the ones that came with the program.

[senunk]

I forgot to say that we are using volume 2. We didn't use volume 1.

[sweetTN]

Hmmm. Alot of "great curriculum, but..." I've looked through a student activity book and the teachers manual, but haven't gotten to do a "hands on" with the student reader. History is one subject which really keeps dd excited about school. She loves activity guides and worksheets, so this just looks so perfect for us. Since we usually curl up and read history together an over abundance of information isn't a problem. Thanks for everyone's input!

[PeterPan]

My dd is 9 this year and we're doing american (if I ever get it started after the baby comes, haha!). I looked at AAH, but really it's aimed for a bit older dc. Some people have said they used just the activity book along with History of US or other readings that were more age-appropriate. My dd really likes history too btw, so what I did was put together checklists and whatnot using the Abeka4 textbook (which really isn't that bad!) and the Escher Story of the USA books used in SLcores 3 and 4. People all seem to have their own preferences in spines, so you might just do some searching for what spine would suit the two of you best and work from there. You could use SL 3 and 4 as the spine and add in activities. You could use Abeka4 and spread it out over two years, fleshing out each chapter with lots of books and projects. You could use the VP cards (which I correlated in my schedule as we like them) and do one card a week, reading the summary on the card and then reading from the sources it lists. Then you would do projects and extra reading to correspond. If you've never looked at VP, their catalog has extensive literature listings for each year of the history and indicates what books go with what cards. VP has been our framework since 1st grade, and my dd really enjoys doing history that way.

 

Would you be able to use AAH next year with a 10 yo 5th grader? I don't know, as my dd isn't 10 yet. I just think it would have been a tad much for us this year. It's target age is more like junior high, isn't it? I can definitely see where it would be a good fit for that age, with its increased content, thought provoking activity and research questions, etc. It's such a trade-off, what you get with each program. I finally decided what was most important to me was the spine, and that I could make a schedule and coordinate things around a good spine, if I had one that really fit us. That's how I ended up with that abeka4/escher combo.

 

Just as another observation, you're heading into 5th grade with this, so it's handy if your spine is conducive to outlining and writing summaries like WTM suggests for 5th. It's just one more thing to consider. You're doing WT1 this year, so next year you'll do WT2. We did that last year, and it's really terrific. I wouldn't add IEW writing for american or anything heavy on top, but doing some notebooking or summaries or even an outline once a week would be good. If you pick a spine that is conducive to that, that's especially handy. What I did with the schedules for my dd is to put it into the weekly checklists as notebooking pages. But I was trying to make it easy on myself with the baby coming. (assuming this baby ever gets born!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) You'll find your own way.

[BizyPenguin]

I really wanted AAH to work out, but it didn't. I posted a lengthy opinion/review of AAH over the summer. Here's is the link. Simply scroll down to see my input. My post is titled "My two cents about AAH and Hakim". HTH! P.S. We're now using Winter Promise's American Crossings 1 program for American history.