If you used Joy Hakim's History of US

[SereneHome]

1. For what age kids did you do it?

2.  Did you supplement with anything?  Books, DVDs, etc?

Thank you!

 

[SoCal_Bear]

If I was using the full volume set (11 or 12 depending on what you have), I would do it during middle school grades.

If I was using the 4 volume Concise History of US published by K12, I would use it with upper elementry with kids working at 4th-5th. It's the spine for K12's 4th and 5th grade history courses, American History A & B.

FWIW, I have both sets. 

You don't have to supplement, but I like using fiction, biographies, and videos to flesh things out more. It's not hard to find books tied to those periods just sitting on the shelf at the library or by looking at book lists for various currciula that is lterature based like Bookshark, Beautiful Feet, Sonlight, etc or even in the activity guides for Story of the World.

[historically accurate]

4 hours ago, SereneHome said:

1. For what age kids did you do it?

2.  Did you supplement with anything?  Books, DVDs, etc?

Thank you!

 

I used it last year with a 5th and a 7th grader. We did volumes 1-8 from Sept-Mar (we stopped in Mar for a medical emergency). They both had a reader going at all times (on average it took 2-3 weeks to finish each book) and watched 1 documentary every couple of weeks or so. Literature was read aloud, sometimes it related to history, sometimes it didn't.  

[lmrich]

I did it with 6th graders. The whole set in a year - it was a lot. I supplemented by having literature that sometimes paired with what we were reading but not always. 

[Porridge]

I read book 6 (Civil War) as a read aloud alongside Across Five Aprils with DD10 and DS8 recently. They were 7 and 9 at the time. The LOVED it. 

I plan to have DD10 go through the whole set slowly over the next 4 years (grades 5-8). That's 2.5 books per year, or roughly 2-3 chapters per week. I'd rather have her go through it slowly and absorb more, than try to drink from a firehose and read it all in a year.  We do 2 history strands simultaneously. We follow the 4 year history cycle (ancients this coming year) and we read American History concurrently. 

For DS8, I haven't decided yet whether to stick with This Country of Ours (Marshall) as his American History book, or transition over to Hakim. We read through one third of This Country of Ours this past year. 

I no longer try to pair history and literature. I just have them read the history source and narrate. Anything extra is not "assigned" but more spontaneous - it's whatever rabbit hole we'd like to explore. This is partly because we do 2 history strands simultaneously, so it's pretty hard to match up the lit with the history.

[J-rap]

We actually used it in 9th grade.  (Possibly I would have used it during middle school, but I didn't discover it until our oldest was about to enter 9th grade and it seemed perfect!)  Because we used it in high school though, we supplemented it with a lot:  DVD documentaries, lots of literature including biographies, the Critical Thinking Company's series: Critical Thinking in United States History, and more.

[alpacawalker]

We are using it for 6th -7th with the K12 books. We are currently using the full books without supplementing. We read the chapters together and have a lot of extra discussions which makes it a full lesson for us. However,  we plan on changing to the concise books for the 1900s (books C and D I  believe) and will more than likely supplement then as they don't appear to have as many sidebars and extras.

[Momto6inIN]

We used the 4 volume concise set with my then 8th and 6th grade DSs. They still remember stuff from those books! It was a great year. We didn't supplement, just read and discussed and the oldest wrote a research paper on the negative effects of the Gold Rush. They did read some lit in their English coursework that corresponded with the time period, but didn't really do any output with them. Some of the titles I remember are Sign of the Beaver, Johnny Tremain, Across Five Aprils, Stolen Into Slavery, Summer of the Monkeys, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Yearling, Tom Sawyer, Anne Frank, Homer Price

[TheAttachedMama]

You might check out Build Your Own Library's 4th and 5th grade (?) plans.   They schedule out the entire series over two years, include timeline figures, mapping assignments, extra internet research projects, easy-to-find-age-appropriate-documentaries, read alouds, and readers.   You really get a lot for your money.  They also schedule a few American poets to read this year and even an American Artist study.   :)  

 

Another great resource is Sonlight Core 100.    Check out their book list.  (Or Book Shark if that is your thing.)   :)  

[MerryAtHope]

9th grade with Sonlight 100.

[Garga]

Didn’t discover it until 10th grade, and it was perfect for what I wnated.  Since it was 10th grade I certainly supplemented.  A few books and a course from The Great Courses.  And required some essay writing.  

[Lilaclady]

I did it last year with a 7th grader. It was a lot to cover the whole thing in a year but it was really good and detailed. Lots of info that I had not gone over the first time we did US history. I did not add readers as we do lit separately. 

[Targhee]

7th grade, DS used it in an online class with lots of web content (videos, interactives, discussion forums).

[veryblueberry]

We used it with the Veritas Press History Explorers to 1815 and 1815 to present.  My daughter loves these books.  She will be in sixth grade.

 

[SereneHome]

Oh, thank you so much everyone.

I am having an internal battle on how to continue with SOTW and still introduce some American History.  I had high hopes for Adventures in America but that didn't work for us at all.

 

 

[Porridge]

17 minutes ago, SereneHome said:

Oh, thank you so much everyone.

I am having an internal battle on how to continue with SOTW and still introduce some American History.  I had high hopes for Adventures in America but that didn't work for us at all.

 

 

Yeah, we wanted to also use SOTW. THat's why we moved to doing 2 history threads simultaneously. It means that you move through one of the threads (in our case, American History) very slowly... like.... over 4 years.  For one of the threads, we just read and verbally narrate and that's all. For the other, we do maps, timeline (though we kind of let that slide this year) and written narrations. 

Another suggestion would be to incorporate some american history books into your family read-a-louds, if you do read-a-louds. 

[Holly]

14 hours ago, SereneHome said:

Oh, thank you so much everyone.

I am having an internal battle on how to continue with SOTW and still introduce some American History.  I had high hopes for Adventures in America but that didn't work for us at all.

 

Have you looked at Biblioplan?  We are using their Year 3 Family Guide and it maps out a plan with SOTW, History of the US, and several other spines.  It also includes related books for all ages as well as a family read aloud, movies, memory work, and mapping.  We just pick and choose from all their suggestions each week.  We are still using the SOTW Activity Guide since we prefer the discussion questions, coloring pages, & maps from it.

My plan for next year is to have my younger ones (6th and under) use SOTW 3 & A Child's First Book of American History (from Beautiful Feet Books).  My 8th grader will use Hakim's History of US series & Famous Men of Modern Times.  My 10th grader will continue with Biblioplan's Companion textbook. 

[nixpix5]

15 hours ago, SereneHome said:

Oh, thank you so much everyone.

I am having an internal battle on how to continue with SOTW and still introduce some American History.  I had high hopes for Adventures in America but that didn't work for us at all.

 

 

Adventures in America was a total flop for us too. Pretty much all of the curriculum from Elemental has flopped for us. 

We use Biblioplan which has been so perfect for our homeschool. We use SOTW but also tie in VP Self Paced courses and timeline flashcards which has really worked for us. VP is super Christian though so it wouldn't work for a secular family. 

[SereneHome]

We are not Christians, so I need a secular stuff

[Vintage81]

BYL 3 uses SOTW 3 and BYL 5 uses the first half of History of US. Some people who use BYL combine these two levels. If you join the Build Your Library Families Facebook group, there's a document in the Files where Emily Cook explains how you can combine them. 

I'll be using these with my DDs this upcoming year, so I can't yet speak to how well they work together, but I thought I'd mention the combination. If they work well, Levels 4 and 6 would follow to complete the second half of American History.

[Cake and Pi]

We did (are still working on) BYL 5 (~5th grade) this year, which uses the first 5 books of the (long version) set.  BYL 6 finishes out the series.  BYL fleshes the series out with historical fictions and documentaries.  We also usually borrow nonfiction books from the children's section on the major topics.  It seems pretty appropriate to use for students working at about 5th-8th grade level.

BYL is pretty neat in general.  You might want to check it out, especially since you're looking for secular material.  You could finish up SOTW through BYL and then move on to History of US.  We didn't use the levels before BYL 5, but I hear they're nicely done.

[boscopup]

My kids read through SOTW on their own, so I sometimes stick US history in where SOTW 3 and 4 go in the cycle. I've done that twice now.

We're currently using BYL 5 (first half of US history, using Hakim's books), and we're really enjoying it. We started in January with a 3rd grader and a 5th grader. It's been a great fit for both. The 3rd grader is advanced, and the 5th grader has some learning challenges. They have both gotten a lot out of the study. We'll finish up BYL 5 this fall and do BYL 6 after that. BYL adds a read aloud and a reader, sometimes helping flesh out the history material and sometimes just giving you a good book to read. ?

[...................]

We used the full volume set for 7th grade and it was PERFECT content and pace-wise. Loved it.

[carrierocha]

We use Tapestry of Grace and Hakim's books are a history spine for Upper Grammar level so grades 4-6ish. Tapestry offers ideas for other literature and texts that dig deeper than Hakim's books so we did most of those. We were able to download the audio of Hakim's books from our library and we would often listen over lunch or in the car and pause a lot to discuss.

[....]

My 13 year-old is reading through SL 100 (which uses the Hakim series) this year and it's a good fit for her.    

[ngraysmith]

I used it with my oldest when he was in 5th and 6th grades along with historical fiction, Howard Zinn and documentaries.  I put together a two year curriculum - you can find it here:  

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15sG2o19RlWLEo7sa1k4Bw_43xe5mjQPOK4Og1Dr0Tr4/edit?usp=sharing

I am in the middle of reviewing it because I will start this fall with my daughter who is 10.  

It definitely could be used with older kids - most of the materials are for middle grades, although some of the documentary stuff is difficult to watch (my son was very upset with the tar and feathering scenes in the John Adams series for example),

 

Nicole