Bookshark - America History

[shawthorne44]

What do you guys of Bookshark's American History at the elementary level?    This is the secular version of Sonlight.   

We started out homeschooling with the first Sonlight preschool level.  Half the books were in the books that mom saved from my childhood.  So, it was cheap and a no-brainer.  Then by second grade we had completely switched to SOTW + Activity Book.   I'd like to insert American History after SOTW4.  History read-alouds is a part of bedtime so done year-round, and that means that we like the book-heavy way of doing history.   Also, inserting an extra history 'year' isn't a problem.   DD will be on the high end of the Sonlight age range.   

I was also thinking about listening to all four SOTW audiobooks one right after another between end of SOTW4 and American History.   Anyone else done this?  

[HomeAgain]

I had the Sonlight version and even though I had all the books previously, I didn't like the layout.  What I ended up doing for American history was pairing the first half of it with SOTW 3, making our read alouds, readers, and field trips more U.S. focused, and this year for modern history I'm dropping SOTW entirely and creating units around different world/U.S focuses: industry, immigration, slavery, eugenics/pseudo-science, wars (each war gets its own unit), human rights, fear.  I didn't like the pace of SOTW 4 and I didn't like the overscheduling of Sonlight/Bookshark.

[MerryAtHope]

I used the Sonlight version (NOT one of the years that had The Light and the Glory though!) Anyway, the US history cores in elementary were two of my favorites. 

[shawthorne44]

Thank you for the replies.   We don't pay attention to anyone's schedules.  So, good scheduling isn't important for us.   Trying to stay on one caused too much parental angst.