US History (non-AP) recommendations

[skimomma]

Dd will need a credit of US History for her 12th grade year.  I had planned for her take this as a DE class, but our options are not as I had hoped.  So now I am looking for either a fairly independent home curriculum or an online class.  Online is preferred.  Anyone have anything they love?  These are the things we are looking for:

1.  No busy work.  Dd is not interested in doing word searches, games, art, projects that don't involve furthering her understanding of historical events, etc.....

2.  Related to #1, gets to the point.  We are not looking for a get-it-done course but dd is going to be over-scheduled next year.  This is a concern I have about online classes in general.  If class time and videos take up more than 5 hours per week with lots of additional reading, studying, and assignment work, it will be too much.  Dd reads deeply so she does not need the same content covered in reading and lecture but would rather see non-reading content be discussion and analysis of the content.

3.  Engaging.  I had a great US History teacher in high school.  He just knew how to make any topic interesting.  This would be a nice bonus.

4.  Does not rely heavily on memorization.  While knowing your basic dates, names, and places is handy, we are not interested in a class that is assessed heavily on memorizing a bunch of facts that will spill out of her head after the semester ends.  This is one reason why we wanted DE class.

Lastly, I would be interested in hearing any get-it-done options as well.  Dd's list of things she'd like to take next year is long.  If we cannot find a good match that meets my criteria above, we might consider something simple and easy.  She covered US History deeply in the 8th grade and will likely be taking it again within the first two years of college so, I am not 100% opposed to considering simpler options if push comes to shove.

[skimomma]

Also, WTMA (non-AP) is on our list of potentials.  Anyone have a review?

[BusyMom5]

I used Holt The Americans- blue book that focuses on Civil War to present.  I kept it pretty light- read a section each day and write a response usually to the Critical Thinking questions.  

[madteaparty]

Sort of out of the box but DS and I have really enjoyed some of the Yale open courses. There’s two American history ones that might work and I was planning on using next year, though they don’t make a very neat unit like the one we are using now (Merriman’s European Civ one).