How do you use Joy Hakim's History of US

[MeaganS]

I was lucky enough to score an entire set of her History of US for $10 this weekend. I've had my eye on them for a while and it's perfect timing as some of my kids are getting to about middle school age. But I'm looking through them and wondering how you use them in your homeschool. There are so many books and so much content that it seems like it would take a while to work through them. If you've used them, how did you do it?

[Zoo Keeper]

Hewitt sells a syllabus for using Hakim... https://hewittlearning.org/product/history-of-us-junior-high-syllabus-tests-pdf/

Bookshark uses Hakim ... https://www.bookshark.com/level-i/history-and-literature/history-i-package

Sonlight uses Hakim...  https://www.sonlight.com/100-00

There is a test booklet from Oxford University press. ... https://www.rainbowresource.com/product/018506/History-of-US-Assessment-Book-3rd-Edition-Revised.html?

I've used Hakim as an interesting American History credit in 9th grade (using SL for two, and Bookshark for one student so far).  Yes, it is not the most demanding text out there, but my kids enjoyed it, and still had room for rabbit trails/projects/papers and extra reading to make it more demanding. 

We added in some activities from Stanford's Reading Like a Historian as well.  https://sheg.stanford.edu/list-reading-historian-lessons

 

[Porridge]

We are reading the ten volume set over 4 years- 2.5 books per year. Kids read and verbally narrate. We don’t use the study guides. 

[MeaganS]

46 minutes ago, Zoo Keeper said:

Hewitt sells a syllabus for using Hakim... https://hewittlearning.org/product/history-of-us-junior-high-syllabus-tests-pdf/

Bookshark uses Hakim ... https://www.bookshark.com/level-i/history-and-literature/history-i-package

Sonlight uses Hakim...  https://www.sonlight.com/100-00

There is a test booklet from Oxford University press. ... https://www.rainbowresource.com/product/018506/History-of-US-Assessment-Book-3rd-Edition-Revised.html?

I've used Hakim as an interesting American History credit in 9th grade (using SL for two, and Bookshark for one student so far).  Yes, it is not the most demanding text out there, but my kids enjoyed it, and still had room for rabbit trails/projects/papers and extra reading to make it more demanding. 

We added in some activities from Stanford's Reading Like a Historian as well.  https://sheg.stanford.edu/list-reading-historian-lessons

 

Thank you! My set came with one of the study guides. I was looking at it and it looks really solid. I'm actually considering having her read a chapter a day and then do the study guide daily as part of her writing. There's a fair amount of writing and I like the look of the prompts for the most part. I'm not in a hurry but I also don't want her doing it for 6 years either. I need to give it some more thought. 🙂

[Slache]

1 hour ago, WTM said:

We are reading the ten volume set over 4 years- 2.5 books per year. Kids read and verbally narrate. We don’t use the study guides. 

As your only history curriculum?

[Porridge]

20 minutes ago, Slache said:

As your only history curriculum?

No, we run two parallel history threads — one US history, one world history. That’s why the US thread is so spread out 😀

[Slache]

Bump! We need more responses!

[LauraBeth475]

We used several volumes last year and read and took notes, but I think this year we might finish the set just as extra reading

[Shoeless]

I wish I could see a sample of the Hewitt syllabus. 😕 

[MeaganS]

So I ordered the official Oxford University Press Study Guide for the first volume. On Amazon it has free returns, which is awesome since I want to look at it first. If the prompts are as good as I'm hoping and requires thought rather than just regurgitation, my plan is to have dd10 read a chapter a day and do the study guide page for the chapter that day as well. That should take her about 45 mins on average? I'm going to have her do it instead of another writing program, since she's sort of bored with CAP and I'm just looking for more practice until she's ready for Writing With Skill. It will give us a good way to really focus on her writing. That should get her through the set in a little over 2 school years, which seems reasonable to me. I'll share how it goes. Up until now we haven't done a formal history for any of my kids, and I think I'll consider this more as a writing program than a history program, the history is just a big bonus.

Edited June 22, 2021 by MeaganS

[Momto6inIN]

We used the 4 volume concise edition, not the 10 volume set, so take this for what it's worth ...

My oldest 2 DSs did all 4 books in 1 year in 8th/6th. They read 3ish chapters a day and we had a weekly discussion together and we used some of the Hewitt syllabus to do a couple writing projects. Fantastic, fantastic year and they still to this day remember stuff from those books and discussions!

DD hated them and wanted nothing to do with them 😜

2nd DD is currently in the middle of doing them over 2 years - 7th & 8th. She enjoys the reading but does not do well with a discussion format as the only output. I tried adapting some K12 workbooks for her, but ended up just making my own comprehension questions and writing assignments and that is going much better.

[Xahm]

We are planning to use these over the next 2 years. We just finished SOTW 3 in 1st/3rd, and we are adding little brother. I decided to hold off on SOTW 4 so that we could cater a bit more easily to our new Kindergartner. My plan is to use volumes 1-6 this year, reading 2 chapters a day most days. We'll do some question/answer and narration as our primary output. We'll do one big read-aloud per volume as well as a field trip or two. My 4th grader will read a number of related fiction and non fiction books, while my 2nd grader will read a few. We'll also watch things like Liberty's Kids.

The following year my rough plan is to do SOTW 4 and the last 4 volumes, but while I normally plan history for just 30 weeks, I'll probably plan that to take a bit longer.