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Highschool history help, please
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My son is fifteen (October birthday). The summer before his 14th birthday I had a general plan for the coming school year and had the necessary books but imagine my shock when, the evening before our new school year, as I looked over our schedule, I realized I had forgotten that he was 13 turning 14 not 13 like I planned. I cried, where had time gone? I stuck with the original plan with some changes but not enough. All that to say, I feel like we’re constantly running to catch up but not attaining and I’m tired of the feeling. I’d like to feel like we’re on course and will get there. I’ve been reading a number of highschool posts but still have questions, particularily with history. I had hoped we would be further along in our history studies but it is taking longer than planned. I really enjoyed doing our history studies as a family using SCM modules but by the end of this school year we’ll have only finished with Ancient Rome. I’m looking for any suggestions for my highschooler and the rest of my children. Would you recommend the highschooler doing history on his own and continue using SCM with the other children as we are, or…..? And what would you use for highschool history?
I should add that my son loves to read and has read alot of historical fiction such as the Henty books and others but he hasn’t covered the remaining history in any depth.
P.S. He doesn’t look to be college bound, but I want to give him everything he needs in order to go if he changes his mind.
I would highly recommend the Notgrass company books, they are Biblically based, excellent Cm type style and really enjoyable. There is Exploring World History, Exploring US History and then a one semster course for Government and a one semester course for Economics. I used some of these as extras for the girls along with other books they wanted to read – however they would work well as stand alone books and I think he would like them. The links are:
http://www.notgrass.com/world-history-high-school-curriculum.php
http://www.notgrass.com/american-history-high-school-curriculum.php
http://www.notgrass.com/american-government-high-school-curriculum.php
http://www.notgrass.com/economics-high-school-curriculum.php
These courses also have a literature element and Bible element which you may find handy. These courses are C< friendly we did not use the testing materials we did narrations and essays. Hope this helps – Linda
Thanks so much Linda! I think you answered my next question and that is whether it is CM friendly or if it is really textbooky. I do have access to traditional history textbooks but I seem to have an aversion to them and would like to stay away from them.
Would you have any must read books that you would recommend to go along with Notgrass books?
If anyone else has anymore suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
They are not everyones cup of tea, but we read the Winston Churchill set A history of the English Speaking People along with World History, and we read A Patriot’s History of the USA with the American history course. My daughters revel in history – so they read pretty difficult books and narrate some of them. They don’t tend to read the fiction books as they prefer biographies and original source type books. They read The Real George Washington, The Real Thomas Jefferson and The Real Benjamin Franklin and The 5000 Year Leap for US history as well as their leisure books. These are definitely not books for kids who don’t enjoy history as they are geared to adults – but both of mine are really into politics and history. We also used books from The Famous Men Series and the Beacon Lights series. I am sure there are others who can recommend really good fiction books if he preferred those. As I studied history in uni I have a big library of history books and they just pick what they want from there. They have read biographies of Reagan and Thatcher and Buckley’s book The Fall of the Berlin Wall – so our examples are not perhaps typical of what people read. I think you could just use the literature books he recommends in the course and that would be great – unless he is like my daughters and loves history.
I can say the I think Notgrass is very CM friendly – it is easy to narrate from and you can easily ignore the tests and the original source book that comes with the main volumes are brilliant. You could add as much extra reading as you want, or none at all. Notgrass says you can give 3 credits for the two history courses, 1 literature 1 history and 1 Bible – I just gave history as we did something else for Bible and Literature, but it is quite acceptable to take the 3. Hope that helps. Linda
Hi Linda!
This is my plan next year for my daughter. Did you by any chance make a schedule combining Churchill with Notgrass? I would love to see that! Blessings, Betty
Hi Betty, I did not make a schedule in the sense that I think you are meaning. What I did was use Sonya’s planner and just filled in the books that way. When we did Notgrass World History we read the first two volumes and then when we read US History we read the other two. I just used the planner and spread them out over our terms – with the US history we also scheduled The Patriot’s book as well over the year along with the other US books. I used MapQuest maps with the course and that also worked really well. Sorry I don’t have a printed schedule to share. So much history overlaps we just decided to split the books in that manner. We wanted to do Churchill because with our English background and having been to so many sites of historical interest in Europe, it made sense to us to have those books in our studies, plus we are history geeks – but they are outstanding books if your child wants to read them. Blessings, Linda
Hi teachmetolearn!
If you enjoy doing history studies as a family and using the SCM Modules, you could continue with your cycle – moving onto Modules 4, 5 & 6. It sounds like your son would still have plenty of time to cover these periods. If, on the other hand, he wants to study history independantly (I have one that prefers this), then Notgrass would be perfect. We, too, will be using this in the fall for 10th, 11th & 12th. The literature selections make it exceptionally appealing ;). Like Linda mentioned, you can easily do narrations with this and it appears to be very CM friendly. Another suggestion might be Truthquest History. He could move onto the Middle Ages guide, then Renaissance/Reformation, and finally the Age of Revolution 1-3. There are so many excellent highschool options for history that it does make it difficult to choose. However, you know your son best and what he needs. I suggest asking him how he prefers to study history, discussing with your husband, and most importantly praying about it.
Blessings ~ Heather
Linda, Your reply is a tremendous help in helping to sort out my thoughts. My son loves history and likes to read biographies but I’m not familiar with the titles you mentioned or the style of writing. Right now he is reading The Trial and Death of Socrates and finding it interesting. I’d like for him to read more original source books and have an understanding of history on which to develop his own thoughts. The only thing is that he dislikes narration and would just like to do the questions and answers and the test and say, “I’m done”.
Heather, I’m not sure how to squeeze the last three modules into two years and still do them justice, which is my trouble, there is so much to learn and enjoy. He’ll be going into grade 11 this fall and he does enjoy independent study, so Notgrass does sound appealing. Thanks for the reminder to pray.
First off I should stress we tend to read books that are conservative in nature with a conservative leaning – if you are more liberal thinking the books we read would maybe not be agreeable. I still have quite a few of my college texts and books which were definitely left leaning and so my daughters have looked at them as well for contrast – but the books I have recommended are not left leaning books. As your son does enjoy history then he would likely enjoy the books my daughters have been reading – here is a – link to Amazon which has a lot of the books I mentioned on the page.
These are wonderful books and my daughters devoured them they read them then with the book closed wrote a summary of the chapter of each. At the end of the book they have rather nice summaries of them to study from should they choose to do so. On occasion I would ask them for an essay on a subject or part of the book, sometimes comparing two people, or two events, or sometimes putting themselves in the time period and writing a news article of the time and the main happening. If he enjoys The Trial and Death of Socrates, then he will enjoy these books as well, they are not school books but most enjoyable.
This is another favorite for US History – http://www.amazon.com/George-Washingtons-Sacred-Peter-Lillback/dp/0978605268/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299796174&sr=8-1
We also read a lot of books by David Barton of http://www.wallbuilders.com
The Notgrass books just add a very nice framework to the other readings we have done and they can work independently from them without me having to spend a lot of time on them – I think in the senior years they should be more accountable and indepenent. He could certainly do the Notgrass tests and do them and be done – some teens do prefer that. I hope these links help. Linda
teachmetolearn, I’m so sorry… I assumed your son still had 3 years left – guess I should have read your post a little closer. It sounds like Notgrass will be perfect for him then – original source documents and all. I know we’re really looking forward to it!
Linda, can I ask how you went about incorporating MapTrek with Notgrass? Thanks!
Well again I hate to admit it, but I did it a bit on the fly – Notgrass is set up to be done weekly – so I would check the weeks lesson, skim it really and then pick out the places that were covered – I would then print the correct map for the time period. For the Bible Study lesson which is always the 5th day lesson, I had a large Biblical times blank map and the girls filled in the appropriate places as they read about them. They would add things to their century book timeline as well. It did not take me a lot of time to do, but it really helped be prepared for the week – I would just give them the map or maps at the beginning of the week and at the end of the week I would check them over and see what they had come up with. We sometimes discussed what they had read or I just read their essay or narration. They did not like the tests, though I gave them one every so often and they always did fine – so a lot of what we did was quite simple. I do not like doing minute by minute planning and with all the medical stuff going on in our home, I could not do it anyway, so we have adapted a lot to that situation and it has been fine. Ideally you start on a Monday and finish on a Friday, but we could never stick to that because of hospital visits, but it still worked out fine. Does that help, or are we a bit slapdash for your needs – I am afraid all my efforts at proper planning went out the window when Chloe got sick. Blessings, Linda
Our dd 9th grade is completing My Father’s World Ancient History and Literature. This has been great for her and I as she is able to work independently while I work with our kindergarten and 1st grader. MFW uses the Notgrass texts as a spine along with great literature. She is also reading through the entire Old Testament as part of the study. The program counts for 3 full credits including Bible, History and Lit. There is mapwork, a timeline, and a focus on learning to write an argumentative paper. Here’s the link for a list of books included:
http://www.mfwbooks.com/L0432336154C450003911022+M50+ENG
Blessings, Melissa
Ladies, your replies certainly have been a blessing.
Linda, Thank you for the links to all those books. We do enjoy David Barton’s materials. And it seems like we both don’t do well with minute by minute planning. As Sonya says, “Life happens”.
Heather, Seeing as our boys will both be doing somewhat the same studies this year we may have to compare notes as we go.
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