Amy,
I, too, am brand new to CM this fall but we’ve done lit-based history for four years now. I did two years of American history with ds (second and third grades) using the TruthQuest American History for Younger Students guides. I compressed the II and III guides into one year. Ds and I both *loved* it! It was a lot of work on my part (though I downloaded a great schedule from the TQ Yahoo group files, which helped tremendously). But it was absolutely wonderful!
After that, I decided to do a four-year rotation b/c ds is dyslexic and I knew he needed the repetition or he was never going to remember Ancients by high school. So we jumped to using Mystery of History with loads of added in books and started with ancient history. He seemed to make the switch just fine from working up until modern American history and then going way back to ancients. Not that I think the way we did things is *the* way–just that it can work to do American and then go back to the ancient stuff and work your way forward.
I have to say that Beautiful Feet is calling to me, though we have enjoyed MOH. If MOH vols. 2 and 3 lined up with Beautiful Feet, I would probably have gone with a BF guide for the fall. Love their books! And I think we may end up switching to BF for the next four years.
Don’t know if I answered your questions but hopefully some of this was helpful, from one newbie to another!
Christina