The History of US by Joy Hakim
Posted in Reviews on September 26th, 2009 by Elaine | Permalink | Share/Save
In this series of reviews, you’re learning about all the books we’re using this year!
Here’s how we’re using this marvelous, engrossing series: everyday, I read aloud about 3 chapters in The History of US. We want to finish the series this school year, so we figured out that’s about what we need to read per day.
Sometimes, I check in at the end of a chapter, should I keep going? And my audience of one usually says, “keep going, this is interesting!”
I’m finding once again, that one of the hidden benefits of homeschooling is the life-long learning that it awakens in the parent.
Again and again as we read, I say, “I didn’t know that!” And I swear I graduated from college, and took history all through school.
Oh! If only it had been this interesting!
I’m lucky enough to own the entire series plus the index and teachers manuals, though I haven’t used the teacher’s manuals yet.
We’re using the History Pockets books (previously reviewed, see below) along with The History of US, plus maps and a geography book.
In addition, we’ll be getting DVDs from Netflix as we go along through the books and the years. For example, we might get The Civil War by Ken Burns when we get to it in the book.
Right now, we’ve got map reading DVDs from the library.
This is another example of a history “spine” that I talked about in a previous post. See, The History of US is our history spine, but I’ll be adding other books as we go along, those books are great, but they’re supplemental, the spine book is the main thing, the organizing force.
It’s a great series, the author makes it interesting, a story, and doesn’t talk down or hold back. The back of the book says it’s for ages 9-100 or something like that. My friend who passed it down to me said it’s junior high level. My ’student’ is 5th grade and the level is perfect for us.
In the introduction the author writes that the book can be used at many levels, and that not everyone is expected to read every sidebar.
If you’re going to study American history in depth, I don’t think you could find a more comprehensive and interesting resource/spine/book than these.