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My ds11 is planning to study U.S. history next year using Joy Hakim's History of US series. I'm trying to decide between using the Bookshark (secular form of Sonlight) curriculum or taking an Online G3 class, both of which use the Hakim series as a main text. If anyone has used either of these, I would welcome your comments. Thanks.

I bought the whole series of Joy Hakim's History of US. I found it overly simple. Maybe the OnlineG3 class is better, but the books themselves leave a lot to be desired.

Thanks, Portia. What would you recommend for US history?

We used the concise edition of A History of US (which is targeted to 5th and 6th graders) when my son was 9, and he loved it. When he was 12, we used The American Odyssey (high school text) and he enjoyed that as well. If it helps, my son is HG, and history and social science have always been his favorite subjects.

(I will say that I can't stand the regular version of A History of US.)

I could not find anything I loved. So he read biographies of key figures within the US and we spent a semester traveling the colonial states. Our next trip, we plan to go out West.

Thanks, Kai. This is helpful. I will take a look at The American Odyssey. Did you use any materials to supplement?

Your combination of study and travel sounds fabulous.

It's not a curriculum, and probably not up to date, but when I was in college I found "A People's History of The United States" by Howard Zinn life changing. It addresses topics that are either not taught or minimized by our traditional history courses (if you watch Good Will Hunting you will hear Matt Damon's character mention it as the "right" books to have). It's brutally honest about our history.

The Joy Hakim books are NOT simple. They are visually appealing and have distractions in side bars, but simple is not a word I'd use about them. They are a strong middle school curriculum. We used G3 and found the discussions great and depth of thought was encouraged.

I agree with this.

They are simple in comparison to a college text, as is any resource targeting middle schoolers. Now, it is likely that a gifted child in the target age range might be beyond them--they were perfect for my son at 9, but would not have been enough at 12--but they are *much* better than typical middle school fare.

And for those of us who are driven crazy by the wandering prose and the crowded, busy pages of the original series, the concise version fixes most of that without taking anything away.

Yes. First, we did it in conjunction with American literature, so there was all that. Here is what we did that was for history specifically:

A People's History of the United States
1491
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Up from Slavery
The Souls of Black Folk (selections)
Black Elk Speaks
Education for Extinction
Black Like Me

Also, these books from our literature study dealt specifically with topics we were studying in history:

Uncle Tom's Cabin
The Jungle
The Grapes of Wrath

My son read this as part of our history studies when he was 11. He loved it, and is now a huge fan of Howard Zinn.

Thanks for the booklist.

I have heard that Zinn's People's History is very interesting, but I've not yet read it.

I found a few chapters of The American Odyssey online, and I like the writing style much more than History of Us. I also noticed a world history text, Human Odyssey, in the same series. Did you use this as well, Kai? If so, did you do world history or US history first?

My son read the Story of the World books for pleasure in early elementary, but for the last two years, we've been studying the history of science using Aristotle Leads the Way and Newton at the Center. This will be our first formal survey of world or US history, and I keep wavering on which to do first.

We used the Human Odyssey series for middle schoolers (there is an adapted version of this series called World History: Our Human Story for high schoolers) after A History of US and before American Odyssey. My son loved the Human Odyssey books so much that I read them to him like a bedtime story when he was 10.

After American Odyssey, we used the college text Ways of the World, though our homeschooling was interrupted after we finished the ancients, and we haven't finished it yet.

This is good to know. I think my son will enjoy the narrative style of the Human/American Odyssey books. I think we may start with Human Odyssey. Thanks for your help, Kai.

The author was an avowed socialist and wrote the book to advance socialism. If my children get the book from the library, so be it, but I would not recommend it to them. A review from the New York Times by Walter Kirn is here.

See, that's why I like it. However, I agree that it needs to be balanced with other views, so I wouldn't (and didn't) assign it in isolation.

I previewed A People's History of the United States via Amazon's "Look Inside" feature and in the first pages the following occurred to me:
1) The time period pre-dates the establishment of the United States by approximately 300 years.
2) The landmass described is Bahamas and Cuba, not what became the United States.
3) "Spaniards" are described, motivated by a quest for gold and a route to the Orient... whereas the ancestors/founders of the US were largely English and motivated by a quest for freedom from religious persecution.

In the "Afterword" Zinn reveals his aims/purpose, his bias/perspective, and that his work drew criticism regarding omissions... similar to the criticisms which he had given earlier works about their omissions. While Zinn extols socialism, I do not see that profits from his authorship were distributed to those of lesser means... if this occurred, it did not come to my attention.

There is good and bad in everything. Be cautious. Ask questions.

Indigo's counter-argument is actually a strong recommendation for the book, because without checking with other sources coming from different perspectives, you might come to believe such nonsense as "the ancestors/founders of the US were largely English and motivated by a quest for freedom from religious prosecution," or that a man whose name is given to a national holiday, the national capital, five US counties, and 12 US cities is somehow inconsequential to US history.

While you may disagree, labeling my post as "nonsense" is insulting and violates Board Rules. Please provide sources which inform your view as to the motivation... here are some which inform my view that motivation included freedom from religious persecution:
1) Library of Congress, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic - America as a Religious Refuge
2) PBS - Destination America - Why did they come?

There is also a South American Country of Colombia... and the Canadian Province of British Colombia. While not "inconsequential" to events which unfolded 300 years later on a separate landmass... just not part of the United States due to separation of time and space.

A few thoughts on Joy Hakim's history...

1) from wikipedia:
2) from Joy Hakim's website: These books may not be geared for gifted pupils.

I did not label your post as "nonsense," but I did label the ideas as nonsense, which is verifiable fact.

Of the 13 original colonies, five can be said to have been initially formed from a primary motive of establishing religious freedom. Let's not pretend the other 8 didn't exist.

Three of the thirteen colonies, plus parts of others, were formed by the Dutch. Germans made up the largest group of non-English immigrants, though waves of immigrants from Scotland, Ireland, and Sweden had already made the place a melting pot before the Revolution began.

A few books of historical fiction to consider adding to a reading list:
- Johnny Tremain (revolutionary war)
- Across Five Aprils (civil war)
- Oscar's Gift: Planting Words with Oscar Micheaux (independently published middle-grade novel, by former SENG director Lisa Rivero, 2011)

The Library of Congress link shared upthread does mention religious persecution for people of these regions.

Then perhaps it's the kind of biased account that it would do well to offset by sources offering a different perspective.

You appeared to counter the idea in my post regarding religious persecution, calling it nonsense. I invited you to share a source which informed your view, and so far you have not. I have shared multiple sources which informed my view that religious persecution was a factor.

You may not like the sources I cited but they do include images of primary source documents, which may be taken as "verifiable fact."

The invitation remains open for you to share resources which inform your view(s).

Meanwhile the links which I have shared (Library of Congress, PBS, and book list) may be considered supplemental resources for the OP and others seeking materials for teaching US History to their middle school age children.

It looks like you've already abandoned your original position that "the ancestors/founders of the US were largely English and motivated by a quest for freedom from religious prosecution," and have moved to "religion was a factor," at which point we no longer have a disagreement.

Even your book from the Library of Congress contradicts your original position:


And except for the fact that the author is grossly oversimplifying in the cast of New Jersey, and flat-out wrong in incorporating New Hampshire into the areas he's citing, and just partially wrong in the case of Pennsylvania because Quakers were already a minority by the time the Revolution began, I don't disagree with the above.

Again, five of thirteen do not a majority make.


It's a lot easier if you've only read a few books, but I'd basically have to give you source material on every single one of the colonies that I'm aggregating and condensing here for you. My list of sources would be ridiculously long and unwieldy. If you wanted to talk about any particular colony, that would be more manageable. But we're talking about over a century's worth of complicated history over hundreds of thousands of square miles, in a time where lack of communication and fast transit meant that history was very local.

But honestly, you could simply go to Wikipedia and find out why each colony was formed. You could see there that New Jersey was first settled by the Dutch West India Company and the Swedish South Company for profit motives (the Dutch acquired the Swedish section by force, then the British acquired both from the Dutch the same way), and that it was only after the British gained control and its new proprietors began enticing renters that religion became a factor for new settlers - and even then, it's only a factor, because it's literally a single item in an otherwise comprehensive agreement: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/nj02.asp

Demographics of Pennsylvania Colony


These are estimates, of course, but it leaves only about 42% of the population to be divided among the remaining groups: English, Native Americans, Africans, and "others." The English cannot have been a majority.

1) You have misquoted my post.
2) I have not changed my position.
3) The LOC link supports and informs my view "...motivated by a quest for freedom from religious persecution"
4) Although you appear to have labeled religious persecution as "nonsense", you have not provided a source which informs your view(s).
5) Whereas I spoke of founding fathers and their ancestors being English as opposed to "Spaniards", you have changed the topic to demographics of the 13 colonies.

That is different than you providing a source which informs your view that what I posted was "nonsense."

1) In general, a weebly website is not on par with Library of Congress and/or PBS. Students of history (and other topics) are often encouraged to seek out credible sources, and are encouraged to become familiar with distinguishing characteristics/features of credible sources.
2) The specific weebly website which you referenced does not provide basic information such as: author, sources, bibliography, purpose of website, etc.
3) The weebly website discusses the demographics of Pennsylvania only, not of all 13 colonies.
4) The weebly website does not discuss the motivation of settlers (freedom from religious persecution, etc)

In this post, the takeaway for the OP and others interested in resources for teaching their middle-school children US History would be: distinguishing characteristics/features of credible sources, Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab).

My kid is gifted and used it at ages 9 and 10 and it was appropriate. But thanks for prediction that "some may find them geared towards a lower level, and frustrating". Never sure who those "some" are that are so frequently referred to. I don't think she GEARED them toward anyone. I think she wrote them.
Textbook league is William Bennetta. Anyone wondering about him can google him.
At the time we were using the series, there was a well organized campaign against them as anti Christian by the new earth crowd. They are quite secular and enlightening. I thoroughly enjoyed reading them as an adult and did not feel they were simple or talking down at all. Primary sources are good, and are taught in G3 with this series, and it helps to have some glue to bind them together for context.

Wikipedia is OK to quote when it suits one's purposes but "In general, a weebly website is not on par with Library of Congress and/or PBS. Students of history (and other topics) are often encouraged to seek out credible sources, and are encouraged to become familiar with distinguishing characteristics/features of credible sources."

Good points, spaghetti.

Please note that what was quoted from wikipedia was aptly labeled by wikipedia as opinion ("Criticism") on the works and was properly cited as to the source of the viewpoint.

The snippet from wikipedia did not stand alone but was shared primarily because it coincided/matched/meshed with what was posted on the author's own website about successful use with low achieving students.

This seems to also fit with your experience, in using the works with a gifted student younger than the target audience of middle schoolers.

Saying that the books may not be geared for gifted pupils is just another way of expressing that they may not have been written/intended for an audience of gifted pupils.

Some parents of gifted middle schoolers seeking materials for teaching US History may appreciate having this information presented for their consideration in selecting resources.

Except for the Catholics, the Act of Toleration of 1689 rendered unnecessary any emigration to the Colonies for religious reasons for most Englishmen. It certainly protected the Puritans and the Quakers.

Hopefully the Smithsonian meets the standards of secondary sources - here's the story of how most English settlers were motivated by poverty, not religion.