Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments History of US

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.