From the High School Lesson Book - A Resource Collection for History and Social Studies

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History has been my favorite subject to teach throughout our homeschooling years. So it might seem odd that I don't have a long list of recommended curriculum. But truthfully, we found something that we really liked and worked great for us, and all four kids used that. So the result is that we did not use a whole lot of anything else during the high school years. Here are the ones we did use and warmly recommend:

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History courses from Notgrass have been our choice throughout high school. All of my students have used Exploring World History and Exploring America, and I've been recommending it for as long as we've been using it. Both of these high school level courses are worth three full credits when a student completes them just as they are laid out. The history credit is obvious, but there's also a full English or Literature credit and a full Bible credit, if all of the work is completed. This can be pretty much an open and go curriculum that doesn't require extra lesson planning and scheduling from the teacher, since the textbook tells the student what to read and what the assignments are. It's recommended that a student plan to spend two to three hours per day on the course.

The curriculum consists of a textbook in two volumes, along with a book of essays, speeches, poetry, and excerpts from larger works of literature. There are 30 units of five lessons each, and in general the first four lessons of each unit focus on History, and the last one is a Bible or Biblical worldview lesson. There's an optional Quiz and Exam Book to go along with the study. It contains some comprehension questions for each of the lessons and for the novels, and midterm and semester exams.

We did not use the full reading list for the Literature portion, and did not do all the writing assignments suggested, but even with only a half credit worth of Literature, there was a lot of material in each of these courses, well-rounded and interesting. For that Literature component, I assigned all the essays and poems but only some of the novels. 

Read more in my post: Exploring History with Notgrass 

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We did not use these courses in our homeschool, but I learned enough about them to confidently recommend Exploring Government and Exploring Economics from Notgrass as well. These are both one-semester, half-credit courses. 

Coming hot off the presses right now is Exploring World Geography from Notgrass. This is a full year course covering physical and human geography, world religions, and culture. If I still had a student in my homeschool, I can almost guarantee we'd be doing this course this coming school year. There's part of me that is considering teaching it at our co-op next school year just so I have an excuse to buy it. That's how much I like Notgrass curriculum.

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Cultural Geography from BJUPress is a curriculum package my daughter used and it is a very interesting and thorough study. It's a course that is intended to be one year, but there's so much to it that we spread it over two years which allowed us to take a bit slower pace and to add some other extras to it. 

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For a wide range of high school level history courses, take a look at SchoolhouseTeachers.com. We found plenty of material that we could use from the selection there, but as supplements to anything else we were studying. There are a number of full courses available to choose from, as well as shorter courses and unit studies. One I relied on often during my daughter's senior year studying American history was United States History: Exploration to Present Day. The course has a printable text that I could draw from, along with links to videos and photos that were very helpful.

 

I'm a HUGE fan of the Drive Thru History series, and SchoolhouseTeachers has it! Dave Stotts makes history fun and memorable as he invites viewers along on his road trips through history. Drive Thru History: American History is a great overview and very entertaining!

These are just a couple of the history courses at SchoolhouseTeachers.com.

There's a very interesting Classical Archaeology course that I enjoyed reading on my own, and that provided extra material when we studied ancient history and some art history.

During high school, many students study Civics or Government, and SchoolhouseTeachers has courses to help you out there as well, with Constitution and Bill of Rights and others.

And of course there are other courses that would fall in the category of High School Social Studies, including Economics and many others.

Just a few more days to take advantage of the sale pricing at SchoolhouseTeachers.com. Through August 31, 2020  the coupons code SHARK at checkout gives you access to these courses and everything else - over 400 courses at all grade levels - for two years.

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As always, I'd be delighted to answer further questions about these resources, or any questions you may have about homeschooling. 

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