In the elementary years I always taught science and history with lots of hands on activities. History was always done in Unit Study format with topics like the Civil War, Ancient Egypt, the Olympics, New York State History, Geography, Presidents and many more. Now that we have entered the years where I have to teach homeschool high school, I have switched to a more orderly fashion of combing through history.

If you look at my 4 Year High School Plan Printable you will see that we are to cover American History for 9th grade (with our Language Arts corresponding to this), World History (with our Language Arts corresponding to this)for 10th grade and then 1/2 of 11th on Economics, and 1/2 on Participation in Government. As for 12th grade, we have yet to decide what is in store so we have left it open to see where we end up.

For American History this year we are using America The Story of Us as a spine and then building out from there. I have used this series of posts from A Journey To Excellence to help me lay out our American History plan for the year.

For each Episode I create a Word Document that contains a list of everything our daughter needs to do for that Episode.  We spend about 3 weeks on each Episode, or really on the time period that the Episode focuses on.  She uses her Word Document as a checklist to plan out the unit over 3 weeks.

Things Included For Each America The Story of Us Episode:

1. Watching the Episode and answer the corresponding questions from the History Channel (Episode by Episode Guides)
2. Read one longer historical fiction book from that time period and answer the given Comprehension Questions (I usually find something by doing an Internet search for each book)
3. Various activities usually Internet links related to the topic
4. There are often related activities from America’s Heritage: An Adventure in Liberty by The American Heritage Education Foundation, Inc. (This is a free resource)
5. Read some shorter biographies and time period books to gather information
6. Watch a documentary or other related video to the time period
7. Complete a number of notebooking pages using all the information you have learned from the above resources

I really love this multi resource approach to learning. From reading historical fiction to doing related activities and watching relevant videos, it really allows your student to immerse themselves in the history. The notebooking pages can be created totally from scratch or you could buy notebooking pages.

Our daughter chose to make her own and she does them in Word on the computer.  I have included some sample photos of her notebooking pages as well as some buying options if you or your child don’t want to create something from scratch.  We printed all of her notebooking pages on card stock and at the end of the year we will bind them together to create a personalized history of the United States book for her to keep.

American History Notebooking Options:

• All American Bundle
• Notebooking American History from Colonization to Reconstruction
• Notebooking American History from Reconstruction to the Twenty-First Century

Join me on a journey through How I Teach Homeschool High School:

Precursor: So You’re Scared to Homeschool High School

Day 1: How I Teach Homeschool High School Language Arts

Day 2: How I Teach Homeschool High School Math

Day 3: How I Teach Homeschool High School Science

Day 4: How I Teach Homeschool High School History

Day 5: How I Teach Homeschool High School Fine Arts