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Let me preface this by saying that I would not feel the need to do this if we had been doing HOD all along. The last time we did HOD was several years ago when we did Beyond. For the past three years, we have done Classical Conversations and used their history sequence as a springboard for all history activities and readings. So three years ago we did US, two years ago we did ancients, and this past year an overview of world history with a slightly more concentrated focus in Middle Ages. However, we had a horrible school year this year with a lot of illness/hospitalizations/missed school. All in all, it was a wash. We are finally on an upward swing now and I am anticipating a great school year for 2017-2018! My kids are now DD-11 and DS-9 and will be starting 6th and 4th grades. I am going to use Preparing with both of them and the extension pack for my 6th grade DD. The one hang up I have is that it has been a long time since we did US history. Had we been continuing with CC, we would be dong US history this year. But for several reasons, we are not continuing with CC and I am confident in switching to HOD for our main curriculum. Starting them both in Preparing will mean that we won't hit US history again for three years. I'm planning on beefing up every year for my older DD and just continuing the sequence.

Some changes that I have already decided to do for my DD:
Sub Detectives in Togas for Bronze Bow, because we read BB last year
Omit the Pastuer biography/just have her do the same one as my DS
Start Journey to American where Pastuer would start and then add Esperenza Rising
also maybe add Phoebe the Spy somewhere?

As I'm looking over the end weeks of Preparing, I just starting wondering if I should pause before WWI/WWII and do a little more early US history for both of them. After a couple/few weeks, then pick up the guide again and finish. Does anyone have ideas of how I could do that? What books/resources to use?

One possibility is to use the history books from Beyond and Bigger as "read alouds" over the summer. They are delightful books, so I think you and your children would enjoy them and learn a lot just from reading through them. I like to read to my children over breakfast and lunch, as well as "teatime" in the afternoon, and it's amazing how much can be covered in that time, without it feeling like "school." If your children like to read, you could also supplement with books from the library, which they could read independently.

The books you are talking about are extension books. Since they aren't let to the program, you could definitely switch some out. I would suggest picking books from Bigger to use: Journeys in Time, The Wright Brothers, and Thomas Edison would be good choices to have her read. If you still have Beyond, and and all of the history books would be good options as well.

Thanks

To clarify, I mean for both of them, not just my DD. I'm wanting to do a little more than read alouds. Like add in a few weeks of history readings and a project and maybe even some timeline events, probably after week 31 (Wars and Revolutions) and then pick up with week 32 (Napoleon) after a few weeks of concentrated US history.

My son started homeschooling with Preparing. He had zero US history in ps. We did the guides just as written and it worked out very well. I think if you try and add too much to Preparing you will miss out on the fact that it is just designed to lay some groundwork for future guides. I think the tendency would be to cover too much detail and overwhelm. The beauty of Preparing is that it gives the students just the right amount of "pegs" to hang future information on. We did watch Liberty Kids DVD as well as a few of the Drive Thru History DVD's the summer after Preparing, but that was it. They get lots of US history in the future guides, probably way more than most other curriculum's.