Uncertain about History for next year

[familygirl]

Hello everyone!
I'm a newbie to HOD. I have four kids but only two are school age. Both are boys and both have bday's in May, so they will soon be 9 and 7 years old. Next year we'll be doing 4th and 2nd grade. I'm looking for a good American History program. This year we briefly studied Early American History so we really want to pick up around the Revolutionary War and continue hopefully thru the Civil War. I'm having a difficult time finding a curriculum to fit this critera but BiggerHFHG looks good. I looked at the placement chart and my oldest really fits the qualifications for PreparingHFHG better than BiggerHFHG, but we really want to do American History. Here are my questions:
Is BHFHG challenging enough (offering enough information) for a somewhat advanced 4th grader? I like the idea of the extension pack for older kids but it looks like alot of it pertains to early American History (I don't know what all of the books are about so I could be wrong about how much is going to interest us--I plan to look at the descriptions online). Also How are the books for the extension pack used, are they to replace the read alouds or the independant reading, or just be an add on to one/both?
How indepth is this history study? How much of the Revolutionary War (mainly the cause of) is covered? Civil War? I know this is a biographical study but I'm just wondering if it explains what brought about these conflicts and how they were resolved. It seems like 1500-1970 is a lot of coverage so I'm wondering if it will be as indepth as we'd like. I think it would work wonderfully for my 2nd grader (really wish I'd discovered this last year ) but I want us to spend time together learning this, so I don't want to use two different curriculums.
Any thoughts on how this would work out for us?
Thanks in advance for any insights your able to offer.
Oh one more thing, we definitly want to do a History timeline and possibly a notebook. How is that done in BHFHG?
Thank you!!

[wisdom4us]

Are you the mom from THL by chance?

I'm bumming this up so others will see it and answer some of your questions for you.

[familygirl]

Hey Summer,
Yeah It's me! I actually made another post because I was afraid this one had been overlooked. Thank you!!!!

[Carrie]

familygirl,

From what you've shared so far, it sounds like your kiddos would fit well within Bigger Hearts along with the Extension Pack for your older student. The Extension Pack is meant to be independently read by your 4th grader following the daily schedule provided in the Appendix of Bigger Hearts. It is intended to be done in addition to the rest of the readings within Bigger Hearts.

The notebooking in Bigger is done weekly according to the plans in the guide. Students are told exactly what to copy, map, or draw each week. The timeline is done inside a file folder. Students add entries weekly to correspond with the history readings.

Within Bigger, more time is definitely given to the early American time period due to that period being very important in the founding and law-making/governing of America. Time is also spent on exploration and expansion and on some of the major wars. We specifically chose to spend much less time on modern history as much of its content is war-filled and is very violent requiring a more mature student.

We find students actually gain a better understanding of the why's behind the history when viewing it through the lives of the people who lived it, rather than presenting history as a body of facts to be covered (which is how I learned history in my school days).

For your 4th grader, you would most likely need to add some of the right side of Preparing Hearts to raise the level of dictation passages, grammar instruction, and math. Or, you could use your own choices in those areas instead. You would also need to add Drawn into the Heart of Reading Level 4/5 for literature study.

Blessings,
Carrie

[sted]

Carrie,

My question is, do the dication exercised in Preparing and HIH go specifically with the History topic eg) ancients or world history or can they be used independantly. For instance if your child is doing Bigger with extensions, would it be "off" to use the right side of either of the higher programs? I'm proposing to do Bigger with all kids and then the left side of Heart in Him for my oldest because she's ready for that level. However, I noticed the Geography and Bible portions seem to closely tie to the Ancients theme. Is that a problem? eg) Genesis finding our roots, etc.

Thanks,
Shannon

[Carrie]

Shannon,

I'm thinking I may have already responded to this on another thread, however I'll just mention here that the dictation passages are not linked with the history study.

Blessings,
Carrie