US History Curriculum

Homeschool Review Crew

Recently we’ve been going through a new US History Curriculum.  We’re huge fans of history in our house and often combine three or four different curriculums that go over the same time period.  Since we’re currently studying US History it was easy to incorporate another curriculum into our school.  This curriculum is from Pathway to Liberty Homeschool Curriculum sent to us as part of the Homeschool Review Crew.  We received a year of Pathway to Liberty’s Homeschool Curriculum titled Pathway to Liberty’s US History.  

Our US history curriculum came to us in physical form.  I received the teacher’s book as well as levels one, two, and three to use with my children.  Additional resources sent included the Chain of Liberty book for student and for teachers.  These books are large and spiral bound.

Pathway to Liberty is a curriculum that can be used with more than one student and more than one age.  Each student will need their own student book but only one teacher’s guide is needed for all levels.  There are four levels to their US History Curriculum but I did not have a child old enough to use level four.  

You can find some links to learn more about their curriculum HERE and HERE on Youtube.  

The Curriculum

This curriculum follows a popular pattern of having four years of instruction.  For Pathway to Liberty Year 1 is Universal History, Year 2 is The Middle Ages, Year 3 is US History, and Year 4 is World History.

Each Year has four different levels of student books so that they can be a bit more geared to student age.  Level 1 is for ages K5 through 3rd grade.  Grades 4th through 6th are Level 2.  Level 3 is geared towards grades 7th through 9th and lastly, Level 4 is for grades 10th through 12th.  

My children vary from preschool or what would be considered K5 up through 8th grade so we received Levels 1, 2, and 3 to go with our US history curriculum level which is also Year 3.  Each student should have their own student book however so I only am using this with three students for this review.

Other supplemental books that we received is the Chain of Liberty student and teacher books.  These are to go with the curriculum.  You will also need a variety of reading books.  Most can be found at your local library or are available for purchase on Amazon/online bookstores.  We actually had several of these already since we are doing US History this year and they are popular books.  

This curriculum is available in two forms.  You can purchase it as a digital download and then just print out the books needed for each student or you can purchase physical copies.  I opt for physical in most instances.  This means that I have to purchase a copy of the student book for each child.  Because we have enjoyed the curriculum so far if I wish to keep using it I will need to purchase several more copies of the student books on different levels.

Our Thoughts

We love history in our home.  In fact, as I’ve mentioned before, we love it so much we reenact both the Civil War and WWII.  I love both time periods as do my husband and children.  Because of this we actually have a lot of knowledge and do quite a bit of free reading on both periods.  Some US history curriculum just don’t contain enough additional information to make us want to use them.  That is not the case thankfully with this one.

This curriculum is jam-packed with knowledge.  Not only is it full of information but it also challenges students to think and form opinions.  I love that each week has a Bible verse for them to memorize.  Each week also has a principle and leading idea laid out for them. 

Sometimes a teacher guide is optional in my opinion.  This curriculum is not that way.  You are going to need and use often your US History Curriculum teacher’s guide.  In fact, my book already has some issues with the spiral binding catching in places because I’ve used it so much!  I do love that it is spiral bound though as it makes it so much easier to use.  

How We’re Using this US History Curriculum

As I mentioned, we received levels 1, 2, and 3.  I have been having my K5 age daughter(she will be 6 this month) use level 1.  Level 2 has been being used by my 8-year-old daughter doing 4th-grade coursework while level 3 has been handed off to my 12-year-old son who is doing a combo 7th and 8th grade this year.  He’s doing both grades because he wants to be the same grade as his older sister and so we’re working on catching up.  He’s doing amazing at that and so I wanted to see how he would do with this history curriculum.  History is definitely something that interests him so I knew he would make time for this.

This curriculum is very comprehensive and covers quite a bit of material.  It is to be used four days a week.  We chose to use that scheduling. It works well for us as we do a town day to go get our milk every week.  Having that day as a light day really helps keep us feeling like we’re not falling behind. 

Level 1 

The lower levels require more parent involvement.  I find that I spend a good hour working through this each day with my K5 daughter.  It’s not that the material is hard for her as much as it’s just a lot of information and reading that I want to make sure she understands.  She is not writing well yet so we tend to have her orally answer questions and if something really needs to be written I will do the writing or hold her hand and guide her through the writing.

I really do think that the information levels are grade appropriate.  This curriculum is good!  It has so much knowledge right there for our kids and I’m really enjoying going through it.   

Back to level 1.  I love copy work.  It’s a great way to practice handwriting for kids.  We also love having memory verses.  These are great!  This level is very adaptable for the parent which is good because it really covers a wide range of ages with the K5 through 3rd grades.  There are a lot of skills that are learned during that span and I feel it does a good job of making it learnable for the whole range while also not too hard for the young or too simple for the older.  

Level 2

Moving on to level 2.  My daughter at this level is doing 4th-grade work but her writing skills need some work as we’ve not done a ton of essay type writing.  This curriculum includes one such work per week and I think that is wonderful for her!  It’s really helping her work on her writing while she’s learning history.  Definitely a plus for us.  Another fun thing that this level adds to the prior is research.  Children get to work on research topics that they then write about.  Again, this isn’t something she’s done a lot of before and I really have enjoyed this aspect.  

Level 2 includes some of the same books to be read as well as more age-appropriate books.  They build on each other so that if your child is doing this particular Year of history for a second time but in a different level they are still learning and gaining new knowledge of the time period.  This is one of the reasons I really am enjoying this curriculum. 

Level 3

For my level 3 son, I’ve been more hands off.  I make sure he has all the reading materials.  At the beginning of each week, we have a short chat about what he’s going to be doing and what I expect of him.  Then at the end of the week, we have another short chat to go over anything I’ve noticed in his work that I’d like improved and to see what he thought of the work that week.  I’m trying to make him more accountable for his schooling.  He knows also that he can come to me at any time with questions.  

He is also doing writing and research. His papers are 2-5 paragraphs in length(or I don’t turn away longer ones) and his research goes deeper.  He’s learning to apply logic and reasoning to his work.  I talk with him and ask things like “if you were this person why do you think they made this decision”.  He is expected to reason out why they chose their choice and if that was a good choice plus why or why not.  I am loving our conversations and seeing why he chooses different answers.  His brain and mine don’t always follow the same paths but I love hearing him back up his choice. 

Level 4

While I am not using Level 4 this year it will only be a few years before I have a child this grade level.  Some things that are noted for this and that I’m really learning about now myself are credit hours.  This course provides you with 1 credit of history, 1/2 credit of Bible, and 1 to 1-1/2 credits of English.  Knowing this makes this a great choice for history as it can also give you extra credits or provide the other credits as well.  My oldest daughter and the 12-year-old son are starting 9th grade this fall and I’ve been spending a lot of time learning about credit hours and how many and what kinds we will be needing.   

Chain of Liberty

This book was written by the author of the Pathway to Liberty US History Curriculum. It is also used throughout this Year of their four-year program.  I can’t speak to whether it is used in other years or not but it is a well-written book about the rights of man and to what degree he should be given them.  

I personally read the entire teachers guide and student book.  They are well written and have a lot of history plus information about man’s rights and why men fight for them.  It definitely encourages free thinking and the right to be able to form your own thoughts and opinions as well as speak them.  I really do want my children to learn how to think for themselves and not just regurgitate facts and figures that others have taught them so I greatly appreciate this book being part of the curriculum.

Teacher’s Guide

The teacher’s guide is essential.  Let me say that again, the teacher’s guide is essential.  Do not skip buying it thinking you’ll save a bit of money.  There are pages and resources in the teacher’s guide that are to be used with students that are not in their student books.  So much information is in here!

Your lesson plans for each level and how to integrate the levels together are within this book.  There are also plans on how to integrate not only history but reading, Bible, literature, writing, geography and so much more into this one course.  I’m always a sucker for getting more bang for our buck and this curriculum is going to cover almost all of your subjects right here in one spot.  

We have made use of the Expanded Reading Chart.  This gives me book basket books to have on hand for anyone wanting to read more.  I also love the Bible lessons and verses.  Maps and vocab are also great to have and they are in here.  I especially love the maps so I don’t have to go tracking those down on the computer.  There are also word studies.  It’s so important to make sure our kids know what the words they’re reading actually mean in context.  

You are going to use this for all four levels.  I can speak for the first three levels at least and yes I have used this repeatedly.  Again, see that the cover on the picture I share is mussed and the binding is already needing to be fixed.  It’s definitely a resource that is well loved and we haven’t even done a quarter of the year yet. 

Learn More

You can learn more about the different years as well as levels by reading the rest of the Crew reviews.  We share only about the US History Curriculum year but there are three other years to read about as well.  Plus you will want to find someone who has used Level 4 as well.  These are linked up on the Main Blog Post over on the Homeschool Review Crew blog.  Reviewers got to choose which Year of the course they wanted to review as well as which level or levels they could use.  Pathway to Liberty also has a presence on facebook, twitter, Pinterest, youtube, and Instagram.