Using The Mystery of History for High School Credit

One of the benefits of using The Mystery of History (MOH) is the ability to use it with a wide range of ages. Most people know that you can use The Mystery of History with elementary and junior high school students, but many parents are unaware that it can be used for high school credit as well.

I encourage you to first check with the laws and guidelines in your states regarding high school credits and graduation requirements because every state differs.

In most states, at least one year of world history is recommended. It does not have to cover all of world history in one year, however.  Because each volume of The Mystery of History covers what is going on all over the world during that time period, any volume of The Mystery of History can serve as a complete world history course:

• Vol. I Creation to Christ
• Vol. II The Early Church and the Middle Ages
• Vol. III The Renaissance, Reformation, and Growth of Nations
• Vol. IV Wars of Independence to Modern Times

To constitute as a credit, your child has to complete between 120-180 hours of work in a particular course with the average being around 150 hours. If you follow a traditional school calendar of a 36 week school year, that works out to approximately 4 hours per week. For those of us that work 4 days, the children need to work around one hour per day.

How The Mystery of History is Structured

Before each lesson in The Mystery of History is a pretest to see what the child knows about the upcoming lesson. After the lesson content, there are various activity suggestions for three different age groups: younger, middle students, and older students.

For the older students activities range from hands-on activities, research, writing assignments, or even drawing. For each lesson, it is also recommended that students make memory cards, add timeline figures to a timeline, and complete a map assignment. For assessment purposes, there are lesson quizzes, quarter tests, and a final exam. Several suggestions for further study of each lesson are listed in the back of the book such as historical fiction, living books, biographies, films, original works, etc.

Scheduling The Mystery of History for a High School Credit

This is how my teenage daughter organizes her MOH studies for high school credit. The week before, we plan the next week’s MOH lessons by choosing additional resources from the supplement section.

At the beginning of the new week, she takes the pretest. Then she reads one lesson per day for three days, completing the activities listed for all students and older students. Often there are several options to choose from, and I allow her to choose those that most interest her. All of the assignments are stored in a three-ring history notebook. On the fourth day of the week, she completes the time line figures, memory cards, map assignments, and final quiz. Grades are based on a combination of each individual assignment completed, quiz scores, and test scores.

Not only did we find plenty of options to make sure the minimum time requirement for a high school credit was met, using The Mystery of History gave my high schooler a thorough look at world history. She found it interesting and enjoyable and was well prepared for history classes in college.