Exploring World History (Notgrass)

Exploring World History is a two-volume, one-year world history course for high school from Notgrass History, the family-run Tennessee publisher founded by Ray and Charlene Notgrass. It awards three credits, history, English, and Bible, in a single narrative package, which is its central selling proposition and its central design tension.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Literature-based / narrative textbook / primary-source reader
Worldview	Christian-evangelical (broadly Protestant; non-denominational)
Grades	9-12
Formats	Print (two-volume textbook + anthology + student review pack)
Cost tier	Standard
Parent intensity	3
ESA-common	Varies by state
Accredited	No (materials only; families choose their own accreditation path)
Established	1999 (company); 2014 first edition of Exploring World History
Website	notgrass.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	4	College-prep narrative with serious primary-source anthology; lighter on historiographical argument
Ease of teaching	4	Self-directed reading; the student is the audience, not the parent
Content quality	4	Warm prose, broad chronological sweep, respectable scope from antiquity through the early twenty-first century
Flexibility	3	Designed as a three-credit bundle; unbundling is possible but forfeits the design logic
Value for money	4	One purchase yields three credits; competitive against single-subject alternatives
Worldview scope	2	Christian narrative integrated throughout; not positioned as neutral survey
Visual/design	3	Photography-heavy two-color interior; readable and uncluttered, not lavish
Support resources	3	Solid sample work and placement tools; thinner video or digital supplementation than larger publishers

Who the publisher is

Notgrass History is a family publishing company based in Tennessee. Ray Notgrass, its president and lead curriculum author, holds a bachelor's in history from Middle Tennessee State University, a master's in history from the University of Kentucky, and a master's in New Testament from Harding University. Charlene Notgrass, who oversees curriculum development, holds a degree from Middle Tennessee State. The couple began homeschooling in 1990 and formally launched the publishing company in 1999, after a decade of writing materials for their own three children. The company now produces a full K-12 social studies lineup, but its identity remains centered on the high school courses, Exploring World History, Exploring America, Exploring Government, and Exploring Economics.

The tone is homespun. Notgrass answers the phone. The company has a reputation in the homeschool convention circuit for being reachable, a family can email Ray and receive a reply from Ray. This is rarer than it sounds.

Theologically, Notgrass is broadly evangelical and non-denominational. The curriculum is written from the premise that God is active in history and that the Bible is historically reliable, but the publisher does not align with a particular denomination, does not take the hard young-earth creationist posture some competitors do, and does not position itself as confessional. Families from across the evangelical spectrum. Reformed, Wesleyan, Baptist, non-denominational, Pentecostal, tend to use Notgrass without friction. Catholic families who use the materials typically supplement Church history sections with their own resources.

The core pedagogy

Exploring World History is a narrative course. The student reads. Two hardcover volumes of Notgrass-written text, a companion anthology titled In Their Words containing primary-source documents and literary selections, and a Bible study component make up the full package. The text is written in a conversational voice aimed directly at the student. Parents play a scheduling-and-grading role more than a teaching role, which is the core difference between Notgrass and the textbook-and-lecture model of Abeka or BJU.

Scope and sequence is ambitious. The course opens with creation and the ancient Near East and runs through roughly 2014, with chapters devoted to Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, early Church, medieval Europe, the Islamic world, East Asia, Africa, the Americas, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the modern nation-state, the world wars, the Cold War, and the early twenty-first century. One hundred fifty lessons spread across thirty units. A student reads roughly one lesson per school day, with a weekly rhythm that alternates textbook reading, primary-source reading from the anthology, and Bible reading from the integrated study.

Signature mechanics: (1) Three credits from one course. When used as written, the course awards one year of world history, one year of high school English, and one year of Bible. The English credit is earned through the literature built into the anthology and the writing assignments integrated into the schedule; the Bible credit through the paired devotional readings. (2) Student-directed reading. The lesson plan tells the student what to read and write each day; the parent checks work and administers the weekly review quizzes from the separately sold student review pack. (3) Primary sources at the center. The anthology is not a token supplement, it is a genuine literature reader, and a significant portion of the English credit depends on reading it. (4) No video dependency. Unlike Abeka Academy or Sonlight's newer digital products, Notgrass has historically been a print-first publisher. A streaming supplement exists for some courses; it is optional and supplementary, not the backbone.

A day in the life

A tenth-grader using Exploring World History opens volume one after breakfast. Roughly forty-five minutes of textbook reading covers one lesson, say, the expansion of the Roman Republic. Then thirty minutes of reading from In Their Words, which for this lesson might be a Livy passage or a section of Plutarch. Writing assignments appear twice a week; on those days the student spends another thirty to forty-five minutes drafting an essay or short response against a prompt the textbook provides. Twice a week there is a Bible reading, paired to the historical period, and a short reflection. Fridays bring a unit review quiz administered by the parent. Total daily load is typically two to two and a half hours across the three credits combined, which is the point: the student gets three credits without three separate course schedules.

A parent using the course as a single-subject history course (rather than the full three-credit bundle) can compress this further. Drop the anthology readings that function as English, drop the Bible study, assign the textbook chapters alone, and the daily load falls to forty-five minutes to an hour. The course is not designed to be used this way but tolerates it. The signature efficiency, one course, three credits, is forfeited in exchange.

What they do exceptionally well

Narrative history at the high school level. The writing is good. Not academic, not literary, but a steady, readable adult register that neither condescends to teenagers nor drowns them in jargon. A strong tenth-grader reads Notgrass without complaint; a weaker tenth-grader follows the thread. This is harder than it sounds. Many Christian-publisher history textbooks read like a compression of primary sources and worldview talking points into prose that feels dutiful. Exploring World History feels written.

The anthology. In Their Words is the quiet strength of the program. The companion volume includes primary-source documents (speeches, treaties, letters), literary selections (Homer, Augustine, Dante excerpts, Shakespeare, Dickens, Solzhenitsyn), and short historical essays paired to each textbook chapter. Reading the anthology seriously delivers a meaningful English credit; skipping it does not.

Three-credit efficiency. For families with a high school student who needs history, English, and Bible but who cannot run three separate courses with three separate teachers, Notgrass is the clearest answer on the market. The design holds together. The textbook, the anthology, and the Bible readings reinforce each other.

Accessibility across the evangelical spectrum. The Christian framing is present throughout but not confessionally narrow. A family from a Reformed tradition and a family from a Pentecostal tradition can each use the course without finding content that contradicts their theology. This is rarer in Christian curriculum than one might expect; Abeka leans Baptist, BJU leans fundamentalist-Baptist, Sonlight leans broadly evangelical-missionary, Veritas leans classical-Reformed. Notgrass is the most denominationally neutral of the group.

What they do poorly

Historiography. The course teaches what happened. It does less to teach how historians argue about what happened. A student finishes Exploring World History knowing the chronology of Rome; a student finishes a strong secular AP World course arguing about periodization, causation, and primary-source interpretation. Notgrass does not attempt the second and families whose graduates plan to study history at the university level should supplement.

Science of history. Because the course opens at creation and treats biblical chronology as reliable history, the prehistoric and ancient-world sections handle dates, archaeology, and comparative civilizations on the publisher's own terms rather than on mainstream academic consensus. Families aligned with the publisher's theology will not find this a weakness; families who want a course that engages with current academic scholarship in archaeology and comparative religion will.

Production values. The textbook is a competent two-color interior on reasonable paper. It is not a full-color lavish production in the manner of a modern high school college-prep textbook. The photography is good, the design is clean, but next to a Pearson or Houghton Mifflin world history survey, Notgrass looks plainer. Whether this matters is a matter of taste and price. Notgrass is much cheaper than a Pearson textbook adoption.

Thin digital supplementation. Notgrass is print-first. Streaming, LMS integration, auto-graded quizzes, and video lectures exist in limited form but are not the company's center of gravity. Families who want a fully digital high school course experience will find the Notgrass experience feels older than its 2014 first edition implies.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Exploring World History if: you want one purchase to cover three high school credits; you have a student who reads well and works semi-independently; you are broadly evangelical and comfortable with Scripture integrated into history readings; you want a literature-rich course built around primary sources rather than textbook-only coverage; you value a family publisher that answers the phone.

• Skip Exploring World History if: you are secular, Catholic, or Orthodox and want a history course without integrated biblical framing; you want a course that emphasizes historiographical debate and engages with current academic archaeology; your student needs video instruction or a full LMS experience; you need an AP-aligned course that explicitly prepares for the AP World History exam; you want to buy history and English as separate subjects.

Cost honest assessment

The full Exploring World History curriculum package, two hardcover textbooks, the In Their Words anthology, the student review pack, and answer key, retails at roughly $125 from the publisher's shop as of April 2026. Individual component pricing is available for families buying replacement parts. A streaming supplement is sold separately when offered for a given course.

Compared to a single-subject world history course from a competing Christian publisher, Abeka's high school World History runs roughly $175-$225 for the student text, teacher edition, and tests; Sonlight's History/Bible/Literature 300 core runs $700-$900 for the literature-based core at that grade, Notgrass sits in the middle on sticker price and at the top on credit yield per dollar. A family using the course as designed pays one hundred twenty-five dollars and awards three credits. That math is hard to match.

A realistic all-in for one tenth-grader using Notgrass as a three-credit bundle runs $125-$160 including the student review pack and any optional streaming access.

ESA eligibility notes

Notgrass History does not currently advertise a dedicated ESA ordering workflow on the publisher site, but Notgrass materials are sold through multiple ESA-approved retailers, most notably Christianbook and Rainbow Resource, which are approved vendors on several state marketplaces including Arizona's ClassWallet, Florida's Step Up For Students, and West Virginia's Hope Scholarship. Families on ESA should purchase Notgrass through a retailer already provisioned on their state's marketplace rather than directly from the publisher. State-specific restrictions on religious curriculum vary; Arizona and Florida typically permit, while some restricted-use programs do not. Verify within the specific state marketplace before ordering.

Alternatives

• Sonlight History/Bible/Literature, a family would pick Sonlight over Notgrass because Sonlight replaces the single narrative textbook with a reading list of thirty-plus real books per year and leans more heavily into literature-as-history.
• BJU Press World History, a family would pick BJU over Notgrass for a more traditional textbook-and-test high school experience with stronger teacher support materials and optional video instruction.
• Mystery of History (Volume IV), a family would pick Mystery of History over Notgrass for a modular, chronologically organized course that can be adapted across multiple grade levels and that takes the biblical narrative as its spine more explicitly than Notgrass does.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Exploring World History curriculum listing, sample chapters, and scope documents available on shop.notgrass.com in April 2026, along with the publisher's own company history and author biographies. We cross-referenced against Cathy Duffy's published review of the Notgrass high school history line and the Rainbow Resource product pages for the Notgrass catalog. Pricing retrieved from the publisher's shop in April 2026.