Planning Multiple TruthQuest guides, the goal

The kids and I have enjoyed our leisurely pace through the explorers, colonial America, and the Revolutionary War using most of TruthQuest AHYS1 this year. Unfortunately, in order to stick to our four year history cycle, we will have a lot of ground to cover next year starting with the Constitution and continuing through the present. The material to cover spans 3 TruthQuest guides. We'll need to finish the last few sections of the AHYS1 guide and cover the material in both the AHYS 2 and 3 guides in one year. To accomplish this goal, we're going to change how we do history just a bit for next year.
We'll start by keeping the parts of history that worked well for us this year. These include spending time reading aloud, doing narrations, and making lapbooks. In addition, I'd like to have the girls do some assigned independent reading as well instead of merely offering them additional books if they are interested. My current thought is to go through the guides and pick the major events we want to cover together. Next I'll go through the sections that highlight different people (ie. scientists, inventors, writers, artist, etc.) and select biographies from these sections that the girls can read independently. In addition Jessi wants to read Guerber's The Great Republic in conjunction with history next year so we'll also be rearranging the order of some of the TruthQuest chapters to match the order of The Great Republic for the first semester. I'd also like to plan a few more hands on activities either once or twice a month just for fun.