American History Unit Study for Elementary Ages #hsreviews

If you’re like me, you love history.  I want my children to love history as much as my husband and I do, so I put a lot of thought into which curriculum we choose.  Recently, we reviewed Golden Prairie Press.  They have an awesome American History Unit Study for Elementary ages.   It is Digital Heroes & Heroines of the Past: American History Curriculum and it is great!   Okay, so you don’t have to take my word for it, keep reading and decide for yourself!

This history curriculum is geared for grades 1-6 though older ages can use it as well.  Within the digital file you will find two sections on each subject.  The first section is for younger grades 1-2 with larger font and a more basic overview.  The next section is for grades 3-6 and is more in depth with smaller font.  This is a 30 week history.  We received the complete history set which includes:

• Heroes and Heroines of the Past: American History Part 1 e-book (lessons for the 1st half of the year.)
• Heroes and Heroines of the Past: American History Part 2 e-book(lessons for the 2nd half of the year.)
• Historical Skits e-book(nineteen skits from the time of Columbus to World War II)
• Sing Some History Audio Download(Hear some of the songs that are mentioned in the book)
• Listen to Some U.S. History MP3 Audio Download(An audio collection of original speeches, poems, sermons, and documents that are mentioned in the book)
• Additional Materials Downloads (Printable timelines, instructions and entertaining videos, color artwork, coloring pages, and much more. 

The full curriculum is available to purchase for digital download for $98.99.  These come in MP3, zip, and PDF files.  You can then use them online or print them off.  I prefer to print off the two sections of the book so that I can have them in my hands for planning purposes.  I’m a very hands on type person when it comes to books.  I want to be able to touch them and mark them up if I want to.  It’s kind of hard to highlight my computer screen!

 

American History is so important for our children to learn.  It’s our history and heritage as a country.  However, most of the time history curriculums are dry.  They don’t hold a child’s interest let alone leave an impression on them that will stay with them.  This is where the good and the bad in terms of American History curriculum are separated.  For us, Golden Prairie Press has created an American History Unit Study that we consider to be a good one!  A keeper if you will.  As a history buff, I’ve tried several history curriculums.  While my kids might have been okay with most, and maybe even paid attention and retained s0me of the knowledge, they were just lacking.  I did not approve.  I wanted an all intensive curriculum that would engage my children and make them want to go back in history.  I wanted them to question and actually be fully involved in their school.  

This is what the Digital Downloads Heroes and Heroines of the Past does for us.  It’s makes my children want to learn.  It makes them want to do more than just that days history lesson.  We have history recreations going on in our yard and in the bedrooms.  I also discovered that you have the option of purchasing the curriculum with a print book as well.  You can see that by going to THIS PAGE.  If I were purchasing the curriculum, I would purchase it with the print books instead of printing them off myself.  

We used this curriculum as our complete history.  So it was being used 5 days a week.  We just stopped the history we were doing(I wasn’t that impressed with it, but it was what we had) and implemented this new curriculum as our main history.   It took over.  We used it daily for the review period and well, we’re still using it daily!  A sample of our day in history would be we do a lesson a day.  We read  the lesson, then we use any of the extras that might go along with our daily lesson.  And then the fun begins!  This is where we either use the skit that is in the extras or we make up our own!  My kids love to reenact things(might have something to do with us being Civil War reenactors) and this is such a fun history to reenact.  I find we spend twice as long on our history lessons, but we retain almost 100% off the lesson!  

If you’d ask me if I recommend this curriculum for your American History needs, the answer would be yes.  I do also want to mention that a few other books are mentioned in the lessons and you are asked to read and reference them.  You can purchase them through the Golden Prairie Press website or simply borrow from the library.  The only difference will be that the books through Golden Prairie Press have been revived a bit.  A main one that is mentioned is Ten Girls From History in which the creator of the curriculum has removed a few chapters and edited the version she sells to make it more child friendly.  

Like what you’re learning?  Want to learn some more about this curriculum before you purchase?  Please take a moment to jump on over to the Main Crew Blog Post and check out all the other Crew reviews.  There are several and we all reviewed the same products so you are bound to find someone who thinks along the same lines as you do and see what their reaction was.   You can also check out Golden Prairie Press on Facebook.