Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in
exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I
compensated in any other way.

 

Early Coast Guard History

Homeschool Review Crew

Rebecca Locklear

 

I love studying history and really want to instil that love within my children.  So when we got the option to review a curriculum about the early Coast Guard history I thought it would be a fun and unique one to go through.  Rebecca Locklear has created a unique curriculum that we’re going to share with you today.  Exploring the U.S. Life-Saving Service 1878-1915: 17 Student Workshops with 120 Activities is a fun curriculum that can be used for all ages.  

About the Curriculum

 

 

This curriculum tells of the early Coast Guard history.  Most of the curriculum is geared for grades 6-12 though some are geared to grades 4-5 as well.  I did find that it could be adapted for younger children as well. 

Rebecca Locklear is the creator of this history curriculum.  She’s also a professional pianist and choral director.  The outdoors beckons to her and she enjoys her time out there.  She likes to learn by doing and you’ll often find her hands on.  Her books are written so students will want to learn history and stay engaged. 

The curriculum we reviewed the early Coast Guard history is 117 pages long.  It is geared towards grades 4-12.  Each activity will tell you what grades it is geared towards as different activities and geared to a different subset of grades.  There are lots of activities within the curriculum to help immerse you within history and help you learn by doing. 

There are 17 different workshops or units and overall there are 120 activities within the curriculum. Activities include games, drama, cooking, music, stories, science, research, and art. Within the book (which is an ebook) you will also get to read lots of history.  It’s not just activities to help you learn, but also lots of interesting nuggets of history. 

Our Thoughts

We really wanted to focus on the ships for this review.  My boys love ships and are often creating ships with their legos.  My boys loved identifying the ships and building the ships and talking about the ships.  It was something fun they could involve their dad in as he is also a ship loving guy who has researched and learned about ships.  My mom is our seamstress extraordinaire and she has been tasked with making Coast Guard flags so part of their lego ship creations can have the proper flags soon instead of all pirate flags. 

I found that a lot of this they did on their own.  But I also found that some of the activities were written as if there were teams of students.  So for instance maybe this was being used in a homeschool coop setting.  Thankfully we have several kids and I could just make them one or two-person teams for this.  A single student being homeschooled might not have as much fun with this curriculum or you would have to adapt it more. 

 

 

We spent a lot of time in one unit because that was what really took my kid’s interest.  It was unit 2 and had them identifying ships, learning morse code, and learning flag signals.  If you drive by my house and see kids signalling SOS please just keep driving.  They’re really not in danger, they just learned and think its fun to signal to each other now.  

 

 

There is history within the book too.  It tells you about what you’re learning.  I think it’s a pretty all-inclusive history curriculum.  That said, I still did add some supplemental reading books to our basket for the kids.  We branched way out and looked at pirates that might have caused the Coast Guard trouble, ship history books, and so much more.  We even found some good books on the Coast Guard to add to our bundle.  

 

 

 

Learn More

You can learn more about the two curriculum options from Rebecca Locklear that the members of the Homeschool Review Crew were offered for review by reading all of the blog posts that are linked up on the Main Blog Post on the Homeschool Review Crew Blog.  We reviewed two different curriculums so you can find all of the ones about the early Coast Guard History curriculum we received by clicking on the ones titled Exploring.  

Rebecca Locklear can also be found on social media on Facebook.  Our author, Rebecca Locklear also has an email subscription newsletter which I highly recommend you sign up for to learn more about what she’s up to and her curriculums.  You can find this by going to her website and going to her contact section which then has a place to sign up for her email list.