Nov. 7, 2009 - American Heritage Education

This curriculum I received on a disk free from American Heritage Education to review for the Old Schoolhouse Crew.  It comes in three levels; elementary, middle school and high school and is subtitled , “An Adventure in Liberty”, which it truly is.  Each level is about 160-180 pages in length.

The content is organized both by theme and date.  Some of theme’s are things like freedom, unity, progress and responsibility.  The dates range from 1776 to 2000.  Topics include many of the things you think of when you study liberty and American; things like the Bill of rights, the flag, the star spangled banner, declaration of independence and more.

Each unit contains a variety of items.  First it contains text teaching the subject matter then it contains discussion questions, activity and game suggestions, definitions and more.  It varies depending on the lesson.  For instance one of the activities is to learn the preamble in sign language!

As a homeschoolers we are used to adapting things made for the classroom for home use, this one will be no exception.  Some of the activities would be difficult to adapt but most could be modified with a little creativity.  This would also be a great resource for anyone who does history co-ops as well. 

Looking through the guide I had planned on trying out a game called Monarchy at our last co-op meeting but we ended up rescheduling due to illness so we’ll have to try it out next week.  In the game each student gets assigned a role like King, Queen, Noblemen, Merchant, Peasant etc…  They get pretend cash based on who they are.  As the simulation progresses things like taxes, colonization and war take place.  Money changes hands based on the event and at the end there is a suggestion of discussion and a worksheet to fill out about the role you played and how it felt.  This is in the middle school set but I think it could easily be used in a multi-age setting.

When we were in the medieval period I found something similar on-line and the kids loved it so I’m pretty sure this one will go over well too!

In our history co-op we are “almost” to 1776 so I plan on using a lot of this as supplemental material as we get into that era.  I do think most will find this a welcome addition to whatever they are already using though it could be used alone.