See samples & order this curriculum at their website elementalscience.com
I loved this simple American history for my 1st grader. For the most part I adhere to the four-year cycles discussed in The Well-Trained Mind for history & science (Ancient History, Medieval History, Early Modern Times, then Modern Times, repeated 3 times throughout the child's schooling). However, I really didn't want to wait until 4th grade before we covered any American History, and I really wasn't ready to jump into an in-depth history study in first grade. And somehow I came across this. It was the perfect solution-- a very gentle introduction to American history and the study of history in general.
The Teacher's Book provides an easy-to-follow schedule to study history 3 days a week. There are 2 short (5-to-10 minute) stories in the Teacher's Guide that can be read directly to the student, and a coloring page to go along with them. There are other suggested Read-Alouds, picture books, and readers suggested to add throughout the week, as well as easy crafts and activities. The Student Book has blank pages for copywork and narration. The 3rd day each week is spent on studying one or two of the 50 states. We read about each state in the suggested book that goes along-- Smart About the Fifty States, located it on our wall map, colored the picture in the Student Notebook, glued on the state flag and wrote a few facts we learned. (I have heard some people say they got by without the Student Notebook, but we personally loved the coloring pages that went along with each section, as well as the States Notebooking pages. If you have a non-coloring type kid, you probably could do with just the Teacher's Guide.)
Many of the most important biographies and stories from American history were included in a simple format that was easy for my first grader to understand. It made our year fun and still provided the "meat" I wanted for our history study that year.
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