Just another sample: Our experience with AP Euro Hx a few years ago was great with PAH. It was an intense course, but dd could write essays quite readily and was well prepared for the exam and future writing assignments. Sorry to hear about your experience. How frustrating.

US History is also a typical 11th grade course here - both in the ps and private hs. There is a note at the APUSH Home page that this test is being redesigned for 2014-2015, so that may figure into your plans. http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/courses/teachers_corner/3501.html I know that the local teachers for AP Biology had kids wait if possible to take that course this year in order to have the new exam.

I came across the Pocket History of the Civil War by Martin Graham put out by the National Civil War Museum. It provides brief details of each of the major battles (usually 2-pages per battle), a table listing number of troops engaged and casualties. It has interesting details of the strategies that were involved by both sides and how they contributed to the outcomes. Of course there is a whole sidetrack you can take on the impact of Mathew Brady's photography. Ken Burns was a great addition to our studies as well. The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara also provided an interesting insight. That perspective of his writing again another conversation of its own. Mr. Lincoln's High Tech War by Thomas Allen and Roger MacBride Allen provided some great insights into the roles of telegraphs, balloons, trains, ironclads, etc.

Thank you very much for sharing this link!

Thanks

If anyone is studying the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, Joanne Oppenheim wrote a book - Dear Miss Breed - about a librarian in San Diego who kept correspondence with numerous middle and high school aged children who had been sent to the camps. There are numerous primary source excerpts from letters written by the children, articles Clara Breed wrote in Horn Book magazine, etc and from the testimonies given in the early 1980s during the government committee investigation. It covers the period from Pearl Harbor through the closing of the camps in 1945. There is a website as well. There is a lesson plan there as well if you are interested.

Here is a link from CPO with graphic organizers, powerpoint presentations for each chapter highlighting key concepts and formulas, and all kinds of experiment sheets and chapter worksheets and extra reading on featured scientists for each CPO book. The recent editions have rearranged some of the chapter order, but the concepts seem pretty consistent with the older version which is included in the previous link. Hope it helps! http://www.cpo.com/home/ForEducators/MiddleSchoolEarthScience/tabid/261/Default.aspx

Thanks for the great list and ideas. We just returned from a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston where they opened a 4-story Art of the Americas Wing last November: http://www.mfa.org/americas-wing/galleries.html I think most of the artists depicted there have been on the lists already on the thread, but they also have this link where you can choose your medium and search their holdings. http://www.mfa.org/collections/art-americas On a different medium note: Their major visiting collection right now is the amazing glass blowing collection of Dale Chihuly who is from Tacoma, Washington. If he is of interest there are several DVDs, (most PBS publications) which may be available at your library or they are certainly at Amazon. I like to share with people a comment that someone once told me about their memories of art history as a student. They would be given post-card sized images of paintings and discuss them and get tested on them at school. She still remembers (from decades later) how amazed she was the first time she went to an art museum as an older teen and realized how large a painting could really be!

These are great! Thanks.

I became aware of the Federal Writers' Project recently when my daughter was completing a research paper. Her source was a state guide. This government- sponsored project was conducted in the 1930s to provide work for writers, historians, etc during the Depression. In addition to state guides, there were interviews conducted with former slaves. Two books by Belinda Hurmence that came of the more than 10,000 pages of interviews, conducted with 80 and 90 year olds are called Before Freedom: When I Just Can Remember and We Lived in a Little Cabin in the Yard. The memories of these former slaves are quite interesting, especially considering that they were only 10 or so years old when the Civil War ended.