American History for k-3

[mlgbug]

so im wondering what you use for american history. we are doing some SOTW but for some reason my older girl grade 2 wants to keep asking about AMERICAN HISTOY! she seems totally uninterested in SOTW no matter what i do. so im thinking of doing american history the rest of the year and pick up SOTW in the fall.....

so that being said, what do you use for american history? my 5 year old K boy wants to get out of EVERYTHING! lol

[Chris in VA]

We liked the Betty Maestro books for Am Hist--they are colorful, easy to read, and just enough for that age. We just added them to SOTW. We also loved Holling C. Holling. His books are more geography, but it was fun to look at the map and chart them. I believe Beautiful Feet has them with some extra activities, but you could probably google and find free stuff easily.

I also liked Colonial Kids as an activity book, and the Little House series with some of the activity books that go with it.

Nothing formal for us, since it was an add-on and more "just for fun" at our house.

Oh, and the American Girl books aren't too bad--a little twaddly, but we enjoyed them. Magic Treehouse books are easy to read and there are several on Am history that might be fun to strew. Finally, we liked some of the books about Native Americans by Kenneth Thomasma.

[ByGrace3]

We are planning to use Truthquest next year. Guest hollow is a two yr American history that is free. Also, Elemental History is a one yr programs. Sonlight core d and e, or MFW Adventures.

 

What do you want history to "look like"? I have found with history it is often easiest to decide what I want and then figure out which curriculum will best get me there.

[MissKNG]

BJU Heritage Studies is my easy, go-to history text. It's easy to read aloud during a meal and it also has little activity suggestions in the chapters. And it is easy to beef up by getting more books/activities on the topics in the chapter.

[Farrar]

We put our own together using individual books and the following series:

 

Betsy Maestro's American history series

The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong

USKids History series from Brown Paper Schoolbag

Jean Fritz's biographies

David Adler's A Picture Book Biography of... series

Scholastic's If You Lived... series

 

We also read a huge amount of historical fiction.

[kirstenhill]

We liked the Betty Maestro books for Am Hist--they are colorful, easy to read, and just enough for that age. We just added them to SOTW. We also loved Holling C. Holling. His books are more geography, but it was fun to look at the map and chart them. I believe Beautiful Feet has them with some extra activities, but you could probably google and find free stuff easily.

I also liked Colonial Kids as an activity book, and the Little House series with some of the activity books that go with it.

Nothing formal for us, since it was an add-on and more "just for fun" at our house.

Oh, and the American Girl books aren't too bad--a little twaddly, but we enjoyed them. Magic Treehouse books are easy to read and there are several on Am history that might be fun to strew. Finally, we liked some of the books about Native Americans by Kenneth Thomasma.

 

 

We are doing American history this year and using a lot of these same resources. I love the Maestro books....Totally wish they went past 1815! I wanted to do primarily literature based history along with quality non fiction picture books. I made my own list from resources like Sonlight, Guest Hollow, and All Through The Ages (ebook with lit listed by historical time period). Here's a link to the page on my blog about what we're doing: http://homeschooldiscoveries.com/our-curriculum/united-states-history-year-1/

 

We've gone through a lot of the units more quickly than I thought we would, so we're already up to the "westward expansion/pioneers" era after the war of 1812. I need to go through my resources and make a list for the civil war soon...since we'll definitely be getting there this year!

[Mrs Twain]

I'll add a few:

 

For young kids, my favorite is Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans (Eggleston).

Eggleston also wrote other American history books, including A First Book of American History for the upper end of the age group you mentioned.

 

My kids and I also thoroughly enjoyed Mara Pratt's four volume American History Stories, though one needs to pre-read and edit those because they were written around 1900 and have not been revised (like the Eggleston books). The Pratt books are worth the time, though.

[Wheres Toto]

We are using the Complete Book of US History, History Pockets, Betsy Maestro, If You Lived...., and whatever other books I can get from the library.

[twoxcell]

For those ages I use HOD Beyond and Bigger. You might take a peak at their book selections. ;) My kids also like the If You series and the D' Aulaire books.

[Walking-Iris]

The spiral history approach in the Core Knowledge books are really good. I also agree with pp that lots of historical fiction would be helpful, Fritz, If You Lived, Getting to Know the Presidents, Sea to Shining Sea, some of the D'Aulaire books, History Pockets, Little House etc.

 

Tag it all onto a timeline.

[ksr5377]

We're using Elemental History's Adventures in America. I love it because it's all put together for me. It's been working out perfectly as a gently intro to US history for my PK and 1st grader.

http://elementalhistory.com/

There is an optional read-aloud list, which I believe you can see if you look at the Teacher's Guide sample. I also appreciate that she gives recommendations each week for a related picture book and beginning reader book. We have a good library and there have only been 1 or 2 we haven't been able to find.

[Chelli]

I love the looks of Beautiful Feet's Early American History Through Literature program, but I haven't used it. It's for those ages though.

[LynnG in Arizona]

I'm planning the same thing next year and was having trouble finding quite what I want. I love the Elemental History program, but it covers only the first half of American history, and there are no plans to write a second book at this time. If you're ok with doing early American history only, I think it might be perfect.

 

For me, I'll have a 1st and 2nd grader next year. I was looking for an engaging spine that I could easily supplement with the huge variety of historical fiction and biographies that are perfect for this age. Here's what I found for a "spine:

 

http://simplycharlottemason.com/store/stories-of-america/

 

I'm then planning to supplement with books - Sonlight and Heart of Dakota have some great American history book choices that are ideal for the K-4 crew, in my opinion.

 

HTH!

[Alte Veste Academy]

I could not find one single spine I loved for American history when we covered it for DS9's 1st-2nd grade years (and I think I borrowed or bought every single one...seriously). Most of them don't get anywhere near modern times and many of them use derogatory terms. What I basically ended up doing (and loving! :D) was planning our two years of American history as a sort of progressive unit study. I could dig up our major units if the search function here worked better because I posted many times during that period. Anyway, we started with Native Americans, moved on to explorers, colonies, the Revolution, etc., etc., etc. When I started looking at it that way and searching for one great spine book for each unit, my life got much easier. WE still went in chronological order but did not use one spine for the whole two years. (At some point, I did pick up Hakim's History of US, which I did end up using quite a bit. Plus, we listened to the whole series on audio, but that's not up most people's alley for early elementary.) Whatever you do, be sure to add lots of biographies to your studies. You get such a feel for the time and the interrelationship of events by reading stories of individual lives.

[jetted4]

I enjoyed the Cornerstones of Freedom book series (should be available in the library) for that age.

 

If a Christian theme suits you and you're planning to do read-alouds, The American Adventure series are a nice set of historical fictions books (first book is The Mayflower Adventure, then Plymouth Pioneers...).

[mlgbug]

I really like the of elemental history.....

[hsmom2011]

We are using Adventures in America along with some of Guest Hollow. Dd loves History Pockets which are scheduled through Guest Hollow.

[happyhappyjoyjoy]

We began using Mother of Divine Grace this year with my 3rd grader. It uses Abeka's 3rd grade history book along with lots of living history titles. I really like the combination of a text and living history. We had studied ancient history, and we also use Classically Catholic Memory Alpha (similar) to Classical Conversations. It was no problem for us to jump in history, especially with learning the timeline in CCM. We will move into Beta in the spring and cover the middle ages which we had skipped. Ambleside is a great resource for living history titles, too.