The Notgrass History America the Beautiful curriculum is a one-year American history, geography, and literature course designed for students in grades 5-8. It combines the flexibility and richness of a unit study with the simplicity of a textbook-based approach to history. Daily lessons guide your middle-school student chronologically through American history, with an emphasis on key events, people, and places.
The 2-volume text includes the course instructions and easy-to-follow daily directions that children are often able to follow independently. Each of the thirty units has five lessons. You can complete the curriculum in one year by doing one lesson per day for 150 days during your school year. Depending on how many activities you assign, most students will need 45-90 minutes to complete one lesson. While this course is designed for children in grades 5-8, younger children can listen to the lessons and participate in the family activities.
Lessons can be read by children independently or used as a read-aloud. Chapters features color and black-and-white historical photographs, illustrations, and artwork. At the end of each lesson, four to six activities are provided from which parents can choose which they'd like to assign. One special family activity, like an arts and crafts project, recipe, or other multi-age activity, is also assigned each week.
Activities vary from day to day and may include:
- Thinking Biblically
- Map work in Maps of America the Beautiful
- Vocabulary
- Entries in Timeline of America the Beautiful
- Reading assignments from We the People (excerpts from letters, speeches, poems, newspaper articles, and other primary sources)
- Reading assignments in the literature titles
- Creative writing
- Assignments in the Student Workbook or Lesson Review
This kit includes:
- Two hardcover student textbooks
- We the People book of primary resources
- Timeline of America the Beautiful
- Maps of America the Beautiful
- Answer key
2nd Edition Updates:
Please note that the 1st and 2nd editions are not compatible with each other - none of the old books can be used with the new and vice versa.
The 2nd Edition of America the Beautiful keeps the same core philosophy and methodology as the 1st edition. In the first edition of America the Beautiful, some units had two lessons of the same type; in this 2nd edition, the focus of some lessons has changed, and others have been swapped out so that each unit has one of each type of lesson. The length of the lesson has also been standardized. There have also been improvements to the historical images and photographs and layout. In the second volume of the student texts, five lessons from the first few units were removed to make room for additional lessons at the end. There were also two literature substitutions: Growing Up Dakota by Charles Eastman instead of The Sign of the Beaver and Katy's Box by Mary Evelyn Notgrass McCurdy - instead of Katy.
