All American History, Volume 1, Explorers to the Jacksonians [1840]

by Celeste W. Rakes

Bright Ideas Press

This is a distinctly different United States History course that should work very well in homeschool settings. Developed through use in co-op classes, it easily adapts for use with individual children at home or for regular classroom use. This review is of Volume 1 covering the period of exploration through about 1840. A second volume will eventually cover the second half of U.S. History, making both volumes a two-year course.

There are three components to the course: the Student Reader, Student Activity Book, and Teacher’s Guide. The core book is the hardcover, 442-page Student Reader. Similar to a textbook, it presents historical information accompanied by black-and-white illustrations. A brief summary of key points concludes each chapter. The text of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are included in an appendix.

Questions and assignments are all found in the consumable Student Activity Book. Here you find activity pages, map forms, review questions, “For Further Study” assignments, and “Images for Required Forms.” The last item is a collection of illustrations (primarily of people) and flags to be used on activity pages. The illustrations in the Student Activity Book are intended to be beneficial to both visual learners as well as kinesthetic learners, providing cut and paste activities to keep their hands engaged.

The “required forms” are one or more worksheets per chapter for students to complete that summarize key information from each chapter. The Student Activity Book forms are intended to be filled in as the student is either reading the text or listening to the text being read. This is training in note-taking skills and it encourages them to be active readers/listeners.

Activity Book pages are perforated and three-hole-punched so they can be easily removed and put into a binder. At the end of the Activity Book are Optional Forms for Further Study. These 12 forms require students to do more in-depth research on topics such as a Native American tribe, a Revolutionary War battle, or Colonial culture. Some forms might be used more than once.

The course is broken down into four units, with eight lessons/chapters per unit. The Activity Book has review questions for each lesson, but it also has a test at the end of each unit.

The Teacher’s Guide includes reduced reproductions of all Student Activity Book pages with completed answers and information to serve as your answer key for all but the “For Further Study” assignments. “For Further Study” suggested “answers” are included in the instruction pages for each lesson.

The Teacher’s Guide has additional activity suggestions, recommended reading lists for three levels: grades K-4, 5-8, and 9-12. It also has checklists at the end of each unit to help you plan, showing which activities are required and which are optional. In addition, the Teacher’s Guide includes masters of the Optional Forms and all of the images. These images might also be used for a timeline and/or a game as described in the Teacher’s Guide.

Part of the reason this course is so suitable for homeschooling is that while it is targeted at grades 5 through 8, it easily expands for use with even younger and older students. Younger students listen to highlights and key ideas from the chapter presented by the parent. They read real books related to the time period--annotated lists of age-appropriate books for each chapter are in the Teacher’s Guide. And younger students participate in creating timelines, map work, and other hands-on learning activities.

It’s even easier with high school students. While you would choose from among the optional activities for students in elementary grades, older students would complete most of the optional activities, especially the For Further Study questions and the Optional Forms. They would also be assigned more substantial reading from the recommended list. The biggest drawback for high school students is that the course is only the first half of U.S History, so it would need to be completed in a semester rather than a year since students typically have only one year to complete U. S. History in high school. This is entirely doable! Volume 2 will provide the second semester, but it is not yet available.

Another plus regarding this course for homeschoolers is that the components are very reasonably priced, especially the Teacher’s Guide. To teach an additional student in the same family, you might share the Student Reader and purchase only an extra Student Activity Book.

The books are very professional in appearance and presentation, but, other than the covers, they are printed in black-and-white throughout. This should not be a big issue for most children.

The religious perspective is subtly Christian in the Student Reader. The most “opinionated” reference I found was in the discussion of the Second Great Awakening and “unorthodox religions” such as Transcendentalism and Mormonism that developed during the same time period. God and Christianity receive occasional mention elsewhere in the text but not nearly as much as one finds in BJUP and A Beka history books. Those wanting a secular text might be comfortable with the minimal treatment of religion in this book. However, the Student Activity Book's "For Further Study"suggestions and "Family Activity Ideas" in the Teacher's Guide offer some more overtly Christian topics. For example, One FFS question directs students to "Find out about John Eliot, the Puritan missionary who was known as the Apostle to the Indians" (SAB, p. 81). Most assignments and suggestions are not specifically Christian, so this arrangement allows the parent who prefers a secular approach to skip any topics with which they are uncomfortable while offering Christian families opportunities to make faith connections through their history studies.