Early American History: A Literature Approach

by Rea Berg

Beautiful Feet Books

Rea Berg has created two different Study Guides for early American History, one for grades K-3, and one for grades 5-8. The content of the guides and the books selected for inclusion overlap, so you should choose only one of the Study Guides.

Rea has successfully pulled together two popular learning approaches—literature-based history and the Principle Approach. The Principle Approach can be intimidating without the sort of help provided here. In fact, Rea describes her method as a simplified Principle Approach. A key book used at both levels is Principle Approach-based America’s Providential History by Mark Beliles and Stephen McDowell.

At both levels, daily lesson plans are supplied (for 110 days in the K-3 Guide and for 119 days in the 5-8 Guide). Generally, children are reading (or being read to from) one of the selected books such as Columbus by the D’Aulaires. Lessons involve activities such as reading quotes of Columbus from other source books, discussing topics raised in the reading, comparing a person’s character with that of someone else the child has read about, drawing or writing in a notebook, working on vocabulary words, drawing maps, completing a time line, or doing research for a report. Activities are appropriate for each level, although you must be careful with kindergarten or first graders to choose activities they can handle. Children maintain a notebook as they do with the Principle Approach.

An emphasis on Christian character flows through almost all the lessons.

Study Guides are available by themselves or as part of a package. Beautiful Feet Books has chosen resource books that are generally available through library loan, but they also sell the books for those who want to own them.

For both Primary and Intermediate levels, all the suggested resources can be purchased as a Jumbo Pack, which includes core books, supplemental books, the Study Guide, and Your Story Hour cassettes. If you want to scale back a bit at the Primary level, you can purchase the smaller Literature Pack that includes the essential books but not including the Guide. The Jumbo Pack has also been broken down into two separate semester packs for those who want all the resources but need to spread the cost out over the school year. A Comp Pack is available for the Intermediate level; this includes only the additional books that you need for the second level.

The Early American History Time Line from Beautiful Feet Books comes with the intermediate grades Jumbo Pack. Selected books are high quality titles that are worth adding to the family library such as titles by the D’Aulaires, The Fourth of July Story, Stories of the Pilgrims, and The Courage of Sarah Noble in the Primary Literature Pack, and George Washington’s World, Of Courage Undaunted, and Poor Richard in the Intermediate Literature Pack.

Hats off to Rea Berg for taking a literature-based approach to a deeper level!