Classical Historian American Civics is a series of seven workbooks that approaches civics education with the idea that good citizens need both knowledge and virtue.
The publisher’s website explains the impetus for this series:
Young Americans do not value the United States of America because they do not know or understand what it is. They have no idea of the liberties Americans enjoy, the sacrifices those before us made to found and build our country, and they do not see how easy it could be for us to lose our way of life. It is not the fault of these young people that they do not value living in the modern world's first republic. It is the fault of our education system run by older Americans who are failing to teach the basics of civics.
To remedy the problem, this series teaches patriotism and appreciation for our country. But it doesn't whitewash things. It devotes an entire book to the problem of slavery.
The series is intended for kindergarten through fifth grade, although I think it is ideal for students in grades three through five. Lessons require no preparation and are easy to present. Some fourth and fifth graders could work through them on their own, but they will probably benefit from the discussions likely to occur if a parent reads the lessons aloud.
Book 1 lays the foundation by discussing key historical influences behind our constitutional republic. The other six books have subtitles that describe their content.
- Book 2 - Limited Government and the Three Branches
- Book 3 - The Bill of Rights and Amendments
- Book 4 - How Law is Made and American Heroes
- Book 5 - American Reforms: Slavery and the Civil Rights Movement
- Book 6 - Important Documents, Dates, and Folktales
- Book 7 – American Songs: Patriotic, Folk, Fun & End of the Trail
Throughout most of the books, each lesson is presented on one page with a facing coloring page. For instance, in the lesson in Book 1 about the influences of the Roman Republic on the U.S., the coloring page has an image of the public posting of Roman laws that was known as the Twelve Tables.
Each lesson is presented in a few paragraphs of text written at a level understandable by most children in third grade and above. The text is followed by a set of questions with blank lines for students to write answers. Younger students might dictate answers for parents to write for them. The amount of text per lesson gradually increases through Book 7. In a few instances in Book 5 and Book 6, a biography or a folktale takes up the entire page, and there are no questions. Book 7 teaches the Pledge of Allegiance, patriotic songs, and folk songs with no questions at all.
The seven books are each divided into three units with a five-question, multiple-choice quiz at the end of most units. Answer keys are at the back of each book, except Book 7 since it has no quizzes.
All except Book 7 also have a page at the back titled Key Words and Terms, and these are listed for each lesson. The introduction has a brief explanation telling how to use these, but I think the instructions are not clear enough. The keywords and terms will look familiar to those familiar with IEW’s Structure and Style writing lessons since writing down keywords from a passage and reconstructing the passage from only those keywords is a primary element of Structure and Style's methodology. The keywords and terms seem to have been selected with that process in mind. This use of the Key Words and Terms helps students recall and review the lessons, and I encourage parents to use it, especially with fourth and fifth graders.
I think this series is excellent, but I did encounter a few oddities regarding the coloring pages. First, several coloring pages appear in more than one book. For instance, the same image of Betsy Ross is in both Book 1 (p. 25) and Book 7 (p. 3). Occasionally, the coloring pages don’t connect with the lesson content, and this is most obvious in Book 7 where there are juxtapositions such as the song “Skip to My Lou” facing an image of George Washington. Part II of Book 6 begins with two “History Timeline” pages that list ten key events in U.S. history. These pages are followed by eight coloring pages. I expected to find coloring pages related to each event, but the pages do not correlate to the timeline at all. (With older students, you might not be using the coloring pages at all, and these anomalies might be irrelevant.)
Summary
Classical Historian American Civics provides homeschoolers with an easy-to-use, gentle introduction to civics that should inspire patriotism while teaching basic information about our government.
