American History Homeschooling

For our history lessons Aaron has been attending a one hour class once a week at Timothy Ministry at FBCW. They are using a history book called "All American History Uniting America's Story, Piece by Piece" by Celeste W. Rakes. The students in the class are doing pretty traditional stuff. They are filling out worksheets with the dates of the establishment of the colony, the key figures, the key settlements, and a few key events. At this point they are studying colonial America. The interest was quickly going by the wayside. So, we went to the library and choose several interesting books about the American colonies. The two I like best so far are "...If you Lived In Colonial Times" by Ann McGovern and "American Kids in History Colonial Days" by David C. King.

" ...If you Lived In Colonial Times" by Ann McGovern is in a question answer format answering such questions as What did colonial people look like? What did people eat? Did children go to school?. The answers were fascinating. The descriptions included what the adults and children wore and how the clothes were made by hand. The description of what they ate included the children's rhyme "Bean porridge hot, bean porridge cold, bean porridge in the pot nine days old." That is really what they ate. The description of school was very eye opening and hopefully illustrated to Aaron how blessed to are to be where we are today.

The second book, "American Kids in History Colonial Days" by David C. King has the story of the make believe family, the Mayhews, and what they do in all four seasons as a colonial family. The interesting part is the projects included in the sections. Today we measured the height of a tree in our yard the way they did in colonial times to make sure it was tall enough to be lumber for a project or a ship's mast. We determined the tree was 156 ft tall. Tomorrow we are going to make marbled paper or candles. Fun!

My lesson to myself that I hope to share with you is that whatever or wherever my child is learning, I have the responsibility to supplement it how ever I can. It is such a wonderful thing.