A Stable Beginning: The Story of the Thirteen Colonies & the Great Republic set with 200 Questions About American History set from Memoria Press ~ a TOS review

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

The Story of the Thirteen Colonies & the Great Republic set with 200 Questions About American History set from Memoria Press ~ a TOS review

History is an important component to our homeschool studies. After all, you learn to not repeat past mistakes when you learn the history of the past. In March we hit a snag in our history studies. It happened during a time when I was really sick and I was struggling daily just to make it to bedtime. Being the stubborn girl that I am, I tried to modify, regroup, and finish out the school year but God was tugging at me to let go. It was evident that we had to make a change quickly, but to what!?

I literally cried out for guidance and very soon afterwards we were offered The Story of the Thirteen Colonies & the Great Republic Set and 200 Questions About American History set from Memoria Press. Montana has been using this set as a part of her Christian history studies to finish our the remainder of this school year.

As Classical homeschoolers we are no stranger to the high quality curriculum that Memoria Press produces. In fact, we use quite a bit of Memoria Press curriculum in our yearly studies already. If you are new to the homeschool, Memoria Press (MP) is a family-run publishing company founded by Cheryl Lowe in 1994. The company creates simple, easy-to-use classical Christian education curriculum for home and private schools all over the world. Memoria Press's produces many popular Latin, logic, literature, and classical studies courses for children in PreK-12th grade. Their products are written and field-tested with the students who attend the highly acclaimed Highlands Latin School. We were blessed to receive both of these sets from Memoria Press for review.

The Story of The Thirteen Colonies & The Great Republic set is a perfect one-year survey of American history and the set comes with a reader, a student guide, and a teacher guide. With 32 weekly lessons you will find a comprehensive study on American history from Native Americans through The Spanish-American War. Each lesson in the student guide is set up with the same four part format that includes:

I. Facts to know

II. Vocabulary

III. Comprehension questions

IV. Enrichment

The reader is a historical reader that can serve as an elementary textbook or supplemental book added to any history program. The chapters are short and sweet but don't leave out what is truly important in the events. All of the chapters include a picture or two about the chapter topic also.

The Student Guide contains reading compression questions that test the students knowledge of the reading material. It also includes a hefty Appendix where you will find the following information:

~ Maps

~ 13 Colonies Chart

~ Mayflower Compact

~ Paul Revere's Ride Poem

~ Letter From George to Martha Washington

~ Declaration of Independence

~ Exerts From Thomas Paine's Common Sense

~ United States Constitution

~ Emancipation Proclamation

~ Gettysburg Address

~ Daniel Webster's Senate Speech, 1830

The 200 Questions About American History Set includes a set of flash cards, a Student Book and a Teacher Guide. The Teacher’s Guide includes a recommended weekly schedule as well as a helpful teaching guideline. The complete course is scheduled out over 34 weeks and also includes tests, quizzes, and drills.

The flashcard set works great with the The Story of the Thirteen Colonies & The Great Republic set I talked about above. In fact, the comprehension questions are pulled directly from the newly edited Guerber book and from Story of the World Volume IV. The student book also includes memorization practice in the form of famous poems and speeches.

The flashcard set is a thick deck of heavyweight cards and includes four different categories of questioning including:

~ 150 drill questions

~ timeline dates

~ 44 U.S. Presidents

~ notable quotes

Since we were beginning mid-year, I checked the books and schedule to see where we were leaving off in our old history curriculum. Turns out that Chapter 12 in the reader was a great place to start our review, that corresponded to week 2 in the planned schedule. I had Montana go back and fill in the previous drill questions as well just for review as well. The reading and drilling was a good fit for Montana my sixth grader, not too hard or too easy.

To help Montana learn and remember the American history questions, we played many games and incorporated their use. A favorite game all of my kids like to play is Jeopardy so we set up cards and played at least once a week. We loved the fast pace of the game and trying to gain points. Most importantly is that she is learning and retaining the information, a big plus in my book!