Journey to Excellence

Only two more units to go, and I will wrap them both up in this post. (Well there are actually five left, but I only completed lesson plans through the next two.) This was as far as we were able to get in the series this year. We were at the end of our school year and Dawson was ready to move on to his unit-of-choice: knights. The next two units in the America: The Story of Us series were Episode 8: Boom and Episode 9: Bust , or better known as The Roaring 20's and The Great Depression. We spent three weeks combined on these two units. Our book for both units was The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I had never read this book before and I thought it was an excellent portrayal of the good and bad of the 20's. The symbolism was astonishing and meaty, and I recommend having your student do an essay on the symbolism in the piece. I wish I would have done that with Dawson. We watched both Episodes 8 and 9, did the discussion questions/video quiz fo...

The next unit in the America: The Story of Us series was Episode 7: Cities . We actively spent two weeks on this unit. However, we started reading our Living Book for this unit early when we gave up on My Antonia while studying Episode 6. We loved our book for this unit on the early Cities. We read City of Orphans by Avi. It did a great job of giving the reader the flavor of immigrant life during this time, the poverty they suffered, and tenament life. It was also a great story about the newsies of the time. The setting was in the streets of New York City and the Waldorf. Great book! We watched the entire Episode 7, did the discussion questions/video quiz for the episode and vocabulary words. These can be printed by going here . The Episode Guides are down the left hand column on the site. All "notebooking pages" are printed from Advanced World History Vol. 2 from Hold that Thought! All "America's Heritage" references are materi...

This week's set of lesson plans did not happen on Study America Saturday because yesterday Brynne and I were celebrating a day of all things The Secret Garden . Hope you weren't checking your computer all day for the lesson plans for Episode 6 (somehow I think you might have better things to do.) But, we're here now. So, let's go ... We have finally moved past pre-Civil War and Civil War to Episode 6: Heartland .   We spent four weeks on this unit. Our living book in this area was a real DUD! In fact, about three-quarters of the way through it, I slammed it shut and said, "We are done! I am so bored reading this!" I had high hopes for a book by Willa Cather. (We were going to read O' Pioneers by Willa Cather, and after reading reviews decided to switch to My Antonia . Maybe the other was better.) I wish that I had a recommendation for you, but I don't. If you have a book from this era that you can recommend to my readers, PLEASE leave...

You might have thought I had given up on my lesson plan post for "America: The Story of Us". But, I haven't! We were traveling and recovering from traveling for the past three weeks. But, today I am back and ready for the next installment. You now find us on Episode 5: Civil War .   We spent five weeks on this unit. Again, it was just too good and rich to wrap up in three weeks. And we spent several days watching one of my absolutely favorite miniseries from when I was a teenager. We read two books about this period: The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick (a 2012 Newberry Award winner). We really enjoyed this book. It had a lot of historical facts that brought the time period alive, but it had the vibe of Huck Finn. I recommend this book for some fun, informational reading. The second book we read was Chasing Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson. I saw this book by chance on the list of 2012 Sequoyah winners, so picked i...

If you have followed Journey to Excellence for any length of time, it is no secret that our year has been permeated with our American History studies. Over a year ago, many of us home educators received a complimentary DVD series from The History Channel called "America: The Story of Us" . Since we typically shy away from textbooks when it comes to Dawson, I knew that I wanted to use this series as the spine for our American History studies this year. So, I got to work. I spent ALL SUMMER last year watching each video and planning Dawson's lessons for the year. I have never been more in love with American History as I am right now, and it is ALL because of the prompting of that amazing dvd series! There are twelve episodes, each 45 minutes long. The graphics and sound effects are AWESOME! They are lively, interesting, and so easy to watch! What I really love about them is that they touch on some aspects of history that I have NEVER learned about, instead of j...

Here we are on Episode 4: Division already! But it was here that we SLOWED DOWN! The slavery portion of history of our country is so deep and so rich and so disturbing that we couldn't seem to move on.  We spent five weeks on this unit. Our book for this unit was Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Obviously, this is a book for mature students. It wasn't nearly as violent as I was expecting. But, it was definitely moving. Again, Dawson was not impressed with Uncle Tom's Cabin . (Hard to please teenager!) I still think it is a necessary piece of literature for this era. We watched the entire Episode 4, did the discussion questions/video quiz for the episode and vocabulary words. These can be printed by going here . The Episode Guides are down the left hand column on the site. All "notebooking pages" are printed from Advanced World History Vol. 2 from Hold that Thought! All "America's Heritage" references are materials print...

As stated in my last post in this series, Episode 3 had so much information that I just felt that we should break it up into two separate units. Today's installment contains the lesson plans for Episode 3: "Westward 2" . We spent three weeks on this unit. It might be beneficial to your student to have them rewatch Episode 3 and review the vocabulary and episode discussion questions to get them started. We continued to read The Captain's Dog by Roland Smith (we still had a few chapters left). Then we moved on to what has been our favorite read of the year ... The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Surprisingly, I had never read this book. It was a hoot! A word of warning, however. I think I have mentioned that I read our historical novel to Dawson each morning. For us it's a good way to start our day, it keeps me involved in what he is studying, it gives us loads of conversation topics, and I just happen to believe our kids are never too ol...

This past summer, when I planned our lessons for this year, I was enthralled with how much information was in Episode 3 ~ Westward . It couldn't be done in just three weeks, as I had intended for each unit. So, I broke Westward up into two separate units: Westward 1 and Westward 2 . This week I will provide the lesson plans for Westward 1 . We spent three weeks on this part of the unit. We read The Captain's Dog by Roland Smith. We read an equal number of pages each day to cover the three-week unit (Suprisingly, Dawson did not enjoy this book as much as I thought he would. With him being such a dog-lover, I thought he would appreciate it more. But it just didn't have enough action for him. You'll find that he's hard to please when it comes to literature. I actually really enjoyed The Captain's Dog and thought it was a great piece of historical fiction.) We watched the entire Episode 3, did the discussion questions/video quiz for the episode and the voc...

Geez .. It's only the second post in this series and I almost forgot about it! On Thursday night, as I was packing to go out of town for the weekend, I remembered that I would need to get it ready to auto post. So, I stayed up that night to get it done. The second episode of America: The Story of Us is "Revolution". We spent three weeks on this unit. We read The Winter of Red Snow by  Kristiana Gregory and Yankee Doodle Boy by Joseph Plumb Martin. We read an equal number of pages each day to cover the three-week unit ( The Winter of Red Snow was good, I thought, although Dawson did not enjoy it as much. It was more of a story than Yankee Doodle Boy .) We watched Episode 2, did the discussion questions/video quiz for the episode and the vocabulary words. These can be printed by going here . The Episode Guides are down the left hand column on the site. All "notebooking pages" are printed from Advanced World History Vol. 2 from Hold that Thought! ...

Here it is ... the first installment of our American History lesson plans using "America: The Story of Us" as our spine. We are currently on Episode 6 and I anticipate us at least getting through Episode 10 by the end of the school year. I hope that you find these posts helpful as you plan your lessons. The first episode of America: The Story of Us is "Rebels". We spent three weeks on this unit. We started reading Blood on the River by Elisa Lynn Carbone. We read an equal number of pages each day to cover the three-week unit (** highly recommend). We watched Episode 1, did the discussion questions/video quiz for the episode and the vocabulary words. These can be printed by going here . The Episode Guides are down the left hand column on the site. All "notebooking pages" are printed from Advanced World History Vol. 2 from Hold that Thought! All "America's Heritage" references are materials printed from America's Heritage: ...

On July 31st, I posted about my intention to post my lesson plans and materials used in our "America: The Story of Us" self-built American History curriculum. I did have plans to do it, but as we have gotten into school I haven't made the time for it. I have noticed that one of my most popular blog posts was THAT POST on July 31st. That tells me that there are educators out there who are searching for lesson plans that incorporate "America: The Story of Us". And today I received an e-mail from a sweet reader who wants to use the series as a spine, but isn't used to building her own curriculum so is feeling overwhelmed. She asked me if I would mind sharing what we have done this year. And I would be so glad to. So, HEADS UP! Starting this Saturday, my Study America Saturday post will feature my American History lesson plans using "America: The Story of Us" as the spine. And just to show you how serious I am, I have already completed the fi...

I've had a couple of commenters say that they can't locate the Episode Guides on The History Channel website. Go directly to this link. They should be right on the left-hand side (scroll down a bit) titled "Classroom Episode Guides". Click on the episode of your choice and it will pull up a pdf for you to print. Here is the link for you to copy and paste if you need to: http://www.history.com/shows/america-the-story-of-us I hope this helps! Let me know if you are still having problems finding it.

We started our first lessons in our American History study. It's going to be an exciting year!! First we watched Episode 1 of America: The Story of Us entitled "Rebels". This video covered the journey to the new world by the earliest settlers, followed by the Puritans . It dug deep into the ensuing conflicts with the British , including the Boston Tea Party , the Boston Massacre , "The Shot Heard Around the World" , and Paul Revere's Ride . We did the Discussion Questions from the Episode 1 Guide (a pdf file that can be downloaded and printed, found on the left hand side of the link) and Dawson completed the vocabulary words from Episode 1. For Lesson 1 from the Institute for Excellence in Writing: U.S. History Based Writing Lessons, Vol. 1 (IEW) , Dawson used adjectives and alliteration to write a poem entitled "America". Here is his poignant masterpiece: We only had two days of school this week, and the majority of it was spent watch...

I have had a couple of requests for copies of my notes and proposed lesson plans for our U.S. History unit using America: The Story of Us . I am completely and totally glad to share all of the work I have put into this unit. But I am concerned about any Copyright issues I might run into if I copy worksheets, etc. And, now that my materials are getting printed, they are hefty! So, here is what I plan to do. But it may take me a couple of weeks. I am going to type up and make jpg files of my lesson plans for each unit and provide them in a post. I will provide the names and websites (to the best of my ability) of all resources used, and the titles and authors of all of the books and videos we will use. Then you can feel free to obtain the resources and make your own copies. It will require some out-of-pocket expenses for those of you who would like to utilize it, in that you will need to order the Notebooking cd's. I hope that this is not too offensive to anyone who has asked...

FINAL UPDATE (JUNE 2012): We completed our entire U.S. History course last month using the America: The Story of Us video series and the resources I had planned. We officially covered Episodes 1-9 which got us through the 1920's. We plan to use the remaining three videos when we study the World Wars in a couple of years. I just want to go on record as saying that I believe whole-heartedly that the use of this series with my resources would more than qualify your child for a full credit of U.S. History. And, it was exciting and enriching. Feel free to follow all of my lesson plans. You can see them all at this link: http://journey2excellence.blogspot.com/search/label/America%3A%20The%20Story%20of%20Us Update: America: The Story of Us is now available as an InstaStream through Netflix! We also had it available at our local library. If you didn't receive a complimentary copy, you won't have to pay the $30 for it! Many of us received a complimentary copy of "...