History…who doesn’t love learning about the amazing people that came before us, and all the journeys, adventures, and even struggles that they went through in order to make the world what it is today? History is without a doubt, a favorite subject in our homeschool. I’ll even go as far to say that American History is at the top on the list. That’s why when we were so I was thrilled to be offered The Story of the Thirteen Colonies & the Great Republic Set and 200 Questions About American History Set from Memoria Press.
About Memoria Press
Memoria Press is a family-run publishing company that was founded in 1994 by Cheryl Lowe. They offer easy-to-use classical Christian education that can be used for homeschools and private schools.
We first discovered Memoria Press while I was searching for a grammar and composition program for my third grader. Since that time, we have quickly fallen in love with this company and have been extremely pleased with their curriculum.
For this review, Memoria Press sent us the American History Sets that include:
The Stories of the Thirteen Colonies & The Great Republic
This set includes H.A. Guerber’s The Story of the Thirteen Colonies & The Great Republic as well a student and teacher book.
The student guide contains 32 lessons in all, and inside you’ll find the recommended reading broken down for each lesson. Along with that, you’ll also find facts, vocabulary, and comprehension questions for each chapter. You’ll also find an enrichment section that includes activities such as mapwork, timeline, research, writing assignments and so much more.
My favorite part, is when you flip to the appendix section of the student and teacher guide. In this section, you find a pretty amazing collection that includes maps, 13 colonies map where you child can make note of each of the colonies, the year it was establish and who founded it. This is a wonderful reference chart that can be used for years to come. You’ll also find the Mayflower Compact, Declaration of Independence, United States Constitution, and so much more. It’s literally packed full of wonderful information that you and your child will both love.
Also, as with most Memoria Press curriculum, you’ll find test and answer keys in the teacher book.
200 Questions About American History Set:
With the 200 Questions About American History set you’ll receive a student book, teacher book and flash cards. This set is designed to be used with The Story of the Thirteen Colonies & The Great Republic and Story of the World Vol. 4.
Inside both the student and teacher book, you’ll find a recommended weekly schedule to follow, with a total of 34 weeks. For example, week 1 has your student reading Chapters 1-7 in H.A. Guerber book and then answer drill questions 1-8 as well as do timeline 1, where they fill in the date for future reference.
You’ll have find that you have weeks laid out for reviews and test on what your student/child has learned so far. Basically every four weeks is a review week, and the next week will be a test on what they’ve learned. The teacher book is where you’ll be able to find the tests and answer keys.
In the back of the student book, you’ll find words to the:
• The Star-Spangled Banner
• Old Ironsides
• O Captain! My Captain!
With the flash cards, you’ll receive
• 150 drill questions
• 30 Timeline Dates
• 20 Notable Quotes
• 44 US Presidents
How we use this curriculum:
Since we don’t have a recommended weekly schedule with The Story of the Thirteen Colonies & The Great Republic, we are doing what works best for us. Basically we are rotating days between reading and doing our lessons.
Before we start our recommended reading, I orally go over the “Facts to Know” section in our student/teacher book, as well as orally go over the vocabulary words. We talk about each word and the definition before we dive into our reading. I do this to ensure that he is going to understand the words that we will encounter during the read. We do choose to read the chapters as read alouds and stop to discuss certain parts of it.
The following day is when the lesson worksheet starts getting filled out. He pulls out the dictionary and looks up the words, as well as answer the questions. Depending on how long the lesson lasts, we either stop once that’s complete or head to the enrichment activity. I feel that the enrichment activities really add to the lessons. For example, when we did lesson 1, we headed out to a local Cherokee exhibit that is set up as well as hiked the trail. It was a wonderful experience.
So what about the 200 Questions About American History? As I mentioned, this book does have a recommended schedule. Currently we aren’t following the schedule to a T, we are actually combining this with our other set. However, as we read through our book, we add in flash cards. We do our flash cards daily and I’m amazed at how much my ten-year old has learned. He is actually retaining all this information. We mix the flash cards up, we play games using the flash cards and depending on the day, his little brother even joins in on the flash card fun. I’ll start following the schedule on this more strict once we hit the section where we add SOTW.
Our final thoughts:
Overall, I have been beyond pleased with both of these sets. Even my ten-year old looks forward to these lessons and especially the flash cards. While you could use these sets separately, I am currently loving going through them both at the same time.
