Golden Prairie Press Review

Vendor: Golden Prairie Press

Product: Digital Heroes & Heroines of the Past: American History Curriculum

Age: 1st-6th grade but older can use this as well

Price: $98.99

I am always looking for new exciting curriculum for History.  In public school that I went to people fell asleep in class so I never got into it.  So when given the chance to review Golden Prairie Press's Digital Heroes & Heroines of the Past: American History Curriculum I was excited.  To this point I have not found a curriculum that I could understand to even teach let alone the kids be able to use it with ease.   Included in the package:

Heroes and Heroines of the Past: American History Part 1 ebook

 View the Contents and Introduction.  View a sample.

Heroes and Heroines of the Past: American History Part 2 ebook

Additional Materials Downloads

Historical Skits ebook 

View the table of contents and sample pages.

Sing Some History CD

Listen to a sample.

Listen to Some U.S. History MP3 CD

 Listen to a sample.

Digital Heroes & Heroines of the Past: American History Curriculum is by Amy Puetz.  It is set up to be a 30 week curriculum. A fun thing about it is that it is grouped two different ways.  The first part is larger print and more keyed to 1st and 2nd grade learners.  Easier terminology and easier to read.  The second part is a bit more advanced for those in 3rd and up grades.  After each lesson there is activities for the kids to do.  They range from songs, cooking, crafts and such. They are not a must to complete but they do help break up the same old reading a story and moving on. The lessons take about 30 minutes to an hour to complete, more if you are doing cooking or a craft.  There are also question pages and the answer key as well.
When we used this curriculum we started using it about 4 days a week.  Since I have kids at different levels we spent about an hour on each lesson just to make sure everyone got it.  The teachers guide shows you all the available activities that you can do at the end of each lesson. It also reminds you not all are required. The options were great because then we got to pick the things we were interested in doing.  So we would read the story for the lesson and then we could answer the comprehension questions. These were pretty simple questions just to make sure the child was listening to the story. I think it also promoted some great conversations to continue with the learning. There were also some writing prompts that are great for the older kids to get some language arts in the mix. Last we would pick out which activity we wanted to do.  Everything you need to complete the activity is included, minus craft supplies and cooking supplies. My kids of course are always all about food.  They also have Bible versus to memorize and have you to come back at the end of the week to recite them.  There is also some extra reading ideas to bring the topic into all of your learning for the day.  Since my kids doing this are girls it was very fun for them to learn about all the heroins in history.  Many were things I never even learned it school which was fun.
I believe their favorite thing was doing the Morse Code activity in lesson 2.  I found little papers around the house where they were trying to make their own.

The curriculum is pretty much a timeline of events with some events briefed over to give the idea of what happened during that time.  For my kids I think it was great.  They get bored easily if things go to in depth and it was easy for me to guide them since I am not to polished on History myself.  We did not extend onto the living books though as we already had some heavy reading we have been doing for other things.  I think branching out would be great for the older kids, especially on the stories and topics that they found interesting.

Overall I think this is a greatly put together curriculum for a family with young ones and ones new to the history world.  Like I said I am not great on history myself so this was easy for me to get into and help without having to do a ton on pre-work in order to be prepared to teach it.  The audios also provided a break for me and a different spin on learning. 

Be sure to check them out on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoldenPrairiePress
Also click below to see what my other crew members had to say about this curriculum.