America's Story 1 (Teacher Guide)

My son LOVES Angela O’Dell’s history text books, but my honest two cents on the Teacher’s Guide is 4/5. PROS: Timeline questions, "imagine you are ______ and write a journal entry" elements (though I often rewrite the instructions). CON: While my son enjoys drawing, he find the “copy this picture” elements in several MB curricula stressful. He has not had formal art training on shading, proportion, etc, and as a perfectionist finds the instruction “copy this picture/image” VERY stressful, even when I explain he just has to do HIS best. I suggest MB revise the wording on their art supplements to eliminate the word “copy” and revise to something like, “Study the image on page __. Draw your own version/idea of what ___ looked like/happened” etc etc. Specifically in the History series, having Angela’s excellent artwork on the “my version of Squanto/etc, now do your own Squanto/etc” page was especially stressful for my son. He was embarrassed to have his attempt permanently pinned/compared to a level he was not ready to achieve. As a result, we often skipped the art study. (In his LA series, where there isn’t a comparison, I have him cartoon his illustrations, as he enjoys cartoon figures.)

While the assignments could be a bit overwhelming for an 8 year old trying to read instructions on her own; we were able to adapt some assignments and make this an excellent resource for reinforcing what we read in America’s Story 1.

This book is a lot of intense reading, but I appreciated how the topics of slavery, especially, were handled with sensitivity and care. It's so important to learn our history as a nation, and as Christians, be able to process it and set our eyes on Christ. Would Recommend this series.

Daughter loved the drawing part, but questions was to hard for her to understand to answer some of them.

My daughter loved the drawing and writing prompts to go along with the daily reading!

This is good if your kids learn more outside the box. The activities and questions are creative and get you thinking, which is good, but for me personally I would like a little more cut and dry review of historical facts in a teacher guide. It does have the lessons planned out well to be enough but not overwhelming. I still would recommend it.

This was useful to reinforce concepts in the history book. I used several of the writing assignments for our writing for the day. All of the activities were varied and inspirational. My children really loved the drawing and written narration parts best. This was a fun addition to the history course!

My son loves to learn, but is inhibited by checking boxes and writing out answers, etc. So, I have decided to do the timeline with this.

We are going to use a heavy cardstock and put them in sleeve protectors and make the timeline as our study, as we go along. He can add his own information on the timeline. I will probably use 'some' of the pages in the guide to add to the 3 ring binder.

It's sad, really. My son said today, "I love to learn I just don't like all that homework." We only do it to show the state that he did it and it ruins his love of learning. I'm hoping the timeline will be fun for him.

I appreciate the different worksheets, activities, & suggestions listed in the teacher's guide, they help reinforce what we are learning. The hands on activities/timeline are a great way to make the lessons more understandable & exciting for children.

I love the story book but these daily assignments did not flow well at all. They were not enjoyable and some were very confusing. Half way through the book I decided we'd only do a couple of the assignments that made sense. I don't think we'll be using Masterbooks for history anymore.