American Girl History Unit

The Abeka history is gone. We just couldn't take one more minute of it. We also stopped using Bob Jones reading. BORING! Both of these made us dread these subject each day. The solution was found in a unit study called Portraits of American Girlhood by Cindy Sotelo. It is a seven unit study using the American Girl books. Perfect!

We were so excited to find that the first girl we read and study is Felicity! Poogie received Felicity and Elizabeth for Christmas. Since we only have the first book in her series I called my local library and found that they had the next two in the series so that will keep us busy. The study also calls for the use of Felicity's cookbook and craft book which I got from my library also. After looking through those two books I know those are books to put on my purchase list, they are wonderful.

The unit study is laid out for us Monday-Friday with reading and/or activities daily. Mrs., Sotelo recommends that you supplement the unit with a math and phonics program. You may choose to also use a separate spelling program if you wish. Most of the activities are grammar and language based so that is not needed. I however, will still use all of these programs we are currently using. The only thing I am changing is to use this unit study for history and reading. I am also replacing the writing portion of my current curriculum with the writing activities in the unit study. These just make more sense to me.

I also purchased a very inexpensive lapbook on the Felicity reading series from Curric Click. It has comprehension exercises, vocabulary, writing prompts, handwriting, sequencing, and the list goes on. Poogie is really looking forward to the newspaper activities in the lapbook. She works on pieces as we go and when completed with have a full newspaper layout.

So what have we done so far in the unit. We started by doing a book activity, naming the author, illustrator, copyright, etc. This is in the lapbook. I made vocabulary cards to go with each chapter, also from the lapbook. Today we will be doing a lesson from the unit study. We will be visiting a website about colonial Williamsburg and design a sign for a business of our choice found there. I hope to take photos and keep a log on my blog of the unit study. ttfn