Monday, November 9, 2009

America's Heritage: An Adventure in Liberty

 
American Heritage Educational Foundation is a non-profit, non-partisan educational foundation dedicated to the understanding and teaching of America's factual and philosophical heritage to promote constructive citizenship and Freedom, Unity, Progress, and Responsibility among our students and citizens.

I had previously downloaded the free lesson plans from AHEF but never understood what they were trying to accomplish. So when I was asked to write a review on America's Heritage: An Adventure in Liberty for the TOS Homeschool Crew, I wasn't sure what I was going to do. The first thing I knew I had to do was to print out the material. The older I get, the harder it seems for me to understand the big picture from reading on screen. Once I had the printed copy in hand, I was able to see what the program was all about and actually got quite excited.

Even though we are currently studying Rome, I have been wanting to include a study about our founding fathers and the principles that made the United States of America strong. It looked like America's Heritage would allow me to do just that. Since I was going to be using it with my 7th and 9th graders, I decided to use the high school level. They also have an elementary level and a middle school level.

With America's Heritage: An Adventure in Liberty, we are learning about our country's birth through the study of some of the founding documents: The Mayflower Compact, The Declaration of Independence, Federalist Paper #47, the US Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the First Amendment. We will also study about entrepreneurs in history, American's Creed, and the US Flag.

Each lesson includes activities to help the students understand what the documents or events mean and how they affect the framework of our country. There are 13 lessons, some which  easily have enough material to cover 2 or 3 class periods.

It has been really refreshing to learn about our founding fathers' backgrounds and the moral character that shaped their thinking. It has also been great to understand more fully what the founding documents mean.

You can download a copy of America's Heritage: An Adventure in Liberty and experience it for yourself.

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Disclosure:This product was provided to our family for free as members of the 2009-2010 Old Schoolhouse Magazine Homeschool Crew. No further compensation was received. Reviews and opinions expressed in this blog are my own.

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