Homeschool Happenings: Memoria Press ~ A Review

Over the past weeks my daughter has been working through The Story of the Thirteen Colonies & the Great Republic Set, and the 200 Question About American History Set from Memoria Press. Both of these sets are aligned for grades 5-8.

The Story of the Thirteen Colonies & the Great Republic contains:

a teacher's guide (end of chapter questions, map work, assignment suggestions)
a student edition which has 32 lessons with space given for students to write definitions for vocabulary and to answer comprehension questions
Guerber's The Story of the Thirteen Colonies and the Great Republic edited by Memoria Press

Each student lesson contains four parts:

Facts To Know
Vocabulary
Comprehension Questions
Enrichment

The Facts To Know section covers people, events, places, etc. that may be unfamiliar to students. The Enrichment section covers timelines, research, primary source, map, composition, thirteen colonies chart, recitation, and poetry work.

At the end of the Student Guide in the Appendix you will find:

Maps
13 Colonies Chart
Mayflower Compact
Paul Revere's Ride Poem
Letter From George to Martha Washington
Declaration of Independence
Exerts From Thomas Paine's Common Sense
United States Constitution
Emancipation Proclamation
Gettysburg Address
Daniel Webster's Senate Speech, 1830

The comprehension questions hit on the most important key points from the reading and definitely require the students to fully engage with the text. For example in Lesson 27 the students are asked:

When war broke out, what advantages did the North have over the South?

Describe the battle between the Merrimac and the Monitor?

In the Enrichment section of this lesson for Research the students are asked to, "Research the structure of the Confederacy. What kind of government did they establish? Did they have similar laws to the Union? Who was in the government?"

Teacher Guide

The Teacher Guide is similar to the Student Guide but with the answers included. In addition, at the end of the guide the following are included:

Completed Timeline
Tests (Tests are given after every 8 lessons.)
Test Keys

Guerber's The Story Of The Thirteen Colonies & The Great Republic is 211 pages in length. There are 85 chapters with black and white pictures included. I really don't even want to call them chapters because they are each only a couple of pages in length.

While reading Chapter 29 entitled, How England Treated Her Colonies, it stated; "As if all this were not bad enough, the English forbad the Americans from manufacturing anything that England produced as well, and required Americans to purchase their products. If the New Englanders wanted to exchange codfish for Virginia tobacco, they either had to send it by way of England, thus paying for its being carried twice across the Atlantic, or else they were obliged to pay heavy duties." To this my daughter said, that was crazy!

The 200 Questions About American History Set contains:

200 Questions About American History Teacher Key
200 Questions About American History Student Book
200 Questions About American History Flashcard Set

This set is supposed to be a supplement to Guerber's The Story of the Thirteen Colonies and the Great Republic.

Flashcards

Student Book

Recommended Schedule

The 200 Questions About American History is a great way to reinforce and review what is being learned. I really liked this complement to The Story of the Thirteen Colonies & The Great Republic Set. I found it a great way to see what my daughter was retaining in her reading and learning.

After having my daughter work through these history sets for a couple of weeks I decided that I wanted two of my other daughters to work through these sets as well. I called Memoria Press and got two more sets. It has been fun watching all three of my daughter's working together to work their way through learning about our great nations history. My 5th grader has been a bit overwhelmed by the curriculum. I think that she is a bit on the younger side and so it was not the best fit for her at this time. My 7th grader was the perfect fit for this and was completely able to work through this curriculum on her own. She likes the set-up and likes that it doesn't take more than 20 minutes a day to complete. I am also having my 10th grade daughter work through this curriculum. She has severe medical complications that make keeping up with academics difficult. She is very smart but just has a hard time keeping up. This has been a good fit for her, especially the 200 Questions About American History. She has been able to catch up on important American History facts.

I would definitely recommend both of these sets to others looking for a good American History overview.

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