I’ve always enjoyed our Ambleside and Charlotte Mason inspired history “curriculum”, which is actually not a traditional curriculum at all, but a guided list of non text book readings about history and historical characters.

The past two years we have enjoyed the whole family approach of the Simply Charlotte Mason history guides.

I admit, I did find myself a little nervous when I found myself staring at the trio of middle schoolers and wondering if we had studied history “enough”.

Pretty sure this is a common homeschooling parent’s fear and, although it plagues me from time to time, it is not one that rests too heavily for too long on my shoulders.  I do know, however, that we had yet to truly delve into social studies in the form of our government’s system.  When Timberdoodle featured the Notgrass Company’s Uncle Sam and You, I felt this was a great opportunity to have my eighth grader try out this book and get an overview of knowledge.

 

 

Honestly, this guide is targeted at middle school in general so all three of my older kids could be using it, but I wanted this guide to be entirely independent and I did not want to deal wth book sharing, so I am tackling it student by student this time.

I  am pretty anti-textbook and what I like about Notgrass is that the book doesn’t reek of textbook at all.  In fact, I think it’s pretty fair to say it is almost anti-textbook really.  It’s written by a husband and wife who are passionate about education and about history.  (And, if you’re checking, that’s the basic definition of what Charlotte Mason homeschoolers would call a “living book”.  A book written by a passionate expert author, not a committee.)

At some point in homeschooling I used anther Notgrass material guide with Riley but I cannot recall for the life of me what topic it covered.  (By the way, the authors’ last name is Notgrass, hence the unusual name.)

The book IS hefty.  Actually – it is so hefty that there are two of them.  You can buy additional guides and supplements to go along with the text but I opted for the book itself because it’s where our real focus is this year.

London, my eight grader, has independently been reading chapters and answering select questions and completing select assignments at the end of each chapter.  I think she’s learned a lot and has a much better working vocabulary about our government and its basic workings than she had before she started this guide.

As she finishes the first section, I will pass the book along to Mosely and then down to Bergen.  (Which helps a homeschooling book budget.)

 

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