Bringing History To Life

Moving Beyond the Page curriculum is designed to bring history to life for children. They don't just learn the facts about historical time periods but are challenged to understand the issues and ideas that affected real people. This is one reason we integrate historical fiction in our language arts units to correlate with the historical time periods being studied in social studies. As children learn about Native Americans, colonization and revolution, westward expansion, immigration, civil war, and civil rights, they are reading stories about people and children from those periods. This approach makes history real and living instead of an endless sequence of dates and events. Moving Beyond the Page social studies units also integrate authentic documents, letters, journals, photos, and other primary sources into the curriculum. We want children to experience history.

AMERICA The Story of US

The History Channel has a brand new series called AMERICA The Story of US. We will not be adding this to any of our full-year packages due to pricing considerations, but if you plan on using Moving Beyond the Page for the Age 8-10, 9-11, or 10-12 levels, you should consider purchasing this DVD set. The program lines up very nicely with our 3-year sequential overview of American history.

The following list shows how each episode corresponds to units within Moving Beyond the Page. Our overview of American history begins in the 8-10 level with Native Americans and early explorers. AMERICA The Story of US picks up the story at the beginning of our 9-11 level with colinization and revolution.

• Age 9-11 - Colonization and Revolution; Age 9-11 - The Witch of Blackbird Pond
  • Rebels
  • Revolution
• Age 9-11 - Westward Expansion; Age 9-11 - The Ballad of Lucy Whipple
  • Westward
  • Heartland
• Age 9-11 - Lincoln (language arts); Age 10-12 - The Civil War; Age 10-12 - Bull Run
  • Division
  • Civil War
• Age 9-11 - Immigration; Age 9-11 - A House of Tailors
  • Cities
• Age 10-12 - The World Wars; Age 10-12 - Number the Stars; Age 10-12 - Esperanza Rising (language arts)
  • Boom
  • Bust
  • WWII
• Age 9-11 - Space; Age 10-12 - Civil Rights; Age 10-12 - Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
  • Superpower
• Age 9-11 - Space; Age 9-11 - Technology and Invention;
  • Millenium

I Can't Believe This Really Happened!

We watched a few of these episodes with our 9 year-old son. He got very animated and would not stop talking about it. He would say things like, "I can't believe this really happened. Usually with a movie you kind of know how it will end, but you never know with this because it is real life." The Great Depression really confused him. He couldn't understand why people would work in dangerous conditions where some people died. We stopped the show many times so he could ask questions and process his feelings and observations about how different life was.

I hope that you and your children are able to experience history through these videos as well.