Review Detail

I am the odd one out! Most people absolutely love America the Beautiful. It is why I chose it for our history this current school year. But the kids and I all find it very dry. The history just doesn't come alive for us and I feel like we end up reading and forgetting (and there is a whole lot of reading). Also, a lot of people love the photos and graphics in the books. Maybe I got a weird copy but our pictures are tiny, dark and grainy. I end up looking for the photos online so we can see them better. In the book they just look like bad photocopies. When everyone was going on and on about the photos I thought they'd be big, glossy and beautiful. Sorry but they're not. I had better history textbooks when I was in public school a couple decades ago.

We finally skipped ahead to The Revolutionary War and it has gotten a little better. We have a timeline going, which my 5th grader finds engaging, so I definitely recommend doing a timeline. The accompanying workbook isn't very comprehensive. It's mostly word searches and crossword puzzles, which is okay for retaining vocabulary, but not much beyond that. Now would I recommend it? I think that with any curriculum it may work for some and not for others. I would check this one out at a curriculum convention or the "view inside the book" feature on websites. It's not for us.