American Heritage Education Foundation

The American Heritage Education Foundation is a non-profit organization “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.”  To further this goal, they provide free educational material focusing on America’s historical legacy. The lesson plans they offer are divided by age levels – elementary, middle school, and high school.

Since my daughter is 5 years old I focused on the elementary lesson plans. The first unit, American Heritage Themes, discusses the ideas of freedom, progress, responsibility, and unity. Each of the following units spotlights one or two of those themes. The units include: 

• Colonial America
• The Declaration of Independence
• A Famous Signature
• George Washington
• The U. S. Presidents
• The Great Seal
• The History of Thanksgiving Day
• The United States Flag
• The Star-Spangled Banner
• The National Motto
• Statue of Liberty
• The Pledge of Allegiance and Creed
• America the Beautiful
• What is an American?

Each unit begins with an overview page highlighting the lesson’s purpose, objective, and theme, as well as listing materials needed and preparation required. The pages following the overview include a list of classroom activities ranging from making a Statue of Liberty puppet to playing a game about independence. Some lessons also include worksheets or puzzles for the children to complete, though I find the quality of many of the worksheets lacking.

The lesson plans are geared to a classroom setting so homeschooler’s will have to sift through the 184 pages of teacher’s materials to find things suitable for use on a smaller scale. I found some interesting activities but since I only have one child many of them wouldn’t work well in our situation. I do think it could make an interesting unit study if you added interesting books to each unit and it’s something I’m considering when TJ is a bit older.

This material is provided for free (CD or PDF download) from the American Heritage Education Foundation. If you’re interested in reading how other homeschool families used this product you can check out the homeschool crew blog.

Disclaimer: I was given this product free of charge to review as a member of the Homeschool Crew. I received no other compensation for my review. All views expressed are my opinions only.