Chronicles of . . . A State History Notebook Review
Hewitt Homeschooling has many great homeschooling products including the Chronicles of . . . A State History Notebook that I was lucky enough to get review. Chronicles of . . . A State History Notebook is designed for grades 3-8. I used it with my 4th grade son.
What you get when you order Chronicles of . . . A State History Notebook-
A nice three ring binder filled with everything you would need for a really great state study!
When I said everything I was not kidding! This is the Table of Contents. This shows everything your child can learn with this study!
Everything is already printed out for you. All you have to do is add in the resources to go along with it. The fact that everything is printed out for you and you have no guessing on what your child should know about the state you choose is well worth the $19.95 price of this curriculum. Just in ink alone you will be saving yourself some money by getting this!
There are 5 main sections in the notebook (as you can also see from the above picture). They are –
1. Facts,Symbol,Emblems – this section covers all of your basic stuff you should know about your state like what the state flag looks like, the state seal, state tree, state animals,etc.
2.Geography- this section covers your basic geography that you student should know like the state outline,population,and natural resources.
3. Industries, Jobs- this section covers the main industries of your state, points of interest, transportation, and even tourism.
4. History, Government- This section covers your state history, historical site, and who sits in government positions in your state. This section has also has a great timeline included in it. This picture below shows you what the timeline looks like. It starts in the 1600’s and go all the way through modern times-
5.Miscellaneous, field trips, photographs- this section covers tons of great information like current events, and great field trips you go ion, report sheets, newspaper clippings, etc.
There are also lots of great suggestions on further ideas on how to learn about your state like interviewing a resident, field trip ideas, research topics, project ideas, and the list goes on and on! This notebook ends with a certificate of completion that your child can proudly show when they have completed everything you want them too. Every printed worksheet in this notebook is easy to use or even to not use! You pick and choose what fits your child and your education goals with this notebook.
How we used it-
I was so glad I got to review this becasue I really wanted to cover state history with my 4th grader this year. This made it so easy and stress free. It saved me tons of hours trying to figure out what I wanted him to know, trying to print it all out and put it in an order that would make sense, find a notebook to put it in, and then drive back to the store becasue I used all my ink up, and also try to think of all the creative things I should add in to a state study. The $19.95 is well worth it and to be honest I would have paid more for all of this!
Thanks to everything being there and already done for me I was able to plan out the study to cover most of this year. I broke it down into small doable parts and then assigned a part to a each of our school weeks.
The first part we worked on was the state symbols. To make this easier for my son I printed out the state symbols and let him color those or just cut and glue them in. I wanted this to be enjoyable for him and he is not a huge fan of writing so I would let him dictate to me some of the answers to the questions and some he would write. Here are some of our pictures-
I thought this was a great thing to include in a state history study. I would have never thought to include the average temperatures of a state! This was also great becasue it gave my son some experience in looking up data and translating it into a graph.We choose to do the average high and the average low.It also opened us up to talking about the different regions and how temperatures might be different in one than the other.
One of the fun things this curriculum encourages you to do is read biographies about people that are from your state. I found this great one about Michael Jordan. I had my son read it and do a separate notebooking page about him and what he was known for.
Another book I found was this really neat one about The Biltmore House, which is a large tourist spot in our state and has some really neat history in it and about it. There is a whole series of these books and they are about different historical places. They are really neat!
I wanted my son to be able to look up information in a book and online so I found a couple of great books about my state and I let him use them for his research. When he was younger we did more school together but I want him to start transitioning into an independent learner so I just handed him the books and the pages of the notebook I wanted completed that day and let him work on finding the information himself. This curriculum was easy to tweak to whatever I wanted to do with him. Whether it was independent learning, a project, or a fun field trip it worked for us!
During our review time we got to go on vacation to another state. One of the really interesting things was becasue I was working on this study with him I was able to point out other facts about the state we went to (Va) and compare them to our state (NC). One of the neat places we went had all the state flags and signs that told about the state. We found our flag and the information and read about it.
We have so much more to do with this curriculum and both my son and I are really looking forward to it!We really had a great time using this curriculum and I would highly recommend it for anyone looking for a state study. You don’t have to take my word about this product, go ahead and click the link below and go and check out what my other Review Crew friends thought about it and see how they used it with their families!
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