American Heritage Education Foundation offers a free CD or download of lesson plans called “America’s Heritage: An Adventure in Liberty”. The CD contains three different sets of lesson plans, elementary school level (in both English and Spanish), middle school and high school level, each consisting of about 180 pages worth of information.
America’s Heritage lesson plans are based around four themes; freedom, unity, progress and responsibility. Each lesson focuses on a document, icon, event or person to demonstrate one or more of those themes to the students. This is a supplemental curriculum and has lots of games, worksheets and activities, but not a lot of information. You would need to find your own outside reading to really learn about the history and heritage of America.
Since the lesson plans are written for a classroom setting, many of the games and activities are impractical for homeschoolers. Some of the resources that would work well in a homeschool setting are crossword puzzles, vocabulary worksheets, role playing, and even a puppet of the Statute of Liberty. There are also some printable pages that would be nice to put up on a school room wall, some are nice and some have quality issues. 
There are about 16 pages at the back of each level devoted to explaining to teachers the guidelines for religious expression in our public schools.
What we thought:
This is not a good fit for our family. We homeschool because we wish to teach our children our values and the Christian Heritage of our nation. This resource does not fit with those goals. There are several statements that have been so watered down to be acceptable that they no longer, in my opinion, convey truth. Take the goal of the lesson introducing our national motto,
The purpose of this lesson is to introduce students to the motto, “In God We Trust.” The motto is found on money and is therefore a constant reminder to the citizens of the United States that progress is a result of freedom for every American as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
There are other statements that I won’t take the time to share as it is not my purpose to get into a political discussion.
If you are interested in an nonreligious supplement to teach your students more about their American heritage , “America’s Heritage: An Adventure in Liberty” provides some interesting “activities in which students assess and analyze their own identities as Americans”* as well as worksheets and discussion questions to be used as a supplement another curriculum. The download or CD is free.
*Quote from the AHEF website.
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We also homeschool with the purpose of teaching our children our values and bringing them up in the ways of the Lord. I am curious to know what kind of curriculum or books do you use to teach your children about American Heritage. We try to be very careful of what we read and use to teach our children, being careful that it resonates with our Christian believes. As I have mentioned before I am a native of Brazil, and I am so inspired by your country because of the resolution of the first settlers to come and create a place where there would be freedom and liberty of worship. It’s sad to see that Americans are forgetting how this country began and are falling for the lies of a socialist/ fascist/ communist government.
anyway, thanks for sharing.
Tereza
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Raising Olives Reply:
November 7th, 2009 at 6:29 am
We haven’t used anything apart from our regular history curriculum, although we have a large selection of living books about America’s heritage and we have a lot of discussions about current policies and happenings and how they abide by or violate our founding documents.
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Oh, come on! Political discussion can be fun! : )
[Reply]
Raising Olives Reply:
November 7th, 2009 at 7:00 am
I’m leaving that up to you Nicki!
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