Yeah!! I'm really excited about sharing this week :-) My family loves history. If I ever go back to college and get a degree it will be in history; in fact, I'd probably major and minor in history!! That's how much I love it :-)

So, I wanted my young 'uns to really learn through living history this year and I found a program by the National Park Service online that is a FREE curriculum for just that! AWESOME!!!

The National Park Service and The National Register of Historic Places has a website called Teaching With Historic Places. It has all the curriculum you need layed out in a plan complete with pictures, maps, and pretty much everything! You can sort by state/location, theme, or time period so it makes finding places that fit what you are studying very easy. You don't have to pick some place you've already visited but if you do, then it really opens up your kids minds because they can really see it and thats perfect for visual learners.

We wanted to pick a place that we've been to recently, and also something that fit in the time period in our country that we are studying. We chose to focus the next several weeks on the Homestead Act and so are using the program that goes along with The Hornbeck Homestead in Colorado. My in-laws live in Colorado Springs and so we had a great time visiting the homestead last year. We even made an old timey video of my mother in law walking on stilts (you might have seen that on my homeschool lounge page)! Here are a few pictures we took when we visited: http://www.angelfire.com/sc/anderklan/hornbeck_homestead/

In Christ,

Sallie