Early Settlers of American History Come to Life
Using Southwest Advantage – an American History Curriculum for the Teaching the Settlers of America
This curriculum design was inspired by our family vacation plans (long awaited and desired!) to visit Jamestown and Williamsburg, Virginia. We studied this unit both before and after visiting Jamestown. History really came to life. If you haven’t seen Virginia yet, I highly recommend it!
Below are the lessons we designed using Southwestern Advantage materials about the Early Settlers. Bringing our trip to life, we created activities, used online resources and great, simple and colorful books to teach early American settlers and their amazing, daring adventure to settling in the New World.
American History Lesson 1: Part 1 & 2
First Settlers
| Topic | Concepts |
| Discovery of America | Discover Motivations |
| 1492 Discovery – The First American discovery by Christopher Columbus | What prompted Columbus to seek other lands and how did he discover America? |
| Materials | Lesson |
| What You Need | Free Lesson Plan |
| Books, maps, crosswords, activities including astrolabe and quadrant. | Lesson Plan Here includes books and links to activities for two weeks of material |
American History Lesson 2: Part 1 & 2
More World Travelers & Explorers
| Topic | Concept |
| More Explorers | Discovery Motivations |
| John Cabot, Cartier, Magellan and Ponce de Leon’s explorations. | Why were so many countries sending out expeditions? What were they looking for? |
| Materials | Lesson |
| What You Need | Free Lesson Plan |
| Books, maps, crosswords and access to template to make ad on computer or by paper | Lesson Plan Here includes books and links to activities for two weeks of material |
Lesson 3: Part 1 & 2
The First Colony of Jamestown
| Topic | Concept |
| The First Settlement | Discovery Motivations |
| Jamestown and Colonization | What was the first colony like? |
| Materials | Lesson |
| What You Need | Free Lesson Plan |
| Computer, books, postcard template, MagellanTV (if you have it) | Lesson Plan Here includes books and links to activities for two weeks of material |
A Simple & Engaging Curriculum for Elementary
My American history curriculum is aimed towards elementary students – with decent reading skills and some help from parent or parents to work on the activities/access the websites. All our children throughout their elementary years enjoyed this curriculum.
Using Southwestern Advantage Book
I love this text because it really helped me create this curriculum and organize my thoughts was Southwestern Advantage. When we met this traveling salesman and bought this one book to try, I had no idea how much the history sections would benefit us, even months later. From this text I created the above lessons to make history fun, simplified and colorful. We have, over the years, learned that there are very few history resources that are condensed into a fun and easy format for elementary children. Ourkids love history but all the content is scattered amongst too advanced texts or boring old books.
While I know there are some history curriculums out there that are fun for kids, most of the time, it’s world history. We wanted to specifically to teach our children the basics – to understand the way our country was founded. I hope this works for your child or children as well as a good starting point.
In making these lessons understanding that you likely do not have the Advantage book. I took the content from those many good, dense pages and drew from it what I found fun and interesting. I am not a history lover – so I made it as simple as I could. I hope it’s enjoyable for your child or children too!
