Life in America Curriculum, Classical Edition

by Ellen Gardner Ahlberg

Life In America, Inc.

Life in America is a history-based unit study approach that covers most of your core subjects for grades K through 12, with the exception of math. At the high school level, students can acquire enough credits, but they will be missing advanced lab activities for sciences.

There are eight core volumes in this curriculum, and each volume should take one semester to complete. Each volume covers all grade levels, with activities assigned at beginner/early learner, intermediate, and advanced levels. Lesson themes are all drawn from history following a chronological progression. Work in other subject areas is often linked to ideas or content from history.

You should begin with Life in the New World, following with England and Her Colonies for the second semester. The second year, you would use Life Establishing the Nations and Life in a nation Divided 1850-1867. The third year volumes would be Life on the Frontier 1868-1897 and Life in the Victorian Age. Then the fourth year would use Life in a World at War 1941-2000 and Life Before America 0-999. These last two volumes are not yet available.

Placing the Life Before America volume at the end of the cycle seems a bit odd, but the idea is that you will use all 8 volumes three times, continually cycling through the periods of history, with students shifting up to the next level within the cycle the second and third times through the curriculum. The entire curriculum is a bit lopsided with study of the United States in comparison to the rest of the world.

Each lesson is laid out following stages: Interest, Inform, Integrate, and Innovate. A number of activities are given for each stage, some for family learning and some designated for each of the three levels of learning.

The Interest activities are designed to engage a child’s attention and stimulate him to listen and look for information. Inform sections seem to always include a page or more of information focusing on either history or science that is to be read aloud to all students. One of the creative touches in this curriculum is the “Detective Manuals” that pose one question before each of these readings to motivate Beginners/Early Learners to listen carefully. Answers involve using a special code to fill in blanks. Additional “Inform” activities direct students to computer CDs (most from Zane Publishing) or the recommended books. Sometimes, additional information for advanced learners is provided in the core guide. This actually presents one of the possible problems with the curriculum. I believe that most older students learn better if they are either reading information for themselves or reading along while someone else reads aloud. It is more difficult for most learners to absorb and/or retain information that is only read aloud to them. Having said that, it is important to note that they will be reading far more of their information on CDs and from books.

Integrate sections of each lesson focus on skill development, but there are often connections between the information of the lesson and the skill building assignments. This is where younger children work on phonics and penmanship, while everyone works on Bible, grammar and composition, art, spelling, vocabulary, geography, character building, and science. For many of these subjects, assignments are specified for each of the three levels. Most of these activities will be essential. This is primarily where you use the grammar, penmanship, spelling, and Picturesque Writing books mentioned below.

The Innovate part of the lesson might actually be something innovative, but generally it means some sort of sharing of what the student has learned. It might be through tests, recitations, discussion, oral presentations, written reports, or dramatic presentations.

Parents select appropriate activities for each of their children, although some of these, especially tests, will be considered essential.

The guide labels the parent’s role in each of these stages: interest = motivator, inform = teacher, integrate = facilitator, and innovate = student. These changing roles, mean that in the last section of each lesson, the parent is being presented with information by the student.

I describe this program as a unit study but it is easier to use than most other unit studies since it’s more prescriptive about what to use when, and it’s more limited on the number of resources it uses than are many unit studies. More about necessary resources later. The publisher also describes it as a biblical and classical program.

The biblical content is strongly integrated throughout (including Bible memory verses) and presents a Protestant perspective. The classical elements are a bit more difficult to identify. Assignments for the three levels reflect the three stages of the classical trivium: grammar stage, logic stage, and rhetoric stage. It is also suggested that students in grades five through eight use The Latin Road to English Grammar, which then provides Latin instruction. Some primary source documents are used, but the Great Books are not used as the source material for students. Also, the type of writing assignments typical of classical education and Socratic discussions at the upper levels are rare.

As far as additional resources, this gets a little complicated. First, you need a Starter Pack when you begin using the curriculum. The Starter Pack includes American History Explorer CD, The Guide to Picturesque Writing, and the Training CD. The first two items are used throughout all eight volumes.

Secondly, you select your core volume or volumes. You save $35 by purchasing two volumes at a time. Then for each volume, you need to also purchase the extra core materials for each student at each level. Some items like CDs might be shared if you have more than one student at a level. Levels in this case are more specifically broken down into grades 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 through 8, and 9 through 12. Students in grades 1 through 4 receive Spelling Hands-On, Grammar Hands-On, Picturesque Writing student book, Picturesque Penmanship, three CD-ROMs, 48 Time Line Cards, bingo-type game cards, Detective Kit, and a magnifying glass. (Yes, all of that for only $30!) The spelling, grammar, writing and penmanship books are all grade level designated, with new books for each semester. The CDs provide much of the textbook-type content for lessons.

For grades 5 through 8, student packages include three CD-ROMs, the Time Line Cards, Picturesque Writing student book, and the Guide to a volume of Guide to Geekdom computer science. For grades 9 through 12, there are six CD-ROMs, Time Line Cards and Picturesque Writing student book.

In addition, the youngest learners need to learn phonics. There is Learn Along Phonics book that provides basic phonics instruction. It comes in a package with a Detective Kit for $45. There is also a new beginner edition of Life in a New World written expressly for young learners. If you have ONLY young learners, you should get this beginner edition and its package that includes three CDs, Learn Along Phonics, Kinder-Math, a literature package of five books, and the Detective Kit for $178.71 (only $120 when purchased with another package).

In addition to these core items, there are some others that you will need. Write Away, Writers Express, or Writers Inc are writing/grammar handbooks for each of the levels. The History of US series is frequently referenced although alternative lessons on CDs are usually suggested as options. Beginners will need Christian Liberty Nature Reader (it comes in the literature package for the new beginners edition). Intermediate students will need Considering God’s Creation and Astronomy and the Bible. For the family, you will need Hand in Hand, An American History through Poetry. These resources are available from Life In America, Inc.

Space and time don’t permit reviews of all the individual books that were created for this program by either or both Ellen G. Ahlberg and Kim Waltmire. However, here are a few notes on the various books.

Spelling books are more activity/practice oriented. Children’s spelling word lists are compiled from topical words from the core book, so this is not a phonetic or word element approach to spelling. Instead, lessons integrate grammar, dictionary usage, and spelling games and puzzles with practice on the individualized word lists.

Picturesque Writing books integrate arts and crafts with writing, research, and other creative learning activities tied to the topical themes in the core books. Each Picturesque Writing book has activities for one of the core books with activities designated for the three different learning levels. The Guide to Picturesque Writing that comes in the starter set serves for all Picturesque Writing student books.

Phonics instruction in Learn Along Phonics moves very quickly into blending, so you might need to add more instruction than is provided at that stage.

Penmanship books use the D’Nealian style of handwriting.

I can’t forget to mention the Time Line Cards and games for each time period that provide yet more learning reinforcement tools. The Time Line Cards are nicely laminated and almost 4” x 4” in size. Suggested activities for the cards are included. The bingo type games focus on historical facts.

Regarding the lessons themselves, I mentioned that students access information from the CDs. These are high quality programs from Zane Publishing, although they are secular in content. The core books often mention potential problems or areas of discussion for Christian parents. The CDs have text with full color illustrations. The accompanying narration adds yet another learning avenue for students. Topical presentations are followed by self-checking quizzes. Parents can check on student scores only immediately after students complete a quiz. The CDs actually serve as textbooks with glossaries and indexes that make them easy to use.

Life in America should be easier to use than some other unit studies since many assignments are already prescribed for different learning levels. There are still quite a few hands-on activities that will require resources and planning, but generally this is less demanding than in other programs.

Occasionally, it is difficult to figure out the referent in a lesson. For example, there’s an instruction to “Review the mystery” without a “beginner” designation (p.17 LIANW), but if you aren’t working with the beginner’s Detective Kit, you won’t understand what that means. Also, I spotted many spelling errors throughout the LIANW core book I reviewed. I’d love to see a professional proof-reading before the next printing.

Overall, I actually think this curriculum will work better for students in the elementary grades than for high school. While it is meets national standards, I suspect students will need more literature and composition skill development as well as higher level lab work to satisfy college entry requirements. I’m also concerned about the quality and content of instruction for upper levels. There are so many excellent texts and resources that delve into worldview questions that I would be reluctant to rely so heavily on the Zane CDs while trying to provide a Christian education.

Also, foreign language might be satisfied with three years of Latin Road to English Grammar (receiving high school credit even if they learn it at younger levels), but most students should be taking at least some of their foreign language instruction while working at high school level. A follow up year of Latin or addition of another foreign language might be a wise choice.