Disclaimer: Complimentary product received. All honest opinions expressed are my own.
If you’re looking for an all-inclusive yet simple U.S. Geography resource, you’ll want to keep reading. Recently I had the opportunity to try out Our 50 States, a U.S. Geography and Literature curriculum by Notgrass History, in our homeschool.
Overview
Notgrass History is a family-owned and operated company that creates Christian Bible-based History curriculum for elementary, middle, and high school students. According to their website’s FAQ section, the areas of their curriculum that are distinctly religious represent a variety of Christian faiths. Moreover, there are other distinctly religious areas in which viewpoints from non-Christian religions are shared. However, according to their website, Notgrass History’s curriculum is predominantly non-religious.
Our curriculum uses narrative lessons, original source documents, rich literature, and hands-on activities to help parents and children love history.
ray and charlene notgrass
Notgrass History also offers a web-based app called HomeschoolHistory.com filled with additional history resources, such as videos, books, field trip ideas, games, and more. It was created for students and families who desire to dig deeper into any time period or historical topic. HomeschoolHistory.com is available on any device.
About Our 50 States
Our 50 States is the first of two elementary U.S. History curricula offered by Notgrass History. (The second is Our Spangled Story.) Created for students in grades 1 through 4, Our 50 States is a full-year study of United States Geography. The spine of this course is a textbook that bears the same name. This course also has three accompanying books: the Atlas Workbook, the Lesson Review book, and the Answer Key and Literature Guide. You also get access to stream or download the songs that are studied in the Units lessons.
The Our 50 States textbook provides narrative readings, photos, maps, and more. It breaks the States up by region and then offers two lessons for each State. At the end of each lesson, there are instructions on which pages to complete in the other workbooks and suggestions for additional activities to reinforce the lesson. Each lesson also includes a song related to each State. Students are able to listen to the downloaded or streamed songs while reading along with the lyrics in the textbook.
The Atlas Workbook is what students will use to do a little mapping. Here they will have a simple tracing Art assignment, a related vocabulary word, and a few short mapping activities that reinforce what was learned in the textbook.
The Lesson Review book provides optional questions that check to see what the student remembers from their readings. There are five review questions per State, with optional Unit tests in the back of the book.
The Answer Key and Literature Guide book was written for parents. It provides the answers to all of the Unit questions and information on the optional supplemental literature that parents can read to their children. The Literature Guide part offers parents with a quick overview of the books and alerts parents about areas of text that they may wish to review before reading aloud with their child.
Your Investment: The Cost
Our 50 States is available as a physical purchase. The books part of this course are available for individual purchase or as a curriculum bundle. The product I received was the Our 50 States Curriculum Package. At the time of this review, the cost of the course package was $70.
I also received access to HomeschoolHistory.com. At the time of this review, Notgrass History was offering a free 60-day trial. At the end of the trial period, you can choose from one of the memberships (3, 12, or 36 months) to continue access.
For Your Homeschool
This program works well for families desiring to take their U.S. Geography up a notch! If you’re looking to teach your child U.S. States & Capitals and interesting State facts, then Notgrass History’s Our 50 States might be for you. This curriculum is not your typical memorize-a-bunch-of-facts U.S. Geography course. Throughout, your child will read narratives that will help them make a connection with the Geography and State Facts that you can’t get from a deck of learning cards. For example, students may read about the history of a State House, meet a family or people group who are from the area, or learn about famous products or a style of cooking that a State is known for (with the option to making some of them at home as an extension activity).
The Our 50 States textbook has a very thorough, easy to understand introductory section that provides clear steps on how to use the curriculum. It is very important that you sit with these readings prior to diving in with your child because it will make your homeschool day much simpler. You will find the sample walk-through of Unit 1 to be very helpful!
For a well-rounded Unit Study, you could also pair up the lessons with the supplemental resources provided within your HomeschoolHistory.com membership. There would not be any need to look for additional materials, unless you desired.
My Impressions
Notgrass Our 50 States was a hit in our homeschool! Both my 8-year-old 3rd grader and I thought that the lessons were short and simple, yet interesting and engaging, as we journeyed through New England. I also appreciated the inclusion of the narratives of Black and Indigenous people and culture that was carefully weaved throughout this curriculum. Notgrass definitely utilized a large resource pool, both in quantity and quality. (They included a Sources section near the textbook’s index.)
For the lessons we completed, we only did what was required and skipped the activities that were optional (for the most part). This is how we used the entire curriculum, including the Homeschool History app, for any given Unit:
Lesson 1
– read Our 50 States textbook narratives together
– child completes given Atlas assignment
– child completes the Lesson Review assignment (we did not do any Unit Quizzes)
– read a recommended picture book (from library) that relates to the State we are learning about
Lesson 2
– listen to the narrative song that corresponds with each State, while child follows along by reading the lyrics
– read Our 50 States textbook narratives together
– child completes given Atlas assignment
– watch supplementary videos of interest from HomeschoolHistory.com
Although many of the additional activities seemed very fun (such as baking blueberry muffins togetherâwe plan to come back to this in the near future!), we opted to keep things as short as possible. Each lesson took us about 15-20 mins on average.
We thoroughly enjoyed pairing our learning with HomeschoolHistory.com! There was an abundance of additional resources for us to choose from. We preferred to watch the supplemental videos, which we actually did together with the whole family. I would cast the videos on our AppleTV and include my two younger children (ages 4 and 5) to snuggle up on the couch with us. Even my husband took some breaks from his work to watch with us! The videos really are intriguing. Truth be told, the videos we watched were curated from YouTube, but what I appreciated was not having to search for and curate them myself. For the amount of resources available on the app, it would take me forever to find and organize them as wonderfully as they are there.
There was one part of the lessons that my young artist did not enjoyâthe art part! He did not take too fondly to the tracing activities because there were too many lines. Also, it made for a point of frustration to him anytime he had to trace a straight line. He preferred to draw whatever inspired him based on the readings and activities. So to remedy this, I simply had him trace the lines of his choice or completely skip the tracing part altogether and draw his own ideas instead. Otherwise, he absolutely loved this curriculum and would often desire to do multiple lessons at a time.
It was so great to see the connections made through each lesson! When we would venture out to the grocery store, for example, my son’s face lit up when he saw the Cabot cheese from Vermont on the shelf. He was even more pleased to discover that the maple syrup he had with his pancakes for breakfast was also made in Vermont!
Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not speak a bit more on the religious aspect of this curriculum. Our 50 States is a geography curriculum in which its foundation is a Christian, biblical worldview. As I sat with the textbook to skim through its pages, prior to our use, I noticed biblical references weaved throughout. It contains short scriptures, references to “God’s creation,” hymns and African American Spirituals, and narratives of Christian families. As a Christian family, this was not an issue for us. However, if this would normally cause you to take pause, I think that you could skip these parts without it taking anything away from the lessons.
The Final Word
I highly recommend using Our 50 States by Notgrass History (especially if the religious references would not be problematic for your family). It is a thorough, intriguing and fun U.S. Geography curriculum that would make for great Unit Studies or a full-year course alongside other subjects. I also recommend using it in conjunction with HomeschoolHistory.com. This is definitely the most easy-peasy, engaging Geography curriculum that my family has used. So much so that my child can easily recall not only the location of the states we studied, but he remembers many of the facts that he read because things were presented as interesting (true) stories.
You can learn more about Notgrass History by visiting them on Instagram or Facebook.
Check out what my fellow Melanated Gold Review Squad Members thought about Notgrass.
