Holiday History Rich with Meaning & Relevance from Silverdale {Review}

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I love homeschooling and all of the benefits that it gives us, but if there is one drawback is that we miss focusing on the different holidays throughout the year. I was excited to review the Silverdale Press LLC White House Holiday Unit Studies in order to see the background to some of the holidays that have simply become a day off of school or more likely, a day that I’m sitting at a bank window that’s not open.

Material That is Worth the Investment

When I first downloaded the PDF files of the separate studies: Valentine’s Day, Labor day, Vetrans Day, Thanksgiving, MLK Day and Christmas, I was completely impressed with the volume of information and the lenght of work that went into these individual studies. These are not throw away PDF files these are definitely worthy of printing out and comb binding, and making them a well structured unit study for your students. There are a lot of pictures and scans of documents to support the lessons.

A Unit Study for All of You or One Alone

Since we have multiple holidays and several students to work with, we went through the materials in a less than systematic fashion. I let my elementary age kids read through the lesson of their choice and share with others what they thought. In doing this we got a really good overview. I would definitely say that this is for upper elementary if you plan on handing this unit study to a student to use independently. The material was suitable for lower elementary students as well great to use with the whole family. I will likely pull out the individual lessons over each of the independent holidays throughout the year.

Unit Studies Bring Clarity and Depth to Subjects

We have studied a great deal of history yet, I have never really been clear of the difference between Labor Day, Memorial Day, and Veterans Day. Now I can answer with clarity about each and everyone. We did the Labor Day Unit in full. I was amazed that we were going through this time in history because, it is extremely relevant to the immigration crisis we are experiencing in the news right now.

Relevant for Today’s Issues

It sparked a good deal of discussion about how similar the concerns were for children and the dangers of cheap labor. One topic was that the danger of expliotation of low wage workers and children. We were able to talk about why we have laws to protect people that seem cruel, but are rooted in reason. It was relevant and engaging. I would recommend it for this time in history.

Thought Provoking Questions

I love deep discussion questions after each unit that really get your kids away that is totally different than any other unit study I have done. The questions are very open ended and allow your child to do some serious thinking.

Open Ended Questions Like…

What would you ask Mrs. Roosevelt if you had the opportunity to talk to her about the labor laws?

What do you think about these workers by looking at their apartment?

Would you want to live in their apartment?

I found these questions really engaging. These aren all the simple hunt-and-find or the bold word, vocabulary definition type approach that I have seen in many studies before.

I Might Have Read This in One Sitting

The Valentines Day Unit was full of sweetness. Who was married in the White House? Several presidential kids and a few presidents themselves. Love notes from Ronald and Nancy Regan, Abagail and Jon Adams and more. I was suprised that I quickly read through the whole unit myself in no time at all. It was that interesting. I hope your kids are as easily captured by history and interesting facts surrounding our National Holidays.

Even though we review a lot of material, there are a select few vendors that I have chosen to incorporate into our regular permanent homeschool collections. I am positive that these unit studies from Silverdale Press LLC and any others they have that coordinate with subjects we are covering are going to be ones that I would likely purchase for my own kids.

The only downside is the cost of color printing but you could always print in black-and-white to save the expense as well. Studying as a family makes these affordable and more fun, too.

As always, feel free to see Silverdale Press LLCs other teaching tools and reviews from families that also reviewed the White House Holidays Unit Study in the link below.