Notgrass Our Star-Spangled Story Review

The school year is wrapping up and it’s time to start my end of the year curriculum reviews!  First up: a Notgrass Our Star-Spangled Story review.

Some background info for you: I have a first grader and a preschooler that used this curriculum.  We do Classical Conversations   which has a history component and technically you don’t *need* to do any history supplementation alongside CC but my kids LOVE history and they definitely enjoy expanding on the CC history sentences.  When I heard about Notgrass’ Our Star-Spangled Story and realized how perfectly it aligned with the CC Cycle 3 history focus (American History) I decided to use it as a supplement for my kids.  That has turned out to be a great choice for us!

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Let’s dive in to the review!

(if you prefer a video review scroll down to the end of this post to watch that)

What does Our Star-Spangled Story cover?

Our Star-Spangled Story (OSSS) begins with talking about the first people to live in America and ends roughly around September 11, 2001.  There are a few lessons after the September 11 lesson but they’re more general (i.e. one about the history of the internet, a couple about some modern day homeschooling families).  It’s a very comprehensive American History curriculum from early Americans to present day.

What’s included in the full Our Star-Spangled Story curriculum?

The OSSS curriculum comes with quite a few books and materials.  Here’s what you’ll get if you purchase the full curriculum bundle.

• 2 textbooks (we did one textbook per semester)
• a Rhythms & Rhymes book (contains poems, songs, and dances that go along with various eras that you’ll be studying)
• mp3 downloads of the poems and songs from the Rhythms & Rhymes book
• a timeline book (lays out the events you study in a timeline format)
• a student workbook
• an answer key for the student workbook
• a supplemental literature set that includes 8 chapter books (that align with the time periods studied in the textbooks)

You can also buy just the curriculum package (includes everything listed above except the literature set)

What are the components of an Our Star-Spangled Story Unit?

OSSS is made up of 90 units (45 in book one and 45 in book two).  Each unit has 3 chapters (they call them lessons) plus a unit activity.  I found this to be perfect for us to do one unit a week – 3 days for the 3 chapters and one day for the unit activity.  Some families take two weeks per unit and therefore two years to do OSSS (book one one year and book two the second year) so that’s an option too if you prefer a slower pace.

Each chapter has a reading about that lesson’s topic (complete with lots of wonderful pictures!) and ends with a Bible verse.  Then there is usually a map section after the reading where you look on a map to find any cities that were talked about in the reading.  Some days there is an associated song/poem/dance from the Rhythms & Rhymes book and/or a portion to look at from the timeline book.  They also tell you which workbook pages go along with that chapter and which supplemental literature book to read if you’re doing that.

In addition to that there are review questions from the reading as well as a couple of suggested “hands on history” extension activities for your kids.  These are typically along the lines of using blocks to build something related to the lesson or pretending to be someone from the lesson or that era.

At the end of the unit (what I considered Day 4 for us) there is an activity.  This varies greatly from week to week!  Some weeks there is a recipe to make (hoecakes like George Washington ate for breakfast, a cake from the WW2 era that doesn’t use rationed ingredients, or a red, white, and blue smoothie),  a craft (making Puebloan pottery, origami Mayflower, or a handwoven basket), a service project (making care packages or cards), a game to play, or a skit to perform.

As you can see this is a very robust curriculum!  I love that it’s not just a history curriculum but that it covers a wide variety of subjects – history (obviously…), geography, literature, fine arts (music, poetry, dance), crafts, games, cooking, even a little Bible.

A sample lesson

Here’s an example lesson for those who want a peek inside.  This is lesson 14 about the thirteen colonies.

First you have the lesson to read (with pictures that go along with it).

Then here on the right in the blue sidebar you can see there are some places to identify on the map, a song to listen to, a workbook page to complete, recommended reading from the supplemental literature, review questions, and some hands on history ideas. The map you’d flip to in the back to find the cities. The song in Rhythms & Rhymes to read and listen to (you can download the mp3s here or listen to them online here) A workbook page to complete

You can also see a couple of other sample lessons on the Notgrass website here.

What we used

Because my kids are so young and we used this as a supplement to our Classical Conversations curriculum we did not do every component of the whole Our Star-Spangled Story curriculum.  We mainly treated it as a read aloud with a few additional activities mixed in.

We read every chapter, looked at the maps, listened to the Rhythms & Rhymes, and looked at the timeline.  Some weeks we did the unit project but not always, only if I thought it was something my kids would really enjoy.  We did not use the workbook, read the recommended chapter books, or do the review questions and extension activities.

Classical Conversations runs on a three year cycle so in three years we’ll be covering American History again.  My older kids will be reading and writing much more independently then so I can see us revisiting Our Star-Spangled Story and going more in depth with the review questions, workbook, supplemental literature, extension activities, etc.  But for this year with as young as mine are, using it more as a read aloud with a few fun activities thrown in was perfect for us!

What I liked about Our Star-Spangled Story

• The most obvious thing is that this fit the bill of what I was looking for – a fun, age appropriate history curriculum to go along with our CC American History focus
• My kids LOVED it.  Each day after I finished they were eager to know what the next day’s chapter would be about.  My oldest was not reading independently at the beginning of the year but about mid-year began reading fluently on his own.  One day I realized he had gotten our history textbook out and went ahead and read the rest of the book!  I still continued to read aloud through the end of the year, both for my younger son’s sake and so we could discuss the readings together, but I was thrilled that he was enjoying OSSS so much that he wanted to read on by himself.
• I appreciated that Notgrass did not gloss over history and did a good job tackling some hard subjects while still keeping it very age appropriate.  Topics like slavery, presidents who denounced slavery yet still owned slaves themselves, the trail of tears, Japanese internment camps, etc. were mentioned in the readings and led to some good discussions with my kids about how people should and shouldn’t be treated or about how the American government/founding fathers/leaders/etc. did not always make good choices.
• Other than doing some prep for the unit activities (if we chose to do those), this curriculum is an easy, open-and-go curriculum that made it simple for me to use.

What I didn’t like about Our Star-Spangled Story

While overall I think this is a fantastic curriculum there are still a few (small) things that I didn’t care for.

• There were a few chapters where the writing is quite choppy, boring, and hard to read.  There are several authors listed on the book so I don’t know if certain people were assigned certain chapters and it’s just a difference in authors or what, but some chapters flowed nicely and almost had that read aloud picture book feel where others were much more clinical and hard to read.  Thankfully that was only a few chapters!  Also, I realize that they may have written that way because young children would be reading it independently and need the smaller sentences but since I was using it as a read aloud to my kids it sometimes felt awkward.
• The Bible tie-ins for each chapter sometimes feel forced.  Now to be clear, we are a Christian family and I have no issue with the Bible being referenced in the curriculum but I also don’t feel like you HAVE to make a Biblical tie in for every single thing.  In some chapters you would be reading along with the story and then *bam* the last paragraph would totally switch topics to try to streeeeeetch and get a little Bible lesson in there.  I usually just skipped that part when I could tell it was a hard reach to make that fit.
• Going in to starting OSSS I had different expectations for the songs, poems, and dances from the Rhythms & Rhymes book and was a little disappointed.  I suppose I assumed they would be authentic (as in you are listening to original recordings or at least listening to current recordings that are stylized to sound authentic – like if you were watching a period drama).  Instead it’s just an adult or child singing/reading/performing the dance.  It’s fine and I got used to it but it wasn’t what I expected. (you can download the mp3s here or listen to them online here; and see the dance demos here)

Will we be using a Notgrass curriculum next year?

No, but not because I don’t like Notgrass.  I am having a baby this summer and next year will be my first year fully homeschooling two kids (one in second grade and one in kindergarten) – I anticipate that juggling two sets of lessons/curriculum plus a newborn (and a toddler) will be a lot so I’m keeping next year suuuuuuper simple for myself and not doing any additional history curriculum on top of what we do in Classical Conversations.  I’m sure we’ll add in some supplemental books and activities that go with CC but I don’t want to go all in with any sort of full curriculum.

Currently Notgrass has two curriculum choices for the elementary (K-4) age group: Our Star-Spangled Story, that we did this year, and a new one called Our 50 States.  I haven’t used Our 50 States myself yet but have heard great things about it from others who have used it this year!  And bonus for the Classical Conversations crowd – Our 50 States also aligns perfectly with CC Cycle 3!  Rumor has it that they are coming out with world history and world geography curriculums for the K-4 bunch eventually but I have no idea what the projected date is for that (CC folks – that’ll go great with Cycles 1 and/or 2!).

So there is currently one more Notgrass option right now, and I’m sure my kids would enjoy it, but for next year I’m scaling back so I won’t be using it quite yet.

Wrap up

And that’s a wrap for my Notgrass Our Star-Spangled Story review.  We definitely enjoyed this curriculum (I learned so much alongside my kids!) and I would for sure recommend it if you’re looking for an American History curriculum for your little ones!

Purchase here:

• full curriculum bundle (curriculum + literature bundle)
• curriculum package only (what I have and showed here in this post)
• literature bundle only

Video here:

Other posts you might like: 

• Our other 2020-2021 curriculum picks
• Logic of English Review
• RightStart Math Review
• All about Classical Conversations
• 10 reasons we decided to homeschool
• Our homeschool kindergarten curriculum
• Relaxed homeschool preschool
• My homeschool planner