Canadian History for Year One

Agree.  It is comical how many books are entitled, “The Story of Canada”.  I have “one” of those 🙂  …mine is the one by Lunn and Moore.  It’s okay, good in fact, and we enjoy the reading/conversation tone  – but sometimes we struggle with how the biographies and sidebars are thrown in…gets us a bit disjointed.   (given that I have a four year honours degree with a double major in history -focus on North American and Western Europe – and political science, you’d think it wouldn’t be hard for me, LOL, yet something about this book just gets me messed up)

I have the Spirit of Canada as well and it is lovely, though – again – I have to work a bit (as the teacher/planner) trying to figure out where we fit in the material from Spirit of Canada in terms of where we are in history.  Not a deal breaker, just a bit of work.

To the OP – the best one I can recommend to you, especially given that you are trying to work this alongside your American studies – is “My First History of Canada” by Donalda Dickie and Rudiger Krause.  It is hands-down working the best for us, out of ALL the other Canadian books I have.    The writing is conversational and there is never a day where even my just turned 7 yr old is excited when we read.  Sections are short, and indications of years/time periods are well laid out.  It’s not exactly the “short stories” book you seem to be asking for, but each “section” is definitely short (5-7 minute reading at most, and then we’ll go to map for another 2-3 minutes just to see where the events took place).  Even if you are wanting just to pick and choose a few areas of focus on your own (instead of a chronological history), you could definitely just pick the section titles that are most “story like”.   I think it’s laid out in a way that will make it easy for you to use alongside whatever you’re using for your American focus.  The second edition by Red Leaf Press (red and white with a big, red Maple Leaf on the front) even has an Activities/Discussion Points and Questions section at the back (including a few map activities).  I don’t typcially do books that have these sections on Discussion Points and Questions because I tend to think they are “textbooky”  and even when this is not the case I often feel doing activities or questions is a bit much after having had the kids narrate.  But rest assured, this book does NOT read like a textbook. And, in this case, I’ve actually found the section on Discussion and Questions to be quite interesting and helpful!

Last point I’ll say on it…when I was trying to decide, I steered away from My First History of Canada because I was under the impression that it was written for a younger audience.  I think I read some reviews that got me mixed up.  I was greatly mistaken on this.  It truly is suitable for grade 1 right up through grade 7 or 8 (for a 7th or 8th grader that has had no other study).

HTH, have fun with it!

Blessings,

Angie