Grade 4 · secular
This is a year-long tour of the United States done region by region — Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, West — plus a final unit on how state and federal government fit together. Your child will read real maps and charts as evidence (not just look at pretty pictures), meet named indigenous nations as governments that still exist today, and figure out why a place with rocky soil built ports and cities while a place with rich soil built farms. By the end they should be able to look at any U.S. region and explain why the land, the people, and the government there look the way they do.
The whole year, in plain English. Tap any unit to see every skill inside, nothing is hidden.
This unit builds the vocabulary every later unit depends on: landform, climate, resource, and region. Your child learns to read a real map (not just a picture of the U.S.) and ends up able to point to and describe all five regions. It's vocabulary-heavy on purpose — no region's story gets told yet, that starts in Unit 2.
Students name the compass rose, key, scale, and title on a map and state what each tells the reader.
Students sort landform pictures (mountain, plain, plateau, valley, coast) into the correct labeled category.
Given a new photo of an unfamiliar landform, students classify it using its slope, height, and flatness.
Students explain why a desert climate region and a mountain climate region require different clothing and shelter.
Students compare a physical map and a political map of the same U.S. area and state what each shows that the other does not.
Students locate and label the five U.S. regions on a blank outline map.
Students match a natural resource to a region based on that region's landforms and climate, for a region not studied in class.
Students use the words landform, climate, and resource correctly in three original sentences about a U.S. region.
Your child learns that indigenous nations governed their own homelands before Europeans arrived and still govern themselves today — this isn't a past-tense story. They build words like nation, sovereignty, treaty, and removal, then practice reading two different accounts of the same treaty to see why accounts of the same event can differ.
Students sort five example groups into 'nation' or 'not a nation' and give a reason for one choice, matching a model just shown.
Given a new, unmodeled example (a nation with no large mapped territory), students decide whether it counts as a nation and justify the decision without a fresh worked example immediately before it.
Students define sovereignty by identifying which of two decisions shows self-governance.
Students identify the two parties and the stated promise in a short treaty excerpt.
Students explain why a named nation's tribal government now sits away from its historic homeland.
Students scan a current source and pick out present-tense verbs (elects, governs, rules) that show a nation is self-governing today.
Students notice that two accounts of the same treaty differ in what they include and emphasize.
Students explain that an account's author and purpose shape what it includes about a shared event.
Students write a full comparison of two treaty accounts naming the difference and its underlying reason.
Students compare two accounts of a treaty in an unfamiliar region never discussed in class, explaining why accounts differ.
This is the first of the five region units, and it studies how the Northeast built wealth through trade and cities even with poor farmland. Your child meets the Haudenosaunee Confederacy as a government that still functions today, then studies colonial settlers and later immigrants side by side.
Locate the Northeast region and its major port cities on a U.S. map.
Define port city, manufacturing, immigration, and population density using the class-built picture glossary.
Explain how the Haudenosaunee Confederacy's council structure lets multiple nations share one government.
State one present-tense fact about Haudenosaunee governance today, from a primary or current source.
Trace one raw material's path from resource to port to factory to finished good using a labeled diagram.
Compare colonial-era settlers and 1800s immigrants on who invited whom and what rights each had on arrival.
Interpret a population density map of the Northeast alongside a text describing its cities.
Construct a two-column chart linking Northeast resources to Northeast industries with one explained connection.
Predict which industry a region with rich farmland but no ports might struggle to build, using the Northeast pattern.
This unit covers the Southeast from the 1700s to today: fertile land and warm climate built plantation agriculture on the backs of enslaved people, the Indian Removal Act forced the Cherokee Nation from their homeland, and the region's economy eventually became today's Sun Belt. It's the heaviest unit emotionally so far — plan for real conversations, not just facts.
Locate the Southeast region on a U.S. map and name its states, using Unit 1's five-region map.
Explain how the Southeast's climate and soil made plantation agriculture profitable.
Differentiate the roles and conditions of plantation owners and enslaved workers using primary source evidence.
Summarize the sequence of events from the Indian Removal Act to the Trail of Tears.
Infer, from a set of facts about Cherokee Nation government today, why Cherokee sovereignty did not end with removal.
Compare the Southeast's cash-crop economy to the Northeast's trade economy from Unit 3.
Explain how the modern Sun Belt economy connects to the region's earlier agricultural history.
Identify the main idea and supporting details in a grade-level text about the Trail of Tears.
Given an unfamiliar primary source about a 20th-century Southeast textile mill, determine who gained and who lost from the change it describes.
Annotate a 1700-to-today Southeast timeline, marking one cause and one effect at three points.
This unit looks at how flat land and rivers let the Midwest be both farm and factory at once. Your child studies the Great Plains, big-scale farming, Great Lakes shipping, the Great Migration, and the Ojibwe and Sioux Nations as governments today.
Label the Great Plains, Great Lakes, and Mississippi River on a blank Midwest map.
Explain how flat land and rich soil make large-scale farming possible in the Great Plains.
Sort Midwest city clue cards into farming-based, factory-based, or both, based on the industry clues named on each card.
Interpret a bar graph showing Great Lakes shipping tonnage to explain why river and lake trade mattered to the Midwest economy.
Compare two firsthand accounts of the Great Migration to identify a shared push factor and a shared pull factor.
Explain why many Great Migration newcomers settled in Midwest cities rather than on Midwest farms.
Summarize the current governments and territories of the Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) and Sioux (Lakota/Dakota) Nations today, using the three facts modeled in class.
Construct a claim comparing the Midwest economy to the Northeast economy using a shared evidence chart.
This unit studies the Southwest through one defining fact: there isn't enough water. That shortage drives everything — where cities sit, how water gets shared, why irrigation matters. Your child meets the Navajo (Diné) Nation as a functioning government today, studies the 1848 U.S.-Mexico border, and sorts Southwest traditions by where they came from.
Locate the Southwest region and its major rivers on a 5-region U.S. map.
Explain why an arid climate requires irrigation to support farming and cities.
State that the Navajo (Diné) Nation governs itself today through its own government.
Compare water rights rules to a fairness rule students already expect, identifying what differs.
Interpret a water-source map to identify why a city is located where it is.
Interpret a population chart showing city sizes across the Southwest.
Explain how the 1848 treaty changed which nation governed Southwest land and people.
Combine evidence from a water-source map and a population chart to write a claim about city location.
Classify Southwest cultural traditions as originating from Indigenous, Spanish, Mexican, or later U.S. influence.
The last of the five region units. Your child studies Pacific Northwest and California nations before 1849, the Gold Rush and the rapid migration it caused, and Pacific trade routes connecting California to Asia. It closes with the third and final round of the migration-comparison method from Unit 3, this time comparing the West to the Northeast.
Locate the five U.S. regions on a blank map, including the West's borders.
Name at least two Pacific Northwest or California nations and one fact about each, as presented on the class map.
Explain why the discovery of gold pulled large numbers of new people into California in a short time.
Compare a primary source welcoming immigrants to one describing an exclusion law, identifying which group each concerns.
Identify one group that gained and one group that lost from the California Gold Rush, citing evidence from two different sources.
Trace two Pacific trade routes on a blank map and label one good moving in each direction, following the modeled route map.
Classify West locations shown on a map into climate types (coastal, desert, mountain, forest) using given climate clues.
Write a two-paragraph comparison of the West's migration story to the Northeast's, citing one similarity and one difference with evidence.
Apply the same similarity/difference comparison logic to a region not practiced this way, using only self-selected evidence.
Infer why the West might be considered several different places grouped under one region name, using map and source evidence.
The capstone. Your child learns that federal government, state government, and sovereign indigenous nations are three separate kinds of government sharing the same land, and pulls in every region and every named nation from Units 3-7 as evidence for how that actually plays out.
Students distinguish a federal-government law example from a state-government law example.
Students classify given powers as shared, federal-only, or state-only using the Day 5-6 power sort categories.
Students explain why an indigenous nation's government is a third, separate kind of government, not part of federal or state government.
Students compare how a chosen power (such as setting a driving age) plays out differently in two named regions from Units 3-7.
Students identify how many representatives a region sends to Congress using a population data table.
Students explain why a region with a larger population sends more representatives to Congress than a smaller region.
Students critique a map that shows the five regions as identical in governance to identify what it leaves out.
Given a brand-new law scenario where the 'whole country vs. one place' shortcut points to the wrong government, students determine the correct government and justify the choice using evidence from two different regions.
From the parent guide
This is a year-long tour of the United States done region by region — Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, West — plus a final unit on how state and federal government fit together. Your child will read real maps and charts as evidence (not just look at pretty pictures), meet named indigenous nations as governments that still exist today, and figure out why a place with rocky soil built ports and cities while a place with rich soil built farms. By the end they should be able to look at any U.S. region and explain why the land, the people, and the government there look the way they do.
Unit 1 · what to expect
This unit builds the vocabulary every later unit depends on: landform, climate, resource, and region. Your child learns to read a real map (not just a picture of the U.S.) and ends up able to point to and describe all five regions. It's vocabulary-heavy on purpose — no region's story gets told yet, that starts in Unit 2.
The full guide covers all 8 units: where kids get stuck, what to say, and how to tell it's working. Included with the course.
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