Government and Civics Class

The 2025-2026 school year has been the perfect setting for a high school course of study in government and civics. In the beginning of my planning I used the helpful resource from our own state's civics department at https://sos.tn.gov/civics/lesson-plans and planned our schedule to meet the criteria of lessons taught throughout the year to match the Governor's Civics Seal (https://www.tn.gov/education/districts/governor-s-civics-seal.html) Unfortunately, I found out that as a homeschool group we were not eligible, but I still wanted our students to meet the criterion. What we learned and experienced along the way was so rich and rewarding! I am writing this blog to document the visits and highlights of our lessons to hopefully encourage you to plan out a study for your high school student!

Course of Study

This is the framework of our in person meetings. Throughout each month students had assignments to write essays, watch podcasts, and read the Tennessee Blue Book along with Tennessee Civics articles. I will work on making this document available in the future, but if you would like to plug something in right now, use the Tennessee Civics lesson plans along with the lesson plans at the Bill of Rights Institute!  The Crash Course Government series was also a hit with many students. Each month focused on the topics you see above. My goal was to create a hands on learning opportunity so each month also featured some field trips in addition to our in person classes using the civics lesson plans.

Field Trips

The first field trip was to visit our own Secretary of State, Tre Hargett and pick up a Blue Book to use throughout the school year! He was so motivational and gave great statistics and information about the voting process and civic engagement for all ages.

Our Library and Archives building created a wonderful scavenger hunt for students that included information about our state constitution and history! Students worked together to complete the activity guide.

Visiting with both the Spring Hill mayor and Maury County mayor engaged students to learn more about local government and the roles they play that directly effect our lives where we live!


And at the state capitol, we had the chance to be recognized from the floor by our Representative, Todd Warner!


We met with Representative Warner before the legislative session and had a wonderful time learning about the role of our state government. 


The Tennessee State Museum is also a wonderful field trip resource to learn more about the founding of our state.

To close out our field trips, we will visit the Governor's Residence in May, (Pictures from our 2022 trip)

 

Additional Lesson Ideas

In September, I wanted to focus on the Constitution and created a special guide for middle and high school that you can purchase here: https://kindandcultivated.gumroad.com/l/dehasm?layout=profile


I love the Tennessee Blue Book because it includes a copy of both our US Constitution and State Constitutions. Students enjoyed our lesson diving deeper into the history and importance of this founding document.

Throughout the year students were also encouraged to submit civics essays to contests like America250, Constituting America, Voice of Democracy, and our Tennessee State Civics Essay Contest. Christian and Eva Mae won our local Voice of Democracy with the VFW for the high school and middle school!


Inviting local government leaders to our in person classes was also a highlight! We had Jaimee Davis, an alderman for Spring Hill, come and speak to students about running an election campaign.


We had Chris Mackinlay, Administrator of the Election Commission for Maury County, bring a voting machine and ballots and explain the rules and regulations of a safe and fair election.



We even had a Mock Election and enjoyed voting on some fun resolutions like "State Cryptid Character" and some more serious bills like the State of Tennessee bills for immigration and sex offender punishments.


During our lessons on the judicial branch, we had a Mock Trial with a script I was able to find on https://www.flmd.uscourts.gov/sample-mock-trial-scripts - we even had a gavel for our judge to use!


Celebration

To celebrate our final class we enjoyed some Patriotic food and activities! We played a Civics test Jeopardy game, read cursive letters from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abagail Adams, and read our final essays to each other! I love that Alvin C. York popped up in several essays, along with themes of the importance of voting, a hope for building trust in our government, and never forgetting the lessons that history has taught us regarding the character of our leaders, past and present.



I am proud of our students and look forward to having a wonderful celebration with my family on July 4, 2026 - America's Semiquincentennial!

























 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Burgess Bird Resources

Image
While planning and working on preparations for Year 1 Ambleside , I have found some amazing resources for study guides.  Unfortunately, one of the resources is no longer free so I came up with my own document that you are welcome to download and use! CLICK HERE to download the coloring pages I also wanted to have a resource to see the color versions of the birds so I created a photo guide to each bird. CLICK HERE to download the photo companion. Here are some other helpful resources! Burgess Bird Study Guide Burgess Bird Images and more links
Read more

Folk Dance

Image
Community dancing is such a wonderful activity for all ages!  I have seen the question pop up in many homeschool groups about suggestions for resources to teach folk dances so I want to share some of my favorites from teaching music and dance to elementary students in public school and our homeschool groups!  If you have the opportunity to find a group already in place to attend and learn dances and observe how they teach you will have a better understanding of how to approach this in a group setting!  You may feel like at the beginning like you are herding a bunch of cats but that's ok!!!  Practice and consistency will improve the process! Cited Material First, I want to just say how blessed I am that I have been fortunate to have training under the most talented folk dance and movement specialists.  I feel like my education and experience has been in the "golden" age through first hand workshops by the following professionals.   New ...
Read more

Term 2 Hymn and Folk

Image
My daughter blessed me while we were driving in the car this week.  She said "Mommy, can we keep this CD in the car forever and ever?"  She was remarking about the current Term 1 CD that we have been studying the past few months.  I love that they have developed a relationship with these songs and it just goes to show me what a testament it is that exposure to quality music can leave a mark on the soul!  I assured her that we will always have the CD to come back to, but soon we'll have a new CD to listen to and new songs to learn!  Here are the current Term 2 songs we will be studying for folk and hymn: December Hymn - Amazing Grace I fell in love with Peter Hollens' gift a few years ago when we listened to his version of Loch Lomond! Folk - The Minstrel Boy There are various arrangements of this song but when I saw a recording by The Clancy Brothers I had to choose this recording for our listening enjoyment!  I think it's important for the kids t...
Read more