American Girl Teacher's Guides
American Girl Teacher's Guides are teacher's educational books. These were officially released from American Girl for educational use with the central stories of the first six Historical Characters.
This article also covers educational purchases and rentals of product.
Details
Guides were released for Felicity Merriman, Josefina Montoya, Kirsten Larson, Addy Walker, Samantha Parkington, and Molly McIntire. Each guide covers all six books of a character's Central Series. The initial guides were released in 1995, with one released for Josefina in 1998. The lessons were targeted towards students in Grades 3 through 5 (US), and could be paired with the Pasttimes series. Guides were marketed towards schools, libraries, and formal educational programs (at the time of release, home schooling was not as prevalent or mainstreamed but homeschoolers could place orders) and catalogs could be ordered that only focused on the books, guides, and special educators' resource kits.
All the books were retired shortly after the release of Kit Kittredge; she and no Historical Characters after her received full sized teacher's guides, though Kit's books were advertised in school and library educational catalogs along with a unit planner.
Educational guides were offered on the American Girl Publishing site until its depreciation, and are now on the Parents and Teachers part of the American Girl site in a reduced form. These guides initially covered multiple characters and lines; newer guides focus on a specific character, generally along with the first book of the series. There are also guides for rereleased books for Historical Characters.
Included Information
Overview: Each book has an overview of the era, the books, the location of the series, vocabulary information, and information about the author. The back includes a full Answer key and other books on each era to suggest for reading. Each book also includes a pull-out map of the locations seen in the series. The inner covers offered the suggestion that books could either be focused on as a character series or in groups on a topic through history (in Central Series order: Family, School, Christmas, Springtime, Summer, and Winter).
The Books: Along with basic plot summaries about each book in the series, there is discussion on themes, the Looking Back section, and worksheets as blackline masters which are marked with unique numbers and legally reproducible for in-class lessons.
Hands-On History: Various activities were included to expand on the stories, including ideas for projects.
Response Key: The answers for the blackline master worksheets.
Books About: A listing of other books, fiction and non-fiction, and magazines, that are either set in the era or about it. Books are sorted into Easy, Average, or Challenging according to the skill level of an average child of the 3-5 grade level.
Map: In the back in a folded, full color version of the historical character's map, at 31.5" by 21.25" in dimensions, and attached to a perforated page for easy removal. These can be removed to be mounted on a wall to display various locations discussed in the story.
Josefina's guide also has a glossary of Spanish words and their definitions.
Theater Kits and Educational Guide
An educational guide was released covering the six plays released with theater kits under the title Five Plays: For Girls and Boys to Perform in 1995. After Josefina was added in 1998, the book was re-titled Six Plays: For Girls and Boys to Perform.
Along with blackline masters of the plays and tips for putting on the play from the director's guide to copy (both in single sheet rather than booklet form), tickets, and programs, there is information on using drama in the classroom setting and elsewhere. This includes using reader's theatre, explaining historical context and play setting (as it is not assumed that students will be familiar with the books), themes, and related post-play acting activities for each play (e.g. a town square meeting for Felicity; adult illiteracy for freed people for Addy). There is also encouragement on including all students by including male students (as every play except Friendship and Freedom has at least one male part) and encouraging all students to try for all roles.
An additional appendix includes character profiles for the radio talk show for Molly's post-play activity and the two roles for Addy's post play activity: Momma and a wealthy woman.
Educational Unit: America At School and Large Class Sets
An educational unit covering the topic of America at School was available for order for schools. The set included a unique Teacher's Guide, "America at School"; the character books pertinent to the unit (the school books), twenty activity cards, two large wall charts (one, "Changes in America", showed overall changes between characters in technology; the other, "Changes in School", showed differences in school-related activities), and a set of ten poster maps (two for each character, one of which was the map of the US at the setting). The book also mentioned options to rent realia. The set could be purchased for $75 and include on copy of each book, or $175 and include five copies of each book.
Central Series books could also be purchased for classrooms. Along with a full set of the central series in either hardback or paperback with a display (books were half price), individual books were offered in sets of twenty-five paperback books for half the cover cost (totaling $74.37). Josefina's books were available in both Spanish and English.
Educational Catalogs
Catalogs aimed at schools and libraries were available; these highlighted the books, Teacher's Guides, the Portfolios of Pastimes, and books in the American Girl Library. Later catalogs in 2001 included audio books, Short Stories, Angelina Ballerina and Amelia books, American Girl Magazine subscriptions, the Welcome to World Books, and American girl published books such as History Mysteries, American Girl Original Intermediate Fiction Novels, and the Wild at Heart Series. Advertised reading programs were also included and often could be free with purchases.
No dolls or other collection products were advertised, though catalogs aimed at schools and libraries discussed the option to rent or buy realia.
Educational Doll Rental (Realia) and Purchase
Schools and libraries could also make a short-term rental of products for display as realia. Realia included all the available dolls and included meet accessories, doll stands, and additional items for students such as bookmarks, reading journals, posters, author biographies, and giveaway pins. School-focused sets, focusing on the School Collections and including the doll with outfit and accessories but not the book, were also available.
Dolls could only be rented by schools or libraries serving a minimum of twenty-five students or children, with one rental per year per school or library. A set of all meet dolls with accessories rented for $30 for a single week while school collections rented for $90 for a total of four weeks.
Dolls and sets could also be purchased at a discount through the catalog, with a set of all dolls for $520 and a set of all school sets for $900. School sets could also be purchased individually for $175 each, but individual meet dolls could not be purchased this way. A single doll was available with a educator purchase of $1000 or more, while a complete set of five--later six--was available for a purchase of $5000 or more.
The option to rent or purchase dolls through educational programs was terminated once the company was wholly owned by Mattel.
Teacher's Guide Books
- 1774 Felicity Merriman: Colonial America
- 1824 Josefina Montoya: Southwest Frontier
- 1854 Kirsten Larson: Pioneer America
- 1864 Addy Walker: Civil War America
- 1904 Samantha Parkington: America's New Century
- 1944 Molly McIntire: World War Two America