Say goodbye to dry textbooks and overwhelming lesson planning! The Smart and Simple Social Studies Curriculum makes teaching history, geography, government, and economics easy and exciting. With ready-to-use lessons, engaging activities, and built-in differentiation, you’ll have everything you need to bring social studies to life—without the prep stress!

3rd Grade Communities
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4th Grade Texas History
4th grade social studies curriculum
5th Grade U.S. History
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Why Teachers Love the Smart and Simple Social Studies curriculum

Ready-to-Teach Lessons

No more spending hours searching for engaging materials! Each lesson is structured with clear objectives, engaging mini-lessons, student-friendly guided notes, and interactive activities that fit seamlessly into your schedule.

Hands-On and Interactive

From guided notes to primary source analysis and project-based learning, students actively engage with social studies concepts. With this social studies curriculum, they’ll explore, discuss, and think critically—while having fun!

Flexible and Standards-Aligned

Designed for 3rd-5th grade, this social studies curriculum aligns primarily to Texas TEKS standards while offering the flexibility to adapt to your students’ needs in a variety of other states. Whether you teach in short blocks or extended lessons, these resources work for you.

What Teachers Are Saying

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This is a very engaging resource to use with my homeschooling child, easy to adapt for at home learning and my child has learned a lot with it. He particularly enjoys the review game at the end of each unit. As a classroom teacher for many years before this year, I can also say this would be fantastic to use in a classroom to supplement social studies curriculum provided by schools.
Goldapple Studio
3rd Grade Communities Curriculum
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I am new to fourth grade and Texas. This resource has saved me tons of research and my students are very interested in the slideshows. I love how easy this resource is to prepare and use with my students.
Janelle G.
4th Grade Texas History Curriculum
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I absolutely love this resource!!! It is comprehensive, engaging, and easy to use. My students quickly fell into understanding the pattern of notes, work, exit ticket and are thriving in social studies now. It is aligned to TEKS and did I say it was a great resource? It is the best I have found.
Susan S.
5th Grade U.S. History Curriculum

Sample the curriculum for free!

Help your students learn standards-based social studies concepts with 3 engaging lessons.

The Southern Teach Welcome Background
MEET THE FOUNDER

HI, I’M KIRSTEN!

I’m a former upper elementary teacher who has taught in multiple districts in Texas. I’ve taken my 11+ years of experience along with my M.Ed in Elementary Education and applied my expertise to each resource I create. I’ve totally been there –

  • Searching all over the internet to find the right social studies resources that align with my state’s standards and weren’t too easy or boring for my students 
  • Scrambling at the last minute to come up with a lesson or activity that aligns with a current event or holiday 
  • Trying to figure out a schedule that fits social studies with all the 150 million things I had to cover before state testing

This social studies curriculum is here to change that. No more fighting to fit social studies into your schedule or wasting precious time looking for activities (only to end up with bored students).