History Units: Year in Review 2015-2016 (Grades 2, 5, 7)

In today’s post, I thought I would re-cap our school year.  Looking back, it’s been a really great year! The chart below shares links to some of the history units we covered in our homeschool.  As you’ll see below, I made notebook pages and packets to go along with most of the units we covered. 🙂

This year the kids were in Grades 2, 5 and 7.  We do our history units together.

History Topics We Covered in 2015-2016

American Revolution

This year we started off with a unit on the Causes and Events Leading to the American Revolution.The girls were watching the series Liberty’s Kids (affiliate link) and we had also done trips to Washington’s Crossing, Valley Forge and Yorktown. It made sense to do a unit on the causes of the American Revolution. We covered the French and Indian War, the various acts that were passed by Parliament (Stamp Act, Tea Act, Intolerable Acts, etc.) as well as the response to that in the U.S. (the Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party, etc.). American-Revolution-Unit-Worksheets-ReviewCardsThe kids then spent 2 1/2 weeks working hard to put on a play (which was about an hour long when we performed it!) all about the events leading up to the American Revolution.

American-Revolution-Play-Homeschoolden AmericanRevolutionPlay-BostonMassacreSceneOur play was quite long and involved… and because of it DD became really interested in drama.  She auditioned for a community production of the musical, Narnia!

Middle Ages Unit

MiddleAges-Charlemagne-KingJohnLast spring, we studied the early Middle Ages.  We stopped because of summer vacation. We did our unit on the American Revolution before delving back into the Middle Ages again.   We picked up where we had left off and studied the Crusades, the Hundred Year’s War, and the Black Plague.Crusades-Worksheets

Some of the posts in our Middle Ages Unit:

Feudalism-Worksheets-Simulation-Activities

MiddleAges-Projects

Next, we studied the Renaissance and Reformation.  The kids *loved* studying the Renaissance. We spent a lot of time looking at the relationship between the patrons (like the Medici and the Popes) with the famous Renaissance painters.

Renaissance Posts:

Medici-and-Renaissance-Art-Worksheets

Renaissance-Artists-and-their-Patrons-Worksheets-Lapbook
Renaissance Worksheets – Holy Roman Empire, Albrecht Dürer

Renaissance-Worksheets-Holy-Roman-EmpireReformation

Then we went on to study the Reformation

Reformation-MartinLuther-Worksheets-Lapbook

U.S. Presidents

Around President’s Day we spent quite a bit of time reviewing some of the well known U. S. Presidents.  You can find our U.S. Presidents review sheets here (plus, the lyrics to the U.S. Presidents Song!)US-Presidents-Day-WorksheetWhen Nancy Reagan died earlier this year, we took the opportunity to talk about and study Ronald Reagan.  There’s a notebook page about his presidency here: Ronald Reagan Notebook Pages. We took the opportunity to learn a little about the Cold War, the Berlin Wall… and Reagan’s role in during Perestroika (political reform) in Russia under Gorbachev. We will need to study this in more depth at some point, but I wanted to at least touch on this period since we haven’t studied this in depth (yet!!).Ronald-Reagan-Notebook-Pages

Finally, we did another unit about some of the Native Americans of the West. We focused on the Navajo, Cheyenne, and Sioux.

Navajo Indians and the Long WalkNavajo-Indians-History-WorksheetsPlains Indian Wars from Sand Creek to Wounded Knee
Plains-Indians-Worksheets

A year or so ago, we had studied many of the tribes of the eastern U.S. You’ll find some of those posts here:

NatAmerican-of-Southeast-Notebook-Pages

U.S. Civics and Government

Finally, at the end of the year we spent some time reviewing the U.S. Constitution and the 3 Branches of Government. You can find our more about our Civics and Government Unit here.Civics-Review-Questions3Branches-of-GovernmentCivics and Government Unit

Our Other History Units:

If you are interested in finding links to our other history units, be sure to click on the History Tab above.

We have other free packets and notebook pages on

  • Africa Learning Packet
  • The Transatlantic Slave Trade
  • India Learning Packet (plus individual notebook pages on Marco Polo, Genghis Khan, Gandhi and more)
  • China Packets (including notebook pages on the ancient Chinese dynasties)
  • World Religions Pages – Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism
  • Civil Rights Movement
  • And much more!!
In the fall, I shared the World Facts Packet with material I go over with the kids each year… things like What are the most populated countries?  What are the largest countries ? What are the longest rivers? tallest mountains? And, we go over similar information about the U.S.: What are the largest and smallest states? Which state has the most people? What is the longest river in the U.S.?  What are the major mountain ranges?World Facts Packet

Europe Flag Map

Earlier this semester I shared a free flag map printable here:Europe-Countries-Flags-Map-Printable

 

What’s coming up for the Fall of 2016?  I actually haven’t quite decided yet.  At some point soon the kids should study 20th century history.  But I know that the kids are really interested in studying more European history; DD is really fascinated by the Tudor dynasty. So, I’ll have to give it more thought this summer! 🙂

You might be interested in this History Checklist of units and topics I hope to cover in elementary and middle school:

HistoryChecklist-Homeschool-GradesK-8

And you might also be interested in this post about Planning for a New Homeschool Year.

Planning for a new homeschool year-homeschoolden

So that’s about it for today! See you again soon here or Homeschool Den Facebook page. Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Homeschool Den Newsletter! ~Liesl

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links in this post are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase. If you do click over, thanks for supporting our blog!

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