Category: History: American West Unit

Oregon Trail Notebook Pages and Lapbook 0

Oregon Trail Lapbook and Notebook Pages

Oregon Trail Packet 20+ pages! For the past few weeks, the girls have been doing a unit on the Oregon Trail. They’ve learned why people moved West, when and where pioneers started, how long the journey West took,  what was needed to travel along the Oregon Trail, dangers the pioneers encountered and other basic information about traveling on the Oregon Trail.  They spent about 10 days learning about the Donner...

Mission US online website 0

American History: Fun Online Interactive History Game

Here’s an American History resource I learned about recently called Mission US  :   If you do Mission 1 about the American Revolution, you might be interested in our packet, Causes and Events Leading to the American Revolution. You kids might also enjoy Liberty’s Kids – The Complete Series: (affiliate link) My daughters have been watching one episode most days this semester. (They are 7 and 10) The Amazon description reads:...

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Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon, & Yellowstone Highlights Video and More!

It’s taking me longer to go through the pictures to share them than the trip itself!! I’m excited because today not only do I have some photos to share, but I also put together a 5-minute video of Yellowstone. A week or so ago I shared our photos from Canyon de Chelly.  From there we continued west through Arizona, first to the Petrified Forest and then on to the pueblo...

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Our 7,000 Mile Trip Out West!!

Just a few days ago, the kids and I got back from a 7,000 mile cross-country trip. We visited more than 10 national parks and monuments as well as a number of famous state parks.  We spent time looking for diamonds in the world’s only diamond mine open to the public, had a long tour of Canyon De Chelly which we had studied about this spring with a Navajo guide...

Plains Indians Worksheets Wounded Knee Sand Creek 0

Plains Wars: Cheyenne and Sioux Notebook Pages (Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, etc.)

The West – The Plains Wars The past month or so, we have been studying Native American History again. This part of our unit was on the history of the Plains Wars from 1864 through 1890. We talked about the Sand Creek Massacre where the Colorado Territory militia attacked a peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho Village (1864), Red Clouds War and the Fetterman Massacre Great Sioux War of 1876 including the...

Arrowheads 2

We Found an Arrowhead!!

I’ve been bursting at the seams to write this post, but wanted to wait til I had more information before sharing our excitement! Can you believe, we found an arrowhead on our property?! Okay, so technically it’s not an arrowhead, more about that in a second.   The first thing we did was start googling to find out more information. I really didn’t know too much about arrowheads. I was...

The Tourist Town of Branson, Missouri 4

The Tourist Town of Branson, Missouri

My in-laws happen to live right near Branson, Missouri.  It’s quite a tourist destination… there are shows of every description… magic shows, country shows, dancing, live music, the Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede, Chinese Acrobats, the art of Kung Fu, blues, the Brady Bunch, a tribute to the Eagles, gospel music and on and on and on. Driving down the main thoroughfare there are fun places everywhere. It is a great...

Plantation Agriculture Museum, Arkansas 0

Plantation Agriculture Museum, Arkansas

We actually stumbled across this museum, but what a FABULOUS place to visit.  Just had to shout that out, it was *that* good! From the time Arkansas became a state in 1836 to the mid 1940s cotton production was common in the Arkansas River lowlands.  Men, women and children could be seen picking and stuffing cotton into long sacks in the fall. Tractors were not used for the preparation, planting,...

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Oregon Trail Activities (Oregon Trail Worksheets)

As I mentioned yesterday, we’ve been reading a book about a girl who travels West on the Oregon Trail with a group of other families.  Since we’ve been reading for quite some time now, I thought we could jump right in and play the Oregon Trail File Folder Game I found at File Folder Fun. I asked them a couple of questions to prepare to play the game in another day...

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Oregon Trail Activities

We’ve been studying the American West this semester.  The kids and I have been thoroughly engrossed in a wonderful book called Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie: The Oregon Trail Diary of Hattie Campbell, 1847 (Dear America Series) (Affiliate link). It’s the story of a girl making her way West along the Oregon Trail with her family.  At one point the pioneers have to struggle up and then back down a...

Lewis and Clark Lapbook 0

American West Unit: Lewis and Clark, Fruit Leather and more

Lewis and Clark Lapbooks: I saw a wonderful set of lapbook materials on Lewis and Clark and on the American West over at Dynamic 2 Moms.  We used some of their materials to make notebook pages for the kids’ history notebooks. Also the US mint website had a number of really great printables about the journey of Lewis and Clark because of the series of nickles that were released in...

American West Unit: Geography and the Louisiana Purchase 0

American West Unit: Geography and the Louisiana Purchase

Our next topic was the Louisiana Purchase. Prior to 1803, the United States territory went only as far as the Mississippi River. Napoleon Bonaparte, the ruler of France, needed money for his wars in Europe and sold the Louisiana Territory to the U.S. for $15 million (3 cents an acre!).  This nearly doubled the size of the United States. We’ve been using a map that shows the Louisiana Purchase and...

American West Unit 0

American West Unit

As I mentioned last week, this semester we are studying the American West. We picked up where we left off last semester when we talked about Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. (To the left is Davy Crockett’s birthplace cabin in Tennessee which we visited last Thanksgiving.) We talked about the Ohio Valley settlement and how as settlers made their way west they used the rivers for transportation.  We learned a...