End of our Civil War Study

We have spent a month and more doing our American Civil War study.  I know my kids have learned a lot but they are ready to move onto science next week.  But here is a quick review of what we covered.

Sophie's completed projects.

I used History Pockets Civil War as a, sort of, guide and for activities and coloring sheets. While I did enjoy having the coloring sheets and the direction in our studies I felt like they (the publishers) did most of the work and didn't leave a whole lot up to the kids to think about. Most of the "activities" were coloring something in, cutting it out and gluing it according to to their directions. A lot of the text was already there they just had to cut it out and put in in the right places. I guess I am used to lapbooks where they just give you an empty mini book with a topic and the child fills in the rest. But for our purposes this worked out pretty well. I didn't use every page from the book but we did cover everything that was included in the program.

I also had a Dover civil war coloring book that added a few more coloring pages into the mix. Henry especially liked these because there were battles scenes to color.

Working on some Morris code

We spent a lot of time learning about Abraham Lincoln. We read a bunch of books about his early life and of course the years he was president. I was especially struck with how unlikely it was for him to go from back woods boy that only had a year of formal schooling to shop keeper then to lawyer and politician and then to President. It is amazing! I know my kids never get tired of hearing his story and neither do I. It is fascinating. Here are a few of the books we read. I know we have gone through a few more than these on Lincoln. They must have been taken into bedrooms or returned to the library before I took this picture.



Speaking of books... Here is the pile of books we have been making our way through.

These are some of the ones we read about the underground railroad

and here are the others we read about the war.

We really liked the Brown Paper School US Kids History of the American Civil War. It was a series of stories from the perspective and experiences of many different people. It started before the war and explained a lot of the reasons behind the fight and the feelings of each side.

While we colored we often listened to music and stories. My kids listened to Bull Run, Lamp of freedom (a short story about a girl who helps slaves along the Underground Railroad. I can't find any links for it. But it was something our Library had in the catalog)  and Civil War songs.  They can often be heard singing "Peas, peas, peas, peas, eating goober peas". That is the song that seems to have stuck with them.

Ian's completed projects.

We haven't covered anything about reconstruction or anything expect Lincoln's assisination after the war so I know we will be back to this time in history again. I am looking forward to a few weeks off of war and fighting. It should be fun to do science everyday for a change of pace.