The American Revolution Unit Study and Lap Book
I’ve had this post in my draft folder since January and I am finally getting around to posting… Sometimes I feel like it is harder to round up all my pictures and find the extra time to actually blog about our projects, than it is to do them! 😉
Anyhow, as I’ve mentioned before, this year we have been making Lap Books to go along with each of our six Unit Studies for American History. Our third Unit was based on The American Revolution. While the girls were working on their Josefina Lap Books (that post is still in my drafts folder too), the boys were busy making their own Lap Books with printable mini books from The American Revolution (Time Travelers History Study Series) CD-Rom.
Resources and Books for Unit Three:
You can find links to all the books we used for this unit here, or you can print our complete Unit Three Plans/Booklist here.
My children have been especially enjoying The Childhood of Famous Americans Series. Unfortunately our library doesn’t carry any of them, but I’ve put in some requests and have been slowly building our personal collection with the help of Amazon’s 4-for-3 specials.
Timeline Entries:
I asked the boys to choose 5-10 from the list to add to their History Through the Ages Record of Time timeline book during this unit. You can read more about our Timeline books here: Lap Booking {and Timeline} Questions Answered
A few timeline entries by Captain
A few timeline entries by Rascal
American Revolution Lap Book
We are just loving the Time Travelers CD’s for creating our lap books for each unit. It’s so nice to have all the printables in one spot, all ready to go, and the quality/detail is awesome!
THE FRONT COVER
The boys actually colored the covers to these lap books 4 years ago, when I first purchased the CD-rom for the lap book! At the time I realized it was a little too advanced for them and saved it for later. They were very excited to pull out their old illustrations and finally complete this lap book!!
INSIDE VIEW #1
The red center page/flap addition contains the following three mini books:
Important Documents
Each of the “important documents” is folded accordion style and placed in the “Doc Pocket.”
God’s Hand in Providence
Looks like I need to add the word “many” to Rascal’s Personal Spelling Lists! 🙂
Minuteman “Pop-up”
Paul Revere by Rascal
Paul Revere by Captain
On the Left Flap:
George vs. George
Tea Troubles
1st Continental Congress vs. 2nd Continental Congress
On the Right Flap:
Whig vs. Tory
Liberty Bell “Pop-up”
Monarchy vs. Republic
INSIDE VIEW #2
Bad News in Boston (with Overlay) andSoldiers of the Revolution
INSIDE VIEW #3
The Center of Actual Lap Book Folder contains the Pie Book of “Acts”…
(before they taped them together to create the “Pie” book)
… and Women of the War.
The back of each flap has all the “People to Know.”
Including: Baron von Steuben, Patrick Henry, Nathan Hale, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, and James Madison
Inside each frame the boys include some Biography Facts, Contributions to the Revolution, Character Traits, and a Quote. I’ve been amazed to hear them rattle off all sorts of facts about these men. They have been learning SO much!!
The boys finished this unit quite awhile ago and are currently putting the finishing touches on their Unit 4 Lap Book, before our summer break, which begins next week! With a new baby this year, we just weren’t able to complete all six units as I had planned. At least I have my History plans for the fall semester all ready to go! 😉
This all looks so wonderful & is very inspiring! Your boys did a great job!
I think I understand what you mean about the time it takes to write posts like these…I've been doing a similar "documenting" of my children's units & projects on my blog this year (mostly because I was inspired by your sweet posts, here, lol) and found out how time consuming it is. (But wonderful to be able to look back & read/see the memories!)
However – and I always think this whenever I come here to read – all of your pics, details & ideas are very encouraging to see! I've gleaned *so much* help from your blog, to use in my own home/school.
Anyway, I didn't mean to write a book here…just want to tell how much your blog is appreciated in our home & say thanks for taking the time to document & share all of your ideas! (I am hoping to use some of your history notes/ideas for our units next year).
Many Blessings,
Collette
These are so awesome. The best part is that i saw first hand how proud your boys were of their work and just how much they learned!
Awesome work!
We too have been using Connecting with History and are waiting for Volume 4, but for the next year (or two!) we will be using your booklists and plans.. Thank you so much! Your plans were a God-send. I did only a little more work to add a separate booklist for my 8th grader. My 2nd, 4th and 6th graders are covered thanks to your efforts. God bless you for sharing! Amy
Thanks so much for taking the time to blog! Your pictures and descriptions are helpful to people like me! Every time I go to our local homeschool convention, I ooh and ahh over the Homschool in the Woods display with all their Time Travelers CD's, projects, and timelines. The only one I've purchased is the Old Testament. I really wish I had the American Revolution right now. Although I've found lots of free resources online, including lapbook material, it takes a lot of time and effort to find it, and too often I found some of the material to be inaccurate, or have typos.
Did your kids color all all those lapbook pieces? My kids don't enjoy coloring as much as they used to, so that would be quite daunting, and time-consuming.
Thanks again for sharing!
Yes, my children do love the coloring. It's the cutting everything out that they do not enjoy all the time. I help with that part so that they can focus on the content!
Thanks for the kind comments!
Thank you so much for posting all of these resources and pictures. I did Sonlight's American History with my 9 year old daughter last year (2014). She hated it and complained every day about how boring it was. It was so laborsome that we didn't even make it through half of the material! I was looking for a way to continue American History this year with a more hands on approach and this looks wonderful. I was just wondering about your schedule for history. How much time in a school day do you typically set aside for just history? And is that time split between individual reading time, cd time and lapbook time? I am trying to get an idea of how to organize all the materials into daily lesson plans. Thank you!
Hi I am getting ready to start the American Revolution with my daughter and I was wondering about your process. I read that you don't use the reading material provided so do you use your main texts for the answers? What do you do with all the extra books on your list? Are they just read or do you use them for answers also? I really want to do this without using the text that came with the CDs. I really love the living book idea. Thank you. Lisa