Colonial Times!

November 22, 2013
I love Early America! Colonial Days, The Revolutionary War, Pioneering and Westward Expansion; I thoroughly enjoy our American History and love when my girls become interested in the early time periods. The Colonial period is one of my favorites to teach.There are so many exciting things to learn.

 About five years ago a friend introduced me to Home School in the Woods, specifically their Time Travelers History Study Series. Each CD is a complete unit study for a specific time period. For example, New World Explorers, Colonial Life or The American Revolution. These are activity-based studies and are jam-packed with projects, games, experiments and activities. We have completed a few of these units and have had a blast doing it! We especially love completing the lapbooks that pull the whole thing together. There are also many really great notebooking activities.

 I introduced my current fourth grader to these in the spring and she has begun to enjoy the fun these lessons offer. Here are some of the many living history activities we have done!

These are our Queen Cakes from the Colonial Life unit.

YUM! 

We also made spoon bread and traditional cornbread to compare the difference between the two.
Bread pudding was another yummy recipe we made.

Here is a diorama that my sweet created. She was given the choice of 4 different types of homes from early America.

Here is a box that she stenciled. The stencils were a printable template included on the CD.

One of the lapbook activities from the Colonial Life CD was to create different dyes from foods and other objects and then use them to dye different types of fabrics and materials. (We used all food items this time. The first time I did this project we used some flowers, but I found that foods make better dyes) This activity enabled us to see just a hint of what it may have been like to create dyes made from foods back then. My girl got very hot cooking these dyes over our stove. She couldn't imagine what it was like to stir a kettle over an open fire, dressed in heavy clothes. And was glad she didn't have to!  

Here are a few pictures of the items we cooked to create the dyes...

Berries

Coffee, tea and cocoa

and the skin from a red onion.

Working hard...

Here are the things we dyed

Muslin, cotton towel, cotton balls, paper and string

When we were finished and everything dried,

we glued samples to these sheets.

And here is the finished product to go into the lapbook!

These are some pictures of our finished lapbook...
(these activities can be found on the Colonial Life CD.)

And here are a few pictures from our lapbook from the American Revolution CD.
(NOTE: My daughter chose to do a different picture for our cover, using flags instead of King George III and George Washington) 

The Home School in the Woods Time Travelers CD's have become a huge part of our history units. I hope you enjoy them as much as we have!
Jen