In order to alleviate some burn-out, the kids and I took a week long "math holiday" and substituted this hands-on history project on The American Revolution.
This book, which only cost $15.00, is published by the Evan-Moor Company. It took me this long to use it because I was thinking that I would have to copy each page three times so that each kid could make their own booklet. I finally realized that we could all work together and that one project would suffice for the family.
The seven pockets were 1)Introduction to the American Revolution and 2)Causes of The War
3) Famous Patriots and 4)A Soldier's Life
5) Battles and 6) Spies and Traitors
and 7) Birth of a Nation. We used large paper grocery bags for the pockets. Each one contained an overview of the topic and a book mark of "fast facts", as well as fun-to- make projects that pertained to the theme.
In "Spies and Traitors", we learned that this secret message is called a Cardan Mask and was used by the British. The cut-out sheet is laid over a piece of paper and the real information is written inside it. Then the 'mask" is removed and the author of the letter writes in words before and after the message so that it seems to make sense to a person reading it without the cut-out in place.The mask and the letter were both mailed to the recipient in two different envelopes to avoid detection.This pocket had a little project on Benedict Arnold and had a secret message in a backwards alphabet code.
In "Battles", Sam assembled a small booklet of famous patriotic quotes. John Paul Jones said "I have not yet begun to fight" and Nathan Hale stated " I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country". The Famous Patriots pocket has a nice paper model of a man on horseback riding across a bridge."The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere", by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in its entirety is put in booklet form below it which begins:
Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
This poem is so beautiful and moving that I can't read it aloud without bawling, over and over again.
This was a week well spent. I am not a real artsy-craftsy kind of Mom, so I really enjoyed the ease of this ready to go project. I would highly recommend this product which is also available in other time periods like The Civil War, Moving West, Explorers of North America, and the Ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece and Rome. I found that it was necessary to copy each page before using it because some of the projects are printed on both sides of a page which needed to be cut. If we don't take a snow day tomorrow, it will be back to business as usual!
