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We have moved from Colonial America / Early Settlers to studying the American Revolutionary War. For this study we are making a lapbook which you can download and follow along with us (click to download). Each week we will add more dates to our timeline and learn about famous people from the American Revolution. I am including resources for lots of good books so you can do this unit without buying a single textbook (assuming you have a good local library)!

I found this WONDERFUL resource! It is a cartoon series called Liberty Kids. It goes through the Revolutionary war in about 40 episodes. It includes famous people, major battles, perspective from both sides, is fun to watch (I enjoyed it to!) and does this all in a tasteful, accurate way. LOVE it! We used this entire series. Our local library had it so we were able to check it out. If yours does not, it is totally worth the $35!! This week we watched episode 1-5 of video series (1 a day for week).

 

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We studied the following events from the Revolutionary War and added them to our timeline.

• TAXES on molasses, tea, paper goods (Stamp Act)
• Boston Massacre – Goofy found a red shirt to represent the British and we acted out the Boston Massacre.

• Boston Tea Party (we had a tea party with pound cake) – December 16, 1773

• English close Boston Port until Colonists pay back the cost of the tea – the colonists called this the Intolerable Acts
• Printing Press & Benjamin Franklin’s newspaper The Pennsylvanian Gazette

To help Goofy understand the printing press and how long it took to set-up to print the newspaper I came up with this project. We picked a simple thing to print “British are coming!” as I knew we’d run out of letters. We laid them out backwards. Then Goof used a piece of paper and and book to push down to make his press print. Putting all the type in for the newspaper would have been a LOT of work!

• Colonial Costume – in The Liberty Tree it explained that men usually braided or pulled back their hair and then put flour on it. It also shows the time period tricorn hats. So we made our own from felt (that we braided) and black construction paper.

Revolutionary War Book to Read: The Liberty Tree does a wonderful job explaining history from both sides. It introduces major characters, explains events leading up to the Revolutionary War beginning with the French-Indian War, and has nice illustrations.  Although this is all you will need you might also want to check out Graffic Library’s The Boston Massacre or the Time Traveling Twins’ Joining the Boston Tea Party

 

 

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We studied the following Famous People from the Revolutionary War and added them to our lapbook.

• Samuel Adams - a politician in colonial Massachusetts, was a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution. His 1768 circular letter calling for colonial cooperation prompted the occupation of Boston by British soldiers, eventually resulting in the Boston Massacre of 1770. In 1776 he helped draft the Articles of Confederation.

(Ideas we didn’t get to to from Squidoo - make root beer (Samuel Adams’ father owned a brewery)

• Benjamin Franklin - a leading author (Poor Richard's Almanack), printer (The Pennsylvania Gazette), Pennsylvanian politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, diplomat, and American founding father. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, a carriage odometer, and the glass 'armonica'. He formed the first public library in America and the first fire department in Pennsylvania.

     

(we made the printing press from letter stamps)

• King George III – his reign was marked by a series of military conflicts involving his kingdoms, much of the rest of Europe, and places farther afield in Africa, the Americas and Asia. George III is often accused of obstinately trying to keep Great Britain at war with the revolutionaries in America, despite the opinions of his own ministers.

• Patrick Henry - an attorney and politician during the movement for independence in Virginia in the 1770s. He is remembered as governor of Virginia (twice), saying "Give me liberty or give me death" and "I am not a Virginian, but an American", opposing the Constitution as it would take away from state's rights, and as a proponent of Bill or Rights.

Check out the rest of the American Revolutionary War Series below and for more fun history units check out my Colonial American / Early Settlers Unit and Early Explorers Unit below.

• American Revolutionary War # 1 – War is Brewing
• American Revolutionary War #2 - The Shot Heard Round the World
• American Revolutionary War #3 - Declaration of Independence
• American Revolutionary War #4 - Freedom at last!