Posts tagged ‘history’

Another Historical Birthday is approaching.  Henry Ford’s birthday is July 30th and we’re featuring a Pathway unit study on the History of Motor Vehicles.

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In this unit, your child will explore motor vehicle travel in history and some important inventors and inventions. Additionally, your child will learn how motor vehicle travel progress affected life and business. This unit will be brought to life with fun activities–such as making stoplight cookies; creating a “then & now” automobile poster showing how they have changed; playing Red Light, Green Light; and making candy cars. Finally, to wrap up the unit, your child will create a transportation collage with timeline. This unit is designed to last one week, depending on how often you teach history.

Have your children ever pretended to be a pirate?  Engage their natural curiosity and imagination with this week’s delightful Pathway about Life in the Caribbean.  Brimming with hands-on activities, there are plenty of options to choose from.

In this unit, your child will explore life in the beautiful Caribbean. Your child will learn about the real pirates of the Caribbean and Christopher Columbus landing on the island of San Salvador. Your child will also discover facts about the weather and geography of the Caribbean. Skills will be mastered through the use of maps, hands-on activities, recipes, games and coloring pages. Your child will have fun learning how to make colorful Caribbean jewelry and going on a treasure hunt. This unit is designed to last for one week, depending on how often you teach history.

This unit, as well as over 900 other Pathways, is free for everyone. Please help keep LessonPathways.com free by supporting our advertisers. If you need to make a purchase, please consider using our online shopping mall, where a portion of your purchase will help make LessonPathways.com even better.

On this day in 1873, Levi Strauss received U.S.Patent No.139,121, for the process of adding rivets to pants for strength.  Today is considered the birthday of blue jeans.  Why not have a little history fun with these FREE resources?

• Read about Levi Strauss and the history of blue jeans
• Watch a video about Levi Strauss
• Watch a video on how jeans are made
• Complete a webquest to discover where jeans come from
• Print and complete this reading assignment with comprehension questions (for the older set)
• Recycle old jeans to make a lunch sack
• Recycle old jeans to make an organizer

Do you have any fun ideas to celebrate the birthday of blue jeans?

This post was written by Christina S., a homeschool mom of two girls.   She lives with her family in Detroit and is looking forward to summer.

As mentioned last Friday, each week we will be featuring a new Pathway here on our blog.  In addition, we will be giving everyone FREE access to this unit for a full week.  Each Pathway contains enough resources for a full week’s worth of learning.

This week’s Free Featured Pathway is all about Booker T. Washington.

Explore the life of Booker T. Washington in this unit. Your child will create a diorama, design a stamp, and make a collage. A map and an online story are included to help your child learn more about Washington. This unit is designed to last one week, depending on how often you teach history.

To access this Pathway, simply click the link above.  While there is no registration needed, we encourage you to sign up for a 7 day free trial to access all of our great Pathways!

*Booker T. Washington clip art courtesy of ClipArtGuide.com

We’re pleased to announce that each Friday we will be featuring one of our great Pathways found on LessonPathways.com here on our blog.

Not only will our readers get to preview each of these unique Pathways, we’ll also be giving everyone FREE access for a full week to explore and use the resources we’ve assembled for you!

This week’s FREE featured Pathway is all about Harriet Tubman.

In this unit, you will learn about Harriet Tubman, one of the heroines of the Civil War Era. Through reading lessons, participating in interactive sites, and using printouts, you will learn about this remarkable woman and the Underground Railroad. You will conduct a pretend interview with Harriet Tubman, make a timeline, create a hero card, and look up vocabulary words. This unit is designed to last one week, depending on how often you teach history.

To access this Pathway, simply click this link.  You don’t need to be a subscriber to use the Pathways we will be featuring each week, but you may want to consider signing up for a free one-week trial to have access to all of our Pathways!

LessonPathways would like to recognize the accomplishments of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the impact he had on the lives of everyone.

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. day, we are giving everyone FREE access to our Martin Luther King Jr. History Pathway.  Here, you will find all the resources you need to complete a one-week study on the life of this great leader and visionary.

FREE Martin Luther King Jr. History Pathway

This Pathway will only be free for one week.  Please enjoy the learning and activities with your child this week.

Image courtesy of  Free-Stock-Photos.com

We are VERY pleased to bring you another wonderful giveaway!!

You could win…

Susan Marlow’s Book, Andrea Carter and the San Francisco Smugglers

http://www.circlecadventures.com/Books.html

This is the fourth book in the Circle C Adventure series for kids and it is SURE to entertain!

Click here to read the first chapter!

When a flood damages the schoolhouse, Andi is ecstatic—until her family sends her to a stuffy San Francisco school for young ladies. The plight of a small, Chinese slave girl captures her heart, sending Andi and her new friends into the dark alleys of Chinatown, where danger greater than she’s ever known waits to swallow them up.

In addition to the book, the winner will ALSO receive the Journey through Learning Lapbook!

From A Journey Through Learning you will get the lapbook that goes along with this chapter book. It is 3 folders big and includes extra study pages such as the Fresno Flood, Chinatown, the Transcontinental Railroad, Streetcars and Cable Cars, the Chinese Slave Trade, Chinese Writing, Golden Gate Park, Life at Young Ladies’ Academy, and more!

Susan K. Marlow is a twenty-year homeschooling veteran of four and the author of the Circle C Adventures series for “tweens” from Kregel Publications. She combines her love of teaching and her passion for writing by teaching writing workshops for kids on line and at home-school co-ops. She and her family make their home in Washington State.

To learn more, please visit Susan Marlow’s website: Circle C Adventures.

How to Enter:

Leave us a comment below and let us know what you love about the Circle C series! (please make sure to include your email address in the form, it will not be visible to others and will not be shared)

For extra entries:

• Subscribe to our Feed
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• Tweet This: RT @LessonPathways Enter for a free Circle C Book & Lapbook http://bit.ly/2cbEK5
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Please make sure to leave a separate comment for each entry. This contest will be open through Friday (January 15th), 11:59 EST.  Good Luck!!

How Did We Go From 13 Colonies to 50 States?

Who Were the Native Americans?

Find Answers to These Questions and Learn More About Our Nation with This Fun Interactive.

The United States History Map is an interactive website where kids can learn about the geographic features, regions, and history of the United States. The site is broken down into five major sections: From Sea to Shining Sea, 50 States, Indians, Colonists, and The Nation Expands. Each section provides background information on the topic, an interactive, and a timed quiz.

Product Description: “Become a geography whiz as you learn how the United States was settled. Discover how the continent was irrevocably changed by European colonization, the events that caused the wholesale displacement and decimation of the land’s original inhabitants, and how the 50 states came to be formed.”

In addition to the U.S. history interactive, you can choose from other subject areas as well, which are located in the upper right corner of the site. You can pick from a list of subjects, including math, science, language, and additional history topics.

Uses: Use this interactive to teach or supplement a variety of history topics, as well as any other subject of your choosing. This particular interactive makes a great supplement for teaching children about the 13 Colonies and Native Americans. It’s also good for use with geography lessons relating to North America and the U.S. The use of interactives makes learning about history much more fun, especially with children. Rather than pouring through books and listening to drawn-out lectures (yawn), interactives allow children to take part in the lesson, bringing the topic at hand to life and making it more interesting.

Content and Safety: This site and its content was designed for upper elementary and middle school grades. However, all ages and grade levels can benefit from and gain a basic understanding of the United States and its history. The site requires Internet Explorer 5 (and higher) and Mozilla 5 (and higher) as well as the latest versions of Flash player.

Using the Product: I had the opportunity to explore this site and found it to be quite interesting—seems you’re never too old to learn (or re-learn). In the first section of the site, From Sea to Shining Sea, kids get a chance to learn how to read and interpret a map of the United States in order to understand its geography and how it has influenced our history. They will also be asked to identify major mountains, rivers, and oceans of North America.

The 50 States section focuses on the various regions and individual states. The other three sections focus on the original inhabitants of North America. Many distinct Indian tribes originally inhabited each of the regions that are now part of the country, and you can learn more about these various tribes in the Indian section of the site. Life for North American Indians began to change with the arrival of Europeans—or the Colonists, which kids will also learn about.

Under the Nations Expand section, kids will learn how the United States grew into the 50 states, expanding from the original 13 colonies. After reviewing interactive overviews in each section, you can test your skills by answering questions relating the U.S. history map in a series of timed quizzes, which will be scored and can be printed off for review. Check out my score and yes, I could use a bit more review!

Tutorial or Promotional Video of the Product: I did not find any specific tutorial for the site; however, once you get there, it is pretty much self-explanatory. You simply read through the sections following the “Next” link (or arrow) located on the bottom right side of each page.

Summary: I really enjoyed this interactive and look forward to checking out some of the other ones on the site. I think children will greatly benefit from the information, and the interactive lessons are good for holding their interest. Although much of this might already be familiar to older kids, they can still revisit and appreciate our history with this site. You may even learn something new, as I did.

This post was written by Nikki P., homeschool mom and Lesson Pathways contributor. You can find this original review of this product posted at ChoosyHomeschooler.

We’d like to wish all of our Canadian friends a Happy Thanksgiving!

The Canadian Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday in October. It differs a little from the American Thanksgiving. Sure, we do enjoy turkey, squash, and all the trimmings! We get together with friends and family for a big meal and football! However, the reason behind our celebration is different! Americans celebrate the Pilgrims traveling to America and settling in the “New World.” Canadians celebrate the harvest.

We live in a northern climate, and a successful harvest is a great blessing! American influence has played a part in the Canadian Thanksgiving. Our holiday originated from a three-fold process:

1. Long ago, before the first Europeans arrived in North America, farmers in Europe held celebrations at harvest time. To give thanks for their good fortune and the abundance of food, the farm workers filled a curved goat’s horn with fruit and grain. This symbol was called a cornucopia or horn of plenty. When they traveled to Canada, they brought this tradition with them.

2. In the year 1578, the English navigator Martin Frobisher held a formal ceremony, in what is now called Newfoundland, giving thanks for surviving the long journey. He was later knighted and had an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean in northern Canada named after him– Frobisher Bay. Other settlers arrived and continued these ceremonies.

3. The third came in the year 1621, in what is now the United States, when the Pilgrims celebrated their harvest in the New World. The Pilgrims were English colonists who founded a permanent European settlement at Plymouth Massachusetts. By the 1750s, this joyous celebration was brought to Nova Scotia by American settlers from the south.

(The above three points are taken from the CanadaInfo website, click here to read the whole article).

Did you know Americans did not have the first Thanksgiving?

Frobisher’s celebration took place 43 years before the Pilgrims gave thanks in 1621!

Each family has its own way of celebrating the holiday. Here are some common practices across Canada:

a) Turkey of course! We also enjoy ham, roast, and pumpkin pie! Our meals do not differ much from the American version of our feast. The Americans contributed to our traditional meal!

b) We often have the cornucopia (filled with fruit, flowers, etc.) on display around the house or on the kitchen table, honoring the European part of our tradition! It is a symbol of abundance.

c) Thankfulness! We enjoy sharing what we are thankful for in remembrance of the English navigator Martin Frobisher. Different people celebrate their thankfulness in different ways, such as going around the table to take turns saying what they are thankful for and offering prayers of thankfulness in church and at the table. The First Nations of Canada celebrate by being thankful to their ancestors.

d) Football! Football is a huge tradition here. No man is denied the practice of undoing his pants after a big meal and settling down to watch the big game! It is a tradition that began with Monday Night Football!

Did you know Americans did not have the first Thanksgiving?

Frobisher’s celebration took place 43 years before the Pilgrims gave thanks in 1621! It began in 1578 for Canadians, but on April 5, 1872, the Canadian Confederation made it a civic holiday, marking the official holiday as the second Monday of October. This was in celebration of the Prince of Whales’ recovery from a serious illness!

We have much to be thankful for, including the diversity of Canadian culture that combines so many different reasons to be thankful, into one holiday: Thanksgiving!

Here are some fun FREE on-line resources for helping your child learn and celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving:

Kid’s Turn Central: Canadian Thanksgiving
Canadian Thanksgiving eCards
Canadian Thanksgiving Printable Wordsearch
Thankful Wreath of Leaves Craft
Canadian Thanksgiving True or False
Learn about Canadian Thanksgiving Video

This post was written by Jennifer B., a Canadian resident, homeschool mom and LessonPathways team member.  The links were compiled by Christina S., homeschool mom and LessonPathways team member.