Colonial Week and American Revolution Week

We spent the last two weeks learning a little bit more about the Colonial period in America and the conditions that led to the Revolutionary War.

We did most of the projects in Evan Moor's History Pockets for Colonial America and the American Revolution.

Here are some photos of Andrew's books:

And some from Eddie's books:

We had fun doing some Colonial activities.  First the boys made ink and wrote on parchment with a quill from the kits we bought in Jamestown.  It was much harder to write with the ink and quill than they thought.

Then, we made butter from whipping cream.  We poured some in baby food jars and shook it until it turned into butter.  Then we melted it and put it on some popcorn for a lovely afternoon snack.

Here are some pictures of them playing a memory game they made about Colonial occupations and then one with the paper powder horns they decorated.  Ali stayed with us one day because she was on spring break from school, so she made a powder horn, too.

We spent most of the week on history, but we did do a little math- some multiplication practice and some fraction work.  And we did a music project and a language arts project from Pinterest, and Eddie and I played a mean game of Scrabble.  Andrew and I played some close games of Uno, and Ali and I played a round of Lego Minotaurus.  Also, the kids have been watching the PBS series Liberty's Kids, and they really like it.  They can't wait for the next disc to arrive from Netflix!

Edited to add the books we read aloud:  The Thirteen Colonies by Gail Sakuri, Can't You Make them Behave, King George? by Jean Fritz, The Boston Tea Party by Allison Stark Draper, and Sam the Minuteman by  Nathaniel Benchley. We are still reading Ben & Me by Robert Lawson- with only a couple more chapters to go.

Eddie read Who Was Ben Franklin? by Dennis Brindell Fradin and Andrew read Meet George Washington by Joan Heilbroner, and they wrote very short book reports on them.