American History and American Government

American Revolution - "I Have, You Have"
An interactive, whole-class game to help review facts.

Books
Find a great books list for: Explorers, Early America, Revolutionary War, Various Decades, Westward Movement, and Civil War.

Civil Rights Overview
This cooperative group project will have students researching people involved with the Civil Rights Movement.

Colonies Contract
Great cooperative activity to learn about the original colonies.

Explorers
A culminating activity great for any Explorer Unit. To culminate our unit on Explorers this year, we are having our fourth graders dress up and decorate a small (about a baseball size) pumpkin to look like one of the explorers we have studied. They will write a very short report on an index card telling the name of their explorer and an interesting fact about him. These will be displayed in our library for a week or so before Halloween.

The Preamble
Working with a team, students will learn more about the Preamble and it's meanings.

Schoolhouse Rock
A great way to add variety to your history lessons. A great tool for learning U.S. history, (and enjoying it), is showing and discussing the Schoolhouse Rock history video. The songs are contagious, and the kids ask for it over and over again!

Slavery
A fun scavenger hunt that allows students to communicate over the Internet with other schools. I have scavenger hunt that I do with a slavery unit. We email our clues to another school and each group will use the Internet to find their slaves. We also tie in a math equation so they know how many slaves were left in that state. After each group is completed we then share our results via-telecommunications with our other classes. If you need more information, please let me know.