Woodstone Prairie

M decided that he really wanted to learn more about the Civil War, so that was the topic for our most recent unit study. This was a hard one for me though, because I had to so carefully go through the materials before I shared them with the kids. The Civil War era was an absolutely horrible time in our country’s history, and I felt as though I had to protect them somewhat from the cruelty of that time, while still giving them a accurate view of that piece of history. Our unit study was probably a little watered down, but I still think they understand the basics… the where, what, when, why of it.

During this unit study the kids got a pretty good overview of who was fighting, and what they were fighting about. We talked about the Confederacy and the Union, and the ways the north and south were different before the war began. We talked a lot about slavery, of course, and R must have said a hundred times how happy she is not to live back then. We talked a lot about the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman. We also talked a little about Clara Barton. We talked about the war itself only in general terms, I didn’t go into any details about battles etc, although we did talk about what a terrible war it was, how many men died, and how many of the “men” fighting were really only boys. We talked a lot about Lincoln, Grant and Lee and the kids have a pretty good understanding of who they were.

We also spent an evening learning more about the music of the civil war (civilwarmusic.org is an awesome site) and the kids learned about the importance of music in the war (drummer boys, buglers, etc). I taught the kids the songs “Dixie” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic” gave them a packet of information about Civil War music, including the words to those songs, and they enjoyed pulling the packets out and singing for dh and I.

The vocabulary words for this unit study were:

abolitionist

Clara Barton

Civil War

Confederate States

Ulysses S Grant

Robert E Lee

Abraham Lincoln

Harriet Tubman

Underground Railroad

Union States

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Resources…

Books: (in no particular order)

Dorling-Kindersly Eyewitness Books, The Civil War
by John Stauchak (2000)
A Picture Book of Harriet Tubman
By David A Adler (1992)

Escape North! The Story of Harriet Tubman
By Monica Kulling (2000)

A History of US Book 6, War, Terrible War
By Joy Hakim (1999) (I used this book mostly as a reference for myself)

The Complete Book of US History
McGraw-Hill (2000)

The Big Dipper
By Franlyn Branley (1991)

Follow the Drinking Gourd

If You Lived at the Time of the Civil War
by Kay Moore (1994)

Civil War on Sunday
By Mary Pope Osborne (2000)

Minty: A Story of Young Harriet Tubman
By: Alan Schroeder (1996) I would NOT recommend this book, both my kids hated it, it made R angry, and we didn’t finish it

Moses, When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom
By: Carole Boston Weatherford (2006)

Kids During the American Civil War
By: Lisa A Wroble (1997)

Videos

Little Women (1994 version)

Animated Hero Classics:

Harriet Tubman

Abraham Lincoln

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Here are some pictures of our lapbooks, they ended up looking a little like satchels, horizontal instead of vertical, so we added handles and clasps to finish off the “look”

Here are some pictures of the finished books.

Here is the outside cover (the kids “antiqued” the edges of the maps to make them look old…)

Open the cover and you see the “who, what, when, where, why” page and their vocabulary words.

The inside part of the lapbook folds in on itself twice. Here’s with the first fold opened…

…then the next fold opened. Now it’s opened all the way.

We added a little pocket on the back for the music. They each have a page about music during the Civil War (with a copy of a photo of a Civil War drummer boy) and a page with the words to the song “Dixie” (with information about Daniel Emmett) and a page with the words to The Battle Hymn of the Republic (with information about Julia Ward Howe).

Well… that’s it. I think it was a good unit study, and once again R didn’t want it to be over. It was a hard one for me to teach, so I’m a little glad we’re moving on to something else!