After losing this entire post at the last minute, I’m quite frazzled right now. (GGGRRRRR, BLOGGER!!!) It takes me an entire week to pull a post like this together, working on it a little at a time. So, I’m going to throw it together in just a fraction of the time before heading to church.
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| If you traveled west in a covered wagon.. like this, you would NOT make it. |
For this week’s history sentence on Manifest Destiny, I thought it’d be cute to make a Craft, a Pioneer Wagon, but we ended up not having the right supplies, so we improvised with popsicle sticks and a hot glue gun. Only I only had one glue stick for the glue gun, so we ran out. Then we used superglue (which does NOT work) and gorilla glue. Needless to say, the boys did not get to do much on this craft except put the base together. The one at Crafty Classroom looks a thousand percent better than this. Next time our family will just stick to the Crayola craft version of a Horse and Wagon. Or maybe do one of these other Pioneer crafts. (Brandy, stop trying to put a square peg in a round hole! You know you’re not the Craft Queen!)
Though we did not get around to it yet, Pages 42-47 of Adventure Tales of America Student Activity Book deals with events surrounding the doctrine of Manifest Destiny and westward expansion. This workbook is intended to go with the flipbooks Adventure Tales of America Vol 1 and Adventure Tales of America Vol 2. As an overview, you can just go to Westward Expansion at-a-glance.
Trails West:
We read Apples to Oregon by Deborah Hopkinson, which includes a a Unit Study on Homeschoolshare. I mention it here because it was such a cute tall-tale – we really enjoyed it as a family.
We went on an Oregon Trail Virtual Tour (Photography of landmarks along the journey) and watched an Oregon Trail Documentary
We played an Oregon Trail Jeopardy Game to see how much we knew. We learned some things by just trying to play the game!
Our interest in an updated on-line version of the old Oregon Trail Game ended when I had to eat Gary within about 2 minutes of playing the game. And I really lost my appetite that day. But for those who are not faint of heart, visit PBS: The Donner Party (for older students).
Other Westward Expansion Topics:
The boys Built a Virtual Sod-House
and played Rail Sail or Overland Mail, even though it doesn’t deal directly with the mail on the Overland Trail. It was still a fun game for them to play.
- Oregon Trail Teacher Education Guide (158-pages of activities from Bureau of Land Management)
- 1843 Map of Oregon Trail (Includes click-through tour of the Oregon Trail and its landmark sites)
- Oregon Trail File Folder Game
- Learn about the parts of a wagon – interactive
- Pioneers
- Interactive Trail Map
- Dynamic2Mom’s Westward Ho Activities:
Westward Expansion Timeline (pdf)
Westward Expansion Art Study
Westward Ho Coloring Pages
Printable Oregon Trail Board Game
Buffalo Bill Mini-Book
Daniel Boone Mini-Book
Our Reading This Week:
- Buffalo Bill and the Pony Express (I Can Read Book 3) by Eleanor Coerr
- Dear Levi: Letters from the Overland Trail by Elvira Woodruff
- The Oregon Trail – Pathway of the Great Migration by Beatriz Mojarro Ray DiZaxxo
- Apples to Oregon: Being the (Slightly) True Narrative of How a Brave Pioneer Father Brought Apples, Peaches, Pears, Plums, Grapes, and Cherries (and Children) Across the Plains by Deborah Hopkinson
- Excerpts from Scholastic Encyclopedia Of The Presidents And Their Times (Updated 2009) by David Rubel
Other things from this period of history that we will probably not tackle this year but hope to come back to at a later date:
- The Wars of Expansion
- Life Portrait of James K. Polk
- American West Timeline
- History Summaries (Search for current topic)
- Trail Facts
- Trail Learning Resources
- Pioneers and The Oregon Trail Squidoo Lens
- PBS: Buffalo Bill
- Modern Map of Oregon Trail
- Oregon Trail Virtual Tour
- PBS – New Perspectives on the West
- Get a Sense of What a Sod House Was Like
- Apples to Oregon Unit Study
- Teacher Guide to Sarah, Plain and Tall
- Schoolhouse Rock’s Elbow Room
- Westward Expansion Connections
- Oregon Trail Supplies Math
- Oregon Trail On-Line Game
Unit 7 of Elementary Life Science Curriculum. (Student edition has reading; Parent edition has experiments and activities.) This is Stephen’s favorite science textbook. He even sneaks off to read the parts that we are not studying right now! We tried following the lung model in this book, but we ended up improvising. (Another Build a Lung model is available but very similar.)
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| What the activity called for. But the coke bottle kept collapsing, and we didn’t have a piece of wood the right size to prop it open. |
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| What our model ended up looking like. We used a Karo Syrup bottle instead of a coke bottle, and kitchen shears instead of a serrated knife. |
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| Instructions: Cut the bottom of the Karo bottle off. Cut the neck of a balloon off and slip it over the cut end of the bottle. Secure with rubber band. Slip a straw through the hole in the lid and secure with modeling clay. Attach another balloon to the straw with a rubber band. Slip balloon with straw and screw lid back onto bottle. |
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| Lightly pull on the balloon at bottom of bottle. The balloon inside the bottle should inflate a small amount. push in on the bottom balloon, the balloon inside should completely deflate. The bottom balloon acts much like the diaphragm, the inner balloon acts as our lungs, and the straw acts as our trachea. |
- Misused Verbs: Lie/Lay
- Using Lay and Lie
- Grammar Worksheets: Lie Versus Lay
- Grammar Practice: Lie Vs. Lay