Awesome American History: Ben Franklin, Paul Revere, Western Missions

These were pages 27-37 in The American Story, covering 1752-1776.

Our active activity was "The Minutemen," a game we made up way back when we did our US History megaunit.

In this game, you wait until your kids are least expecting it and then you attempt to startle their socks off by screaming, "The British are coming!"

They then have 60 seconds to grab something that represents their gun, and something that represents their powder (usually something sack-like).  Or you can simplify it and just do the "musket." We had enough kids that I just had them grab a nerf weapon for a gun.

For our art activity, we made butter.  It ended up being more active than artistic (shaking a jar of cream), but I just realized that next week I have 2 art activities, so I guess it all evens out (you can tell how much I stress about these things)!

For our snack, my friend from Boston made Boston Brown Bread, and we ate it with yummy fresh butter~ and yummy it was!

PARTY!

Last Friday we had our long awaited US History party.

After 2 (and a half) years of study, and 10,000 years of history, we were ready to celebrate for a long time.  In fact, we took the whole day!

We started with a true colonial breakfast: popcorn with cream (and sugar).

Then we had historical fun blocks.  We rotated between Battle of Britain (WWII fighter plane game), Mission US (online Revolutionary War role playing mystery game), this great game that has you match events from US history with years (best capstone review project possible!), and Wii exercise games which had nothing to do with history.

In the afternoon, the party really got going!

 We played Minutemen.  In this game, you wait until your kids are least expecting it and then you attempt to startle their socks off by screaming, "The British are coming!"

They then have 60 seconds to grab something that represents their gun, and something that represents their powder (usually something sack-like).

I really enjoy this game, but I think they're on to me.  They were lined up in 20 seconds with nary a sock in sight.

 Then we did Guess the Historical Figure.

They dress up and we have to identify them.

Some are specific, like Annie Oakley here.

Others were general like the 70s girl, the 60s Star Trek fan, and the soldier from the Future.




I almost forgot!  My favorite game was 10,000 in 5.  That would be 10,000 years of history (narrated by me) acted out in 5 minutes (by them).  I'm not sure how long it actually took, but it raised the bar for hysterical historical!

All this was accompanied by lots of snacks and a sound track of music from different eras.

We had pizza for dinner.

And, if you could guess what shape I was trying to get the cupcakes to make, you could have cupcakes for dessert!

Can you get it?