If you've read enough of my posts, you know that I consider myself to be "right-brained challenged" ... this is a nice way of saying that I have the creativity of a gnat! Now, I can put together beautiful scrapbook pages, but most of my ideas are inspired by layouts in design books. I just have a very difficult time being creative in its own right.

So, once again I have found a series of books that looks promising for adding some hands-on fun to our history studies. The American Kids in History series by David C. King covers some time periods for which I was having difficulty finding projects.  I purchased the books for the Civil War, Victorian days and World War II. Other time periods covered in this series include the Revolutionary War, Colonial times, the Pioneers and the Wild West.

In each book, we will follow two different families as they live through one year of each time period. The children in the families that are featured prominently are 11 or 12 years old, so this is a perfect series for my 4th and 6th graders as they will range in age from 10-14 during our 3-year study of American History. The study is broken down into seasonal activities and each season includes 8-9 fun projects, recipes, games or activities that are representative of what children would experience during that time period.  Interspersed throughout the book are brief blocks of historical information about what life was like for families living during each time period.

I believe these books will add a lot to our studies. The activities look fun and the materials needed for the projects are easily found at local stores. I know for a fact that we will not do all of the activities in the book, but I plan on hanging onto these books because we may pull them out in high school just to add a little fun to our studies at that time .... why not? That's the thrill of homeschooling .... we can do whatever we want to make our studies fun!

... Kris ...