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I know it's halfway through the month already, but I wanted to share a few great resources for studying African American history.

Black History Month at FactMonster

Black History Month at Education World

Awesome Stories: "Enjoy an interactive learning experience as you see thousands of hand-selected and relevant links to pictures, artifacts, manuscripts, documents and other primary sources, IN CONTEXT, within each story." This is a huge site with tons and tons of information! If you haven't seen it, it is well worth looking at. You have to sign up for a free membership to access everything on the site. I signed up for the academic membership without any problems. Here are some of the Awesome Stories links related to Black History Month:

Amazing Grace: The Story Behind the Movie

Slave Voices

Black History Month (some of these will link to chapters in the above topic - it is a "focused topic" list, which is a new feature of the site)

Slavery (another focused topic list)

Civil Rights (a focused topic list)

American Civil War (a focused topic list)

For Older Students:

PBS: Africans in America: This is a very informative PBS website. I was amazed at the amount of information here! There is also a PBS video series by this name that I was able to obtain from my local library.

PBS: African American World: Your guide to African American history and culture

The Underground Railroad (interactive National Geographic site)

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African: If you saw the movie "Amazing Grace," this is the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, one of the characters featured in the movie.

For Younger Students:

Educational Bookmarks for Black History Month

Culture and Change: Black History in America (Scholastic site)

Famous African Americans

About Africa:

PBS: Wonders of the African World

PBS: Africa for Kids

PBS: Kids Africa

Xpeditions Printable Map of Africa (You knew I would have to get at least one map in here! You can customize this one for printing.)

You can tell that I'm really impressed with what PBS has to offer for African American history. If you are interested, you can find a lot of wonderful information by doing a Google search. I haven't completely gone through all of these sites, so please use discretion and do some previewing!

Although this post highlights free resources for Black History Month, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Belinda, one of the bloggers here at HSB, has written a Christ-centered literature-based curriculum that focuses on African American history. Her products and samples are available at A Blessed Heritage. We are currently studying the Age of Exploration, Renaissance and Reformation using Tapestry of Grace, and I have been adding in and/or substituting some of Belinda's literature recommendations. I think her curriculum is going to be a valuable addition to our history studies.

Enjoy!

~Andrea

Take an interactive journey through the port of London from Roman times to the present day.
Complete tasks and follow the clues along the way."

I found a game called Time Pirates Adventure today and decided to let my youngest daughter play for a while. Before I knew it, three of my children (13yo, 9yo, 8yo) were surrounding the computer learning about trade in London during Roman times and Elizabethan times; shipbuilding during Medieval times; and merchant-worker relations during the 20th century. As stated above, the focus is on London from Roman times to the present day. The game doesn't have sound and is pretty simple as far as graphics go, but it must be a winner judging from my kids' interest.

You do have to register to play. You have to create a user name and password, and provide your e-mail, gender, age, country and interests. There doesn't appear to be an age limit. I used my child's age and my e-mail address. They only allow one identity per e-mail address.

I also noticed that once you log in to play, there is a teacher's area that summarizes the information in each time period.

The main website, PortCities UK, also looks quite interesting and informative. 

Enjoy!

~Andrea

I came across a site a couple of days ago that I really liked. Most of you have probably already heard of it, but I'm blogging about it anyway just in case. It is a kid-friendly history site called "Time Warp Trio" that is based on a Discovery Kids Channel show. We don't have cable, so I had never heard of the show before. The show is based on a book series by John Scieszka, author of "Math Curse," one of our favorite living math books.

The website has information, interactive games, activities, lesson plans, book recommendations, and website links for the time periods of each of the adventures. I am especially impressed with the Lesson Plans, and Books and Links sections of the site. The lesson plans contain historical background information, a couple of activities, and the same book and link recommendations at the Books and Links page of the site. The activities also list the curriculum standards covered.

The books sound a bit like the Magic Tree House series. Apparently, there is a book that causes people to be able to travel back (or forward) in time. I assume that the book is "magic" in case that is a concern for any families. The books are for ages 7-11 and look especially boy-friendly. I just checked out "See You Later, Gladiator!" from the library. Maybe I can talk one of my sons into reviewing it.

The author, Jon Szieszka, also has a website called "Guys Read," which is basically a boy-friendly searchable book list. You can search by favorite book title, favorite author, or subject. I searched for books about the Romans and the search generated 154 titles, many of which were excellent, some of which I had never heard of, and others I wouldn't recommend. The site does look like it could be helpful for parents who are willing to do a little research on the recommendations.

That's all for now. I hope this is helpful to someone.

~Andrea

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