Third Grade, History, Set One

We read Child's History of the World chapter 75 to review the American Revolution.

• The Story of The Surrender at Yorktown by Zachary Kent -- we didn't read the entire book, just parts about the battle at Yorktown and the surrender. Then we found a video on YouTube so we would know what "The World Turned Upside Down" sounded like (that is what the British played at the surrender).
• There is a graphic (page 31) from A Visual History of the United States by Harold Faulkner, 1953 (pdf download) that shows how the Revolution changed American life.

We read Child's History chapter 76, which is about the French Revolution.

We are reading George Washington's World. We started at page 234, Washington Refuses Absolute Power. We have read through page 285, and are now going to take a break to read more books about the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. I want to catch up to the French Revolution in this book before reading other books about it.

• Understanding the Articles of Confederation by Sally Isaacs -- well written for children; lots of pictures and illustrations
• Shh! We're Writing the Constution by Jean Fritz -- I got the dvd of this book and we watched it
• The Constution of the United States by Christine Taylor-Butler -- I'm having K. read this book on her own.
• A More Perfect Union: The Story of our Constitution by Betsy and Giulio Maestro -- good information, presented in a child-friendly format with lots of illustrations
• We the People: The Story of Our Constitution by Lynne Cheney -- another good book for children
• You Wouldn't want to be an Aristocrat in he French Revolution! by Jim Pipe -- this was the only book in our library system that dealth with the French Revolution in a format interesting to younger children.
• The Industrial Revolution by Carla Mooney -- this book has 8 chapters with a few projects at the end of each chapter. We read the intro and chapter one, which talks about textiles and the changes to spinning and weaving. The project K. chose was making a water wheel (before using steam, factories were built by rivers to use the river's current to run the machines). My goal is to do one chapter each Set.

If you have an older child, The French Revolution by Adrian Gilbert looks like a really good book.

We have started California History. I am using a publication called "California Weekly Explorer". It is in a newspaper format with 32 four-page issues. The ones I am using are twenty-plus years old, and California Weekly Explorer no longer has them, but I believe I found them, now called My California.

We are also making a notebook of our 50 states in the order in which they joined the union. We have one page for each state. The information on it is:

• Name
• Postal abbreviation
• State capital
• Date it became a state and its ordinal number
• State nickname
• State flag (printed from www.statesymbolsusa.org)
• State bird with picture
• State flower with picture
• State tree with picture
• Interesting fact
• Important places or people

We are working on getting the first thirteen states done, and then will do each state as it joins the union.