If trees could talk
This middle school curriculum,
If Trees Could Talk, is ready for you to freely download and use in your classroom or homeschool. It consists of nine modules which bring together history and social studies. Also available is a student assessment you can download as a PDF and student worksheets that go along with the lessons. Lesson plans, activities, and resources are all completely there. All you have to do is implement it.
Labels: Free stuff, History, Lesson plans, Social Studies
Center Of Population Project
While visiting the family camp this week, we discovered something pretty neat there. It was a cement pad in the shape of our state, even having a blue path across it representing the Arkansas River.
In the center of that cement pad was something that at first we thought might be just a manhole cover or something similar. However, we discovered it wasn't that at all.
It turned out this was the marker for the
Center Of Population Project. I found information about this neat project just by searching with Google.
I'm sharing it with you, readers, so that you might also be able to find where this project is located in your state. It's kind of neat, but I wish they would have used an upright marker nearby so that everyone could read more about it and know just why the monument is there in the first place.
Let me know what you find out about this project in your state!
Labels: Geography, Social Studies
The American flag
This site has just about everything you need to create your own themed social studies unit on the American Flag. This will point you to sites where your child can learn about how to handle and respect the flag, how to fold it, and its history. The site includes activities and downloadable, printable flags for you to use. Just visit
American Flag Pictures and be prepared to stay there awhile, browsing the resources.
Labels: Free stuff, Social Studies, Unit Studies
Free outline maps
You can download free outline maps at
Houghton Mifflin Education Place. These are great for worksheets, geography, games, and tests. They are PDFs. Permission is granted on the site to download, print, and hand out maps for classroom use.
These are the free maps that are available:
- World
- Africa
- Europe
- South America
- North America
- United States
- Historical
- Primary
- Asia and the Pacific
Labels: Education, Free stuff, Geography, Maps, Social Studies
Election lessons
Hardly a year goes by when there isn't some sort of election. If not local, then state or national. It's important for your child to learn how these work and why it's important to vote.
Election Central has lessons and resources for your homeschool child to study the election process, political parties, and voting.
It's both a privilege and a duty to cast a vote in an election. That's our only way to make our voices heard and even if our candidate or cause loses, we can be satisfied that at least we've had input into the process.
Labels: Civics, Education, Free stuff, Lesson plans, Social Studies
Immigration issues lessons
Because of the controversial nature of late of immigration, CRF has put together some lessons you can download free in PDF. They are balanced to all sides of the issues and teach the history of immigration, current trends, and current proposals. You can get the link for downloading at
Current Issues of Immigration, 2006.
This would be very good in a homeschool coop or other group setting since it also lets the children form a discussion panel.
Labels: Civics, Education, Free stuff, Lesson plans, Social Studies
Southeast Asia unit resources
You can easily build a complete unit study on Southeast Asia by visiting this site. They include just about anything you'd want to use for such a unit for your homeschool Geography class. Some of the materials are PDF, so you can freely download them to use as part of your resources.
Teaching Modules contains both lesson plans and resources so you can get full benefit from the site. Here's how they describe it:
The following lesson plans and teaching resources have been developed by K-12 teachers, pre-service education students, students of Southeast Asia, faculty and other Southeast Asian experts. They are for use by teachers wishing to bring Southeast Asia into the curriculum.
Labels: Social Studies, Unit Studies
Our Constitution
If you are interested in writing a unit study for your homeschool for the our United States Constitution, this would be an ideal place to begin.
Foundations of our Constitution gives you great information about the Magna Carta, the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, and the Pledge of Allegiance. From these resources, you could build the basis of a unit study or just use them for a few lessons on the Constitution.
Labels: Education, Social Studies
Build a 50 states unit study
The excellent resources here would allow you to build your own unit study on the
50 States. It includes Resources, Process, Tasks, Assessment, and Standards which you can choose to use or not at your discretion. A homeschool would benefit from this in the elementary levels. It's interdisciplinary containing composition, geography, reading, and research. Much of the research is done on the internet and some of the work is done using the computer's own on-board programs.
Labels: Education, Social Studies, Unit Studies
50 States lesson plan
If you ever needed fun ways of teaching the 50 states to your homeschool child, here's the site you need to be using.
Fifty States, Five Lessons is a lesson planning article that will certainly lead you in the right direction. Here, you'll find not only five lessons but also state facts and figures and good lesson resources.
Labels: Education, Lesson plans, Social Studies
Caddie Woodlawn
If you've ever seen this movie or read the book, you were probably as moved by it as I was. Now you can use the book as the central resource for a unit study for Westward Expansion.
This is a grade 5 unit for
Caddie Woodlawn and is complete as far as I can tell. It's from SCORE and if you've used their resources in the past, you know they pretty well fill in all the gaps for you.
Labels: Education, History, Reading, Social Studies
Westward Expansion
As your homeschool moves through the history lessons, you're bound to get to the Westward Expansion, complete with the wagon trains, settlers, and various uprisings that ensued when the white man encroached on Indian lands.
West Lessons will guide you through teaching the material you need to teach about Westward Expansion. It includes the lesson plans and materials list you need in your homeschool setting.
Labels: Education, Social Studies
LIfe in Plymouth Plantation
SCORE has a complete and free lesson plan for studying Early American History based on
Plymouth Plantation Life. This plan covers everything from objectives to activities to evaluation. It also includes all the printables you'll need to implement this very nice unit.
Labels: Education, Free stuff, History, Social Studies
American Revolution lesson plan
This is pretty neat. This site has
FREE lesson plans, clip art, and free PowerPoint presentations for your homeschool history covering the American Revolution. You can also find good information about the soldiers of the Revolution. I wish I'd seen this site when we were homeschooling since we did use the computer and internet for a lot of our studies.
Labels: Education, Free stuff, History, Lesson plans, Social Studies
American Revolution unit study
This is a complete and free unit study online for your homeschool. I loved having the children do unit studies since they overlap so many subjects. As with any unit study, you can choose as much or as little as you want your children to complete.
American Revolutionary War Unit Study covers it all - lesson plans, activities, timelines, video and book resources. Everything you need for a good homeschool history unit study is in one location.
Labels: Education, Free stuff, History, Social Studies, Unit Studies
Civil War unit study
This unit study focuses on Harriet Tubman, a real heroine in the Civil War and freedom effort. This unit would work well in your regular homeschool history studies or would be good to use during Black History Month. It's set up for grades 4 through 6 and seems to be complete, including appendices, a unit test, and answer key. Check it out on
Harriet Tubman - Underground Railroad. I think you'll be pleased with just how full and engaging this unit is.
Labels: Education, History, Social Studies, Unit Studies
Civil War lesson plan
There are tons of books and websites dedicated to studying the Civil War of the U.S. One can get lost and confused when trying to generate lesson plans for this era in history because of so many resources. It's hard to pull them all together and decide which ones would be best to use. What I'm giving you here is an online lesson plan for
the Civil War. This plan would be good to use in your homeschool, I think, because it covers all the basics - Objectives, materials, historical fiction, integrating reading and writing, and enrichment activities. It includes other things, too, such as the unit wrap-up and further studies and resources.
This was an important time in our nation's history and should be given the full measure of study, especially if you are concerned that too much history is being lost to the minds of young people today.
Labels: Education, History, Lesson plans, Social Studies
USGS Geography
What a neat site! The
USGS gives you free Geography lesson plans, lessons, and downloadables for all grades up to 12. These include maps, teaching packets and cover earth science and life science as well as Geography. They also link you to
other sites and related lesson plans.
This site is definitely worth a look-see for your homeschool geography needs.
Labels: Education, Free stuff, Social Studies
