Civil War Unit Study and Final Projects

After doing the Revolutionary War a couple years ago, it was time to study the Civil War again. I was excited because there are so many interesting and fun activities that go with the Civil War, I knew the children would like it. Here is our shelf of library books all ready to go! :)

And here's my Civil War Pinterest Board

(Click to enlarge either of these)

Here's a picture of our map of the battle of Gettysburg, for an idea of the level of impressiveness we're talking about in these activities. The eggs represent various regiments, and the pillows and books are various hills and landmarks. :) It did the job!

Ziggy's imagination was most caught, for some reason, by the description of Robert E. Lee riding to Appomatox to surrender. For awhile every paper on our house was made into a flag bearing the words "I srendr" and Ziggy rode around on his "horse," Traveler, to do the honors.

We made hardtack to try, and honestly, right out of the oven it was pretty edible. Kind of a like a dry, less-flavorful biscuit. The kids were saying how it didn't seem so bad to them, so I saved a piece and left it out on the counter for three days and THEN had them try it. It was awful, of course—rock-hard and almost impossible to chew. And we didn't even have to contend with maggots like the real soldiers did!

Another fun thing we did was get a telegraph key and learn Morse Code. Of course, the key doesn't make a noise or send a signal without anything to hook it up to, but it gives the general idea of what a telegraph operator during the war would have used. Daisy and Junie had a fun time writing and sending each other messages.

It was pretty hard to get the right letters, especially when the message was coming fast! You can see the "C"s for "correct" and the "W"s for "wrong" on Junie's paper. :)

For our end-of-unit celebration, each child chose a project to do. This was one of my favorite parts of the last time we did this unit, and this time it was the same. I love seeing the great ideas everyone comes up with! Daisy decided to do a presentation on the Battle of Gettysburg and the dedication of the cemetery afterward, where Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address. She painted the hill where the cemetery is found, and made crosses and headstones for the hundreds of graves there.

She also made finger puppets of some of the people that were there for the cemetery dedication. The orator Edward Everett and his wife, a little girl in the crowd, and of course President Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln, and Tad Lincoln.

Above the puppets in this picture is the podium where President Lincoln stood to give his address.

Daisy put a teeeeeeny copy of the Gettysburg Address on the podium. Those are the real words! She printed it out on the computer. :) And as the finale to her presentation, she recited from memory the Gettysburg Address!

Teddy had the really cool idea to make a Civil War Musket. He was not content to just make a simple one like I suggested, but wanted to do every part like the trigger, the hammer, the cap, and so forth to make it accurate! I helped him find a piece of bamboo to be the ramrod and a wrapping-paper tube to be the barrel, but he constructed all the other parts himself using a box cutter and tape and cardboard. I was amazed at what he was able to do!

You can see some of the mechanism here. One white arrow points to the hammer, which is attached with a paper fastener within the barrel so you can actually cock it. The other white arrow shows the frizzen above the pan, where you set the little cartridge (or is it a cap…I've forgotten). It fits nearly onto the frizzen so it can be hit by the hammer, strike the flint, and light the charge inside the barrel.

Here is a side view. The bayonet is affixed by Velcro so it will stay on the barrel! :)

And here Teddy is dressed as a Union Soldier with his trusty musket!

Malachi stood during the program and gave an Impromptu presentation on "Civil War Babies." Very information. You can see Exhibit A in his arms.

Then Ziggy got up to do an impromptu presentation too, and Clementine joined him!

Goldie's project was about transportation and communication during the Civil War. She taught us about the telegraph, the railroad, and hot air balloons, which carried units of Civil War Spies! We read several interesting books about that. Goldie made the cutest little models to illustrate her information!

Junie's project was also amazing. She made a model of a Union Army encampment, and her attention to detail was just incredible. There were campfires, tents, cannons and cannonballs, rocks and logs painted to look like cannons and cannonballs (that was a funny little detail we read about in a book—a trick some regiments used to make their numbers and weapons appear more formidable), stray cats, and so forth. It was such a cute little scene!

Cats eating the solder's fish he cooked over the fire

A cannon, and a tiny cart full of hardtack for the soldiers

(This shows how tiny the hardtack and the barrel of coffee were)

A campfire with a roasted chicken roasting nearby (and a dog trying to steal it)

A soldier fishing in a stream outside the camp, and another hiding behind a tree

A solider bedding down for the night

I loved these projects and the good things the kids learned while working on them!

Writing our own books

We learned a lot about bookmaking—both the physical process of it, binding and papermaking and pop-up books and signatures and folios and so forth—but also the process of writing and publishing a book; the different types of publishing and what steps a story goes through for editing, proofreading, graphic design, etc. before it's published. I had the children each plan and design a book or write a story to be "published"! It was a lot of fun. I was amazed at the things they came up with! I wanted to wait to publish this till Daisy had hers done, but she keeps forgetting to do the last things for it, so I'll have to update with hers in another post. She's taking longer than the others because she's writing a longer chapter book plus a cute shorter children's book!

Junie used my book formatting software, Vellum, to design and format her book. It's called "Yankee Doodle the Spy" and it's so cute. I love how it turned out. We had it printed and bound at Office Max.

Her favorite page was the "About the Author" page!

It was also fun because they did the wrong binding on her book, so then they reprinted it and did the correct binding and she got to have two copies!

Goldie's book was incredible. I'm still in awe because I've never seen anything like it before and I don't know HOW she came up with the idea! It's a story hidden inside a sort of playhouse. Here's the outside of it. She covered cardboard with wrapping paper and used a ribbon to lace it shut.

The spine

The back of the book, with instructions on how to read it

And here's how it looks when you open it up—a forest scene, and a little woodcutter's hut with furniture. (This all goes along with the story, of course.)

Inside the hut, the parts of the story are numbered on little sheets of paper, rolled up, and hidden inside the objects. So you can see the book on the stool has a #1 on it.

You open it up and find the first part of the story. Under that "once upon a time" page the book is actually a little box, and you can kind of see the tiny folded paper within the box. That's the story's first paragraph.

You can see the rolled up paper under this chair

And one hidden here in the picture frame and so forth.

There's even a tiny cake that sits on the table!

And the "copyright" mark is on some smoke coming out of the chimney! :) This is the cutest book ever. I love it so much!

Teddy wanted to make a nonfiction book with pictures in it from some of our trips. He made the cover and we laminated all the pages. Then we got it spiral-bound.

He chose his favorite pictures to print and arrange on the pages.

And added some of his own labeling :)

Such a good little author and a fun project.

I saved the most impressive for last. I didn't tell Malachi he had to write a book for this unit, because he's always writing and had already finished about 3 other books or novellas on his own. I did tell him he should work on formatting one of those books with the Vellum software, and maybe someday he could upload it to Amazon and print out some hard copies for himself. But I didn't really follow up or think that was urgent, just something he could do sometime.

Then, about a week after Mother's Day, I woke up to find a 300-page hardback book on my nightstand with a bow on it. It was by "Malachi Norris" (he's already decided that's his pen name…his first and middle) and I had never seen it before! And it was dedicated to me! I started crying as I read his sweet, funny, witty dedication page. It turns out he'd been working on this book for four months secretly, typing away at it when I thought he was doing other school work (which he also managed to keep up on, somehow!) and he'd enlisted Daisy's help with editing and Sam to draw the cover. Then he'd formatted it, uploaded it to a Barnes and Noble self-publishing platform, and ordered a copy—all without me having any idea what he was doing! I was completely amazed.

I was so excited to read it, and it didn't disappoint. It's a mystery story set in a cool fantasy world, and I was completely enthralled. I knew Malachi was a good writer, but I was still surprised at how I was able to absorb myself in his story and enjoy it so completely. I have a feeling Ky is going to be a great author someday! He's working on the sequel to this story now, and I can't wait!

Hooray for books and hooray for my little authors!