Tag Archives: underground railroad

History in March ~The Underground Railroad and Abraham Lincoln

We started out March with the underground railroad for history.

It was a hard subject to explain to a 5 and 6yr old.

We read about Harriet Tubman in our Value Tales book and my oldest got mad.

Very mad about the way she was treated.

The funny thing was the civil war made more sense to him after reading about slavery.

We read the You Choose history book on the Underground Railroad.

I highly recommend it to anyone doing this study!

Both of my boys (ages 5 and 6) really got into it.

I forgot to take a picture of all the books on the underground railroad together since I really did not think we would be spending much time on it.

After we started studying it we stretched it out for two weeks.

This is the only picture I have of one of the other books we read.

Friend on Freedom River by Gloria Whelan is a beautiful book.

I have really liked all of the books I have read in the Tales of Young Americans series.

The illustrations are beautiful and the stories pull you in.

We listened to the three part series on the Underground Railroad by Adventures in Odyssey.

I cried.

It was amazing.

We usually listen to these in the car on the way to a field trip or something.

When I get to our destination I always feel like I am being hunted, or in the midst of a battle.

We also read Booker T. Washington’s a Slave Among Slaves.

It was in a reader so I had my oldest read some of it and then I finished it since it was a little long for him.

It was a great read.

The second part of the month we learned about Abraham Lincoln.

Again this was supposed to be a short study but it ended up going two weeks.

I love that about homeschooling.

We again listened to the Adventures in Odyssey on Abraham Lincoln.

It ends with his assassination.

I did not tell my boys what was coming.

I felt mean but I thought they would get more out of the story that way.

Thankfully they did not end it with too much drama so it was not as scary as I thought it might be.

We did the reading guide with the magic tree house lesson plan while reading the book Abe Lincoln at Last!

They have lesson plans to go along with the Magic Tree House books!

The reading guide is towards the end of the lesson plan.

We only did the reading guide this time but the boys loved finishing reading our chapters and running over to the computer to see what they remembered.

After reading the Magic Tree House book we read Mr. Lincoln’s Boys.

They mentioned the boys in the Magic Tree House book so the boys loved reading more stories about them.

Just a Few Words Mr. Lincoln is about the Gettysburg Address.

At the end of the book they have the Address and the boys were excited to hear it after reading about it in the book!

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln was a hard book for my oldest to hear.

I did like how it did not end with him getting shot though and continued the story until they caught Booth.

There are a lot a good books out there on America’s history though!

Do not give your child a book full of dates to learn history!

Give them a good piece of historical fiction first, make history exciting!