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Thursday, November 19, 2009

The Constitution & the Bill of Rights

Today was our 2nd program in the Colonial Williamsburg Electronic Field Trips (CW EFT). (I highly recommend these and bought them through Homeschool Buyers Co-op!) It was called "A More Perfect Union" and was primarily about ratifying the Constitution. 

In preparation for this EFT, we have been studying the Articles of Confederation (which was what our government was based on before the Constitution), the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. With our subsription to CW EFT, I was able to read some background information and there were 4 activities. With the craziness of life this week, though, we didn't get to most of it. We did, however, read some good books including:
  • The Bill of Rights (True Books) by Christine Taylor-Butler
  • The Bill of Rights in Translation: What It Really Means by Amie Jane Leavitt
  • The Constitution of the United States by Christine Taylor-Butler
  • We the People: The Story of the Constitution by Anne Cheney (plan to read tomorrow)
  • requested Shh! We're Writing the Constitution but haven't received it yet
We also watched some BrainPop videos:
  • U.S. Constitution
  • Branches of Government
  • Bill of Rights

I found some other activities to do that we'll try to do tomorrow:
And we sang the Preamble song (we know one from Classical Conversations and the School House Rock song) and the Bill of Right chant several times (from Classical Conversations.)
And, from my husband's favorite show, here's Barney!

5 comments:

  1. I love how Barney messes up his hair! My oldest son is studying this same subject himself and he can make some funny faces while reciting the stuff. HA HA. It is so neat to see other homeschooolers learning the same time in history.

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  2. What a thrill to find this blog entry. I'm glad your daughter is enjoying my book. A good supplement is the National Archives and the Library of Congress online which has pdf's of the actual letters written by the founding fathers. I was fascinated to discover how much intrigue was involved with writing the Constitution and strange facts such as Benjamin Franklin having to be followed each night because people feared he would "spill the beans" about the secret discussions. Or that the Bill of Rights had to be narrowed from hundreds of suggestions and it's lack of inclusion in the original Constitution almost derailed the process.

    Enjoy! Christine Taylor-Butler

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  3. How cool that you got a comment from one of the authors! Sweet!
    This is one area that GB and I have discussed many times, but we've never really had a formal study. I think he's going to really get into it when we do study it.
    I really love little tidbits like the one that Ms. Butler included in her comment. Those bits are what make history seem so real to me. And GB is the same way.
    I'm going to bookmark this post so I can come back to it when we do study it, (wink-wink) since you've already done all the leg work. Hahaha!

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  4. Great post. I LOVE this Barney clip. Classic! I just added Christine Taylor-Butler's book to my Amazon wish list.

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  5. That was a great EFT wasn't it? I'll be posting my entry after the kids are done with their projects.
    Blessings,
    Laurie

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