The Constitution & the Bill of Rights

This year we are using the Colonial Williamsburg Electronic Field Trips which we bought through the Homeschool Buyer's Co-op.  The first show was today, though they are recorded and you can watch them anytime throughout the school year. I highly recommend them!

 

We started out by reviewing the Articles of Confederation and the Federalist vs. Anti-Federalist compromise while creating the Constitution.

 

We started with this video about The Making of the American Constitution. You can also watch the video on this TED ED site. It also has multiple choice questions about the video and a "Dig Deeper" section. 

 

 

Next, we watched this short video titled "Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists: A Compromise." Then, we did all of the activities that were included in the CW EFT. The two major components were summarizing the 10 amendments and then reading about cases and documents and determining to which amendment they corresponded.

 

Tomorrow, we will actually watch the presentation as we spent two hours doing these videos and activities. I found two more videos I'd like to use...

 

A 3-minute Guide to the Bill of Rights, which is also from TED ED and therefore also has multiple choice questions and a "Dig Deeper" section.

And, "The Bill of Rights Hand Game: US History Review" by Keith Hughes. I have watched several of his videos and really enjoy them. This particular one is to help you remember the first 10 amendments that appear most often on a particular test and Mr Hughes uses hand 'signals' to help you remember what each of them mean.

As I've been teaching Alex again this year, I'm just amazed at all of the available resources! A lot of teachers now "flip" their classrooms and you can find some wonderful videos to explain difficult concepts!