The Constitutional Convention

Today we will be finishing up our study on the Constitutional Convention using the following three sites:

First, we will listen to "The Constitutional Convention of 1787 for Dummies by Keith Hughes. We have watched several of his videos and I think they are great!

 

 

Then, we will play "The Constitutional Convention" at Anneburg Classrooms. (Note that when it asks you to login you push "cancel" and you will be able to play.) This game says: "Travel back to 1787 and become a delegate to the convention in Philadelphia. As the Founding Fathers struggle to decide how the young nation will be governed, explore how very different men representing their states' conflicting interests created a bicameral legislature and three branches of government."

 

 

And, lastly, we will play Constitutional Convention Jeopardy at the Super Teacher Tools site for a review. You can also play this on your iPad or other non-flash device. Whichever way you play, the scoring is awkward. But, I think it is worth it for a good review game!

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! 

Supreme Court Learning... with Games! (great site)

One of our relatives is a law professor at KU. Today, she got to meet with former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. I thought it was a great time to talk about Justice O'Connor and the Supreme Court. So, we started the day by watching two BrainPop videos - Branches of Government and Supreme Court.

(free clipart)

After the videos, I read a short article from Ben's Guide about the Supreme Court and an article about Justice O'Connor's visit to KU.

 

(free clipart)

Then, we started the really fun part. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has a great site for Middle School kids called Our Courts. On the site, you can play games and, so far, we've played two of them. The first is called Supreme Decision.  In it, you are a clerk to one of the justices and you are supposed to gather information to help the justice decide which way to vote. The case is about a middle schooler who was told by the principal that he couldn't wear a t-shirt which showed a photo and the name of a band. You need to decide if this falls within the students "freedom of speech" right.

The second game we played is called Do I Have a Right? In this game, you open up a law firm and hire lawyers that are experts in different ammendment rights. As the clients walk in, you are to match the client to the appropriate lawyer. This game is a LOT of fun and can be played over and over. You can: hire new lawyers, upgrade their desks to make them more effiicient, add objects to the waiting room to keep your clients from leaving quickly, and run adds to increase your client traffic. Alex and I both played this and, not only did we have a lot of fun, we learned more about which ammendment stands for which right!

 

(Alex at Brown v. Board of Education museum, Sept 2008)

Although I had other plans for the week, I think we'll continue working with this website tomorrow. Although I did all of the "teacher's lessons" with the Supreme Decision game, I didn't for Do I Have a Right? So, I want to go back and cover that and also look at the final game entitled Argument Wars. This game will help you learn more about specific cases like Brown  v. Board of Education and Miranda v. Arizona.

got census?

We received our Census 2010 form earlier this week. Since Alex was born in late 2000, this is the FIRST census she has been included on! And, as a genealogist, I love the census! How else would I track my ancestors? So, I was excited that this is a census year. (And, I'll be excited in 2012 when the 1940 census is released to the public! Each census is "private" for 72 years.)

So, Alex and I have been completing a Census Lapbook created by A Journey Through Learning. (It is on sale at CurrClick for only $4.) This lapbook also comes with a study guide, so most of the information is right there for you! (You do look up some numbers on the internet.) I think we have 3 little booklets to finish and then we need to put it all together.

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:

• Bill of Rights Concentration Game at Quia
• Preamble Scramble
• Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists game
• Branches of Government game
• other games (including those above) found at this Constitution Day site

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!

Presidents' Song

We are getting ready to memorize the entire list of presidents - in order - for Classical Conversations. Whew! Someone sent me a link to this song which goes through each president (through Obama) with pictures and interesting facts. I thought it was great and wanted to share it! We've already watched it several times. Each time, we have discussed different facts about the presidents. Enjoy!

Election Day!!!

We're going to use our day to learn about (and have fun with) the election today. I'm using a few of Lapaz Learning's ideas.

We have a map to track the states tonight and a white house pop-up and figures of McCain and Obama ready to take over in D. C.

We'll also be reading a few books about elections and doing election math. Alex gets a monthly copy of Scholastic Math magazine, and this month's issue is all about elections!

If you've posted about what you're doing, please leave it in the comments so maybe we can use your ideas today, too. :-)

Oh, I also just ran across this site, and we might try some of these activities.

And more... from the site above, we went to Brain Pop and watched 3 videos: Presidential Elections, Political Parties, and Voting. I don't have a subscription, so either these are free videos or at least they're free today! Enjoy!

And, for lunch we're watching some School House Rock! episodes - including Electoral College.

Math Splat (Fractions) & Boston Tea Party lapbook

We had a really nice day. The sun was out and we started school very late - about 11 am - but we got to take our time and got finished around 5 pm. We did eat lunch and run some errands during that time. Then, I cooked dinner before Alexandra headed to gymnastics. And, we did some of our school time in the garage with the door open! We're going to have to do that again!

Yesterday, Alexandra finished her first book in a new series, "Key to...", that we're trying out. She finished level 1 of Key to Fractions, so we played some online fraction games today. Her favorite by far was Math Splat.

I know I haven't been posting much about our (very SLOW) studies in American History. We recently finished our studies of Colonial America and started studying the American Revolution times yesterday with a book, George vs. George: The Revolutionary War as Seen by Both Sides by Schanzer.

Well, today we were going to concentrate on the Boston Tea Party and Rhonda at Alston Academy sent me a link for free lapbooks. Well, I haven't really enjoyed lapbooks very much in the past, but Alexandra has loved them. And, they happened to have a lapbook about The Boston Tea Party! And, I love 2 things about it: they don't give you all the answers BUT they give you a few books (in the case, 2) where you CAN find the answers! Oh, we're really enjoying this! We own one of the books, so we've started with that and I hope I can get the other one from the library in the next few days. And, I think I see a lot of lapbooks in our future...


While we were in the garage doing school, Alexandra saw a big heron fly by. A few minutes later, he came back and perched on the roof across the street from us! We usually see these birds in the water, not perched on a roof! It was an amazing site to see and I'm glad he stuck around long enough for me to take some photos. And, I identified him as a great blue heron (they stand almost 4 foot tall!)- he even had the ornate plumes on his/her head, but they're hard to see in this photo. You might try enlarging!

Election Study

We are really enjoying our study of the election process. As always, I'm learning so much myself! As I said earlier, we are using a unit study called HSforGOP. Today, Alexandra spent 2 hours and 40 minutes working through the study, doing research, earning points, and blogging about it! This was HER choice, not mine. :-)

She learned about the qualifications for being president. Here's her blog writing (each child can create a blog on the site):

The U.S. Constitution says that the president of the United States must be: born in the United states, at least 35 years old, and be a United States citizen and must have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years.

I would not be able to be president because I've not lived in the U.S. for 14 years and I'm not 35. I'm only 7.

My dad could be president. He has always lived in the U.S. and he's older than 35. So is my mom.

I found this information in a book called "Smart About the Presidents."

She also learned the names of some of the parties, what GOP means, the 4 steps to becoming president, about caucuses and delegates, about Super Tuesday, and much more! I really enjoyed her post about the 4 steps to becoming president.

Step 1: Many people want to be president. Lots have different ideas of what they would do as president. The people who want to be president must be in caucuses and primaries to get the nomination for thier party.
Step 2: At the end of the caucuses and primaries, each party holds a National Convention where they will narrow it down to one person. That person then picks a vice-president from his or her party.

Step 3: Now, each party has one candidate. They go to different states to try to get votes for themselves. People don't give their vote to the person they want to win, but to the electors who will go to the Electoral College and the elector will give the votes for their state.

Step 4: In December the electors cast their votes. Whichever candidate gets more than half of the votes is the new president. January 6th, they tell the people who won. January 20th (2 weeks later), the new president and vice-president get to start their new jobs.

We are now doing early voting in Texas, so "we" will have to go vote next week so she can experience that (again). She's having so much fun learning about this - and so am I!

What are you doing to study about the election process? Any great books or websites? One good site about the government is Ben's Guide to U.S. Government for Kids.

(Book we enjoyed: If I Ran for President by Catherine Stier)

How Does a Caucus Work Anyway?

With it being Super Tuesday, I decided to start a little study of the election process with Alexandra. I actually joined "Homeschoolers for GOP" which is kind of like a group study on elections. We'll earn points for doing various activities as we learn about the election process.

Today, we had a very broad overview of the election process and talked about the fact that it was Super Tuesday. (Texas doesn't participate in this day and our elections will be next month.)

We also watched a very neat video about how a caucus works. I really had no idea that in a Democratic caucus, the people aren't voting using a ballot but actually moving around a room to a "corner" to support their candidate! I can't wait to learn more!

Campaign Trail

Once again I'm sorry that it's been so long since I blogged. I guess this is just how summer will be this year. I also haven't been reading blogs like usual. Guess I'm just taking a break! I have started our Japan KONOS unit and I think we'll be using the online co-op next year. I'll try to post more about that tomorrow.


Last week, we helped a relative on the campaing trail. One of my relatives was running for office and we went to lend support and help out. I helped phone potential voters, stood at an intersection holding a sign and waving, and went to several rallies.


This was my first political experience. I am now more aware of how a campaign works (and so is Alexandra!) and will be kinder to those who call me about campaigns and will wave to those who are campaigning. I also just plan on being more informed and supporting the candidates that I agree with more in the future. Unfortunately, our relative lost, but it was a wonderful race and I am so proud of everyone who worked so hard.

Great Book: Vote!

I picked up a "new" book this weekend at Half Price Books. It's called Vote! by Christelow. It is a great book about voting (how it works, who can vote, etc) as told through the eyes of 2 dogs. My sister-in-law is currently running for office and I thought this was gave Alexandra a great view of what she's doing.