Revolutionary History and Delight Directed Preschool

 We find ourselves in an exciting time-period in history class: the time of the American Revolution. As a fun field trip we visited The Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. This very interactive museum not only engaged the children with hands-on exhibits that explore the time of America's independence, it also houses many neat historic artifacts. My favorites were: a piece of the beam from the bridge that Paul Revere rode across on his historic midnight ride and George Washington's war tent. The boys really enjoyed all the weapons on display, and all the children had fun getting tattoos aboard the ship -tattoos are not offered all the time. We are taking a little break from Susan Wise Bauer's The Story of the World to read some biographies and other books about this time period in history. We are enjoying: 

Birthdays of Freedom, by Genevieve Foster, which begins at the beginning of time and relates how all of history led up to the revolution of 1776.

Benjamin Franklin, by Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire. This story is beautifully illustrated and a very nice history of Benjamin Franklin's life. 

Where Was Patrick Henry on the 29th of May? by Jean Fritz. This book is so fun and we learned a lot about the great orator, Patrick Henry.

My fourth grader is reading Yankee Doodle Boy, by Joseph Plumb Martin to himself. I will ask him to write a report once he is finished. He tells me that it's "boring". I value the real history of the story.  He also read The Magic Treehouse: Revolutionary War on Wednesday, by Mary Pope Osbourne. This story he read in one sitting and he really enjoyed it. I think the value of Mary Pope Osbourne's Magic Treehouse stories are that they give the children confidence in reading. The repetition from book to book and the simplicity of the stories makes them accessible to younger readers. My 2nd and 4th grader have both fallen in love with Jack and Annie. 

Preschool is quite a challenge these days. School with the older children demands much of my time and planning fun activities for pre-school proves too much most days. Thankfully my little ones play well together and the toddler loves play-doh and cutting paper into tiny strips. He will entertain himself for quite a while with that one. This week, though, I found a gem. A Peter Pan themed pre-school pack for free on-line. I wanted to share it here, because we had such fun reading Peter Pan -their favorite story right now- and then doing an activity. Here is a link to the PDF. Enjoy!