Have students try these activities to expand their knowledge and interest in the American Revolution.
Use the time line in Important Events of the Revolution as a basis for an expanded time line. Have students work in groups to research 10 additional events that took place in the last quarter of the 1700s, around the time of the American Revolution. Students should try to find dates of various kinds of events, such as the publication of popular poems or books, the births of future presidents, and inventions—both in America and overseas. You may wish to have students write a paragraph giving details on each event.
Art & History
Have students draw their own versions of the Boston Tea Party. First, students should do some research to determine certain information, such as the kind of ships that may have been in the harbor, the way the people were dressed, and so on. Encourage students to come up with their own artistic version of the event using a variety of mediums and art forms, such as watercolor, pop art, collage, colored pencil, and cartoons.
Geography & History
Provide students with an outline map of the 13 original colonies, or have students draw their own map. Ask students to label each state with its name. Demonstrate how to use the index of an atlas to find the location of certain cities. Then, as students read this unit, and especially while reading Important Events of the Revolution, they should mark and label each city mentioned and the event that took place there.
The birth and death dates of several important people from the American Revolution are mentioned in the topic Portraits from the Revolution. Have students create some math problems using those numbers. They can figure out how old each person was when he or she died, calculate how old each person would be if he or she were alive today, figure out the average life span of the people on the two pages, calculate how old one person was when another person was born, and so on.
Have students write a poem about some aspect of the American Revolution. Poems may be about a famous person, a specific battle, a feeling at the time, an event, or another topic. Remind students that poems do not have to rhyme. Poems can be collected in a poetry anthology and made available for students to peruse at their leisure.
Have students find the poem mentioned in Important Events of the Revolution by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” They should write it out and illustrate it. Volunteers might read parts of it aloud to friends, family, or the class.
Games and Activities on the American Revolution | Kids Discover