Curriculum Center Suggestions & Activities
Grades Four through Six
Objectives
(will differ for you depending upon grade
and ability level of your students)
For you:
- To offer you teaching resources to enhance
regular curricular studies.
- To provide you with information on valuable
places on the Internet.
- To introduce you to how others are using
online sources.
- To give you activities to use with your students.
For your students:
- To help students develop an interest in Internet
resources related to a study of America
- To help students use links to locate information
within and beyond sites
- To introduce students to learning about other
places by taking virtual tours.
- To help students learn how access sound files
online.
- To show students the wealth of resources
about their country that is available on the World Wide Web.
- To encourage students to seek new learning
methods and to work together on group projects and presentations
with and without technology.
Curricular Extensions, Projects, Ideas
Here are a few ideas on how to help students
with this study:
1. Because a number of sites offer K-12 lesson
plans, we encourage you to spend some time reviewing what is
available in order to find appropriate lessons for your classes.
To get you started, try these:
2. Go to the Williamsburg site and work with the children
doing the "Mop Top" lesson which involves both math
and history. There your students will learn, through math and
art activities, about the hats worn during this time period and
how to make them.
3. Betsy Ross told George Washington that
the stars on the flag should have 5 points instead of 6. Apparently,
people in that time thought 5 pointed stars were too difficult
to make, but Betsy showed them how. Visit
Betsy's
home to have your students learn to create and cut out 5
pointed stars.
4. Invite parents to come to school to take
students on tours of their favorite sites that celebrate our
nation.
5. Take your children to the Census sites
to practice reading the numbers and to learn about the population
growth in the nation (and world). Have them determine how fast,
or slow, the population of the United States and the world are
growing. Are their more births than deaths in the United States?
How many people immigrate to the United States each year?
6. Use Just for Fun on the Census site to
find information on your location using the map stats. Have students
find their home state and county and print a map of where they
live. Ask them to discover what they can learn from census facts.
7. Go to the Congress, House, and Senate sites
to have the children make lists of all the people who are representing
them in our government. Encourage them to learn how to write
to these people to express their opinions.
8. Have the students discuss why people were
willing to leave Europe in the 1600 and 1700s to undertake a
hazardous trip across the ocean only to step ashore on a land
with few rules and regulations and little organized government.
9. Discuss with the students the purpose of
the Bill of Rights? Why do we need a Bill of Rights? Do all countries
have laws like these protecting the rights of citizens? Would
the United States be different if we didn't have the Bill of
Rights?
10. Have the students use the timeline of
the history of the US flag to find out when different states
joined our union.
11. Focus upon flag rules and etiquette. Have
the students visit various sites to learn about the Pledge of
Allegiance plus how and when to salute the flag, how to fold
the flag, and the rules governing when it is to be flown at half-staff.
12. Divide students into small groups and
have each group develop a ten-question history of the flag quiz.
Sample questions could be where and when was the first American
flag flown over American troops or how many different flags has
the United States had? Have groups exchange questions and research
the answers.
13. Go to the site of the Franklin Institute
in Philadelphia to find lots of science activities and learning
experiences for your students. You'll love this site.
14. Have students learn about and role play
the parts of favorite Americans.
15. Have your children see how they do on
the 10 question multiple choice exam on at Happy Birthday, America's
American History site.
16. Plan a Birthday party for our nation with
your students. Use the sites to help you. Perhaps your students
will want to attend as famous people from history? Parents might
enjoy "dressing" for the party, too. You and the parents
can work with the children to learn about and help prepare foods
from different regions of our country or foods from a specific
time period. You might want to have each student and their parents
tell everyone about their favorite place in America or their
favorite thing about the country.
17. Take students to the fireworks safety site.
Sample Student Activities Grades Four through
Six
(Adapt these to Grade & Ability of Students)
Activity #1: And the Banner Yet Waved
Grades 4-6
If you ever get to Baltimore, be sure to visit
Fort McHenry and go to the presentation featuring the writing
of the "Star Spangled Banner." It's an inspirational
program that ends with the opening of curtains to view a flag
like the one that few over Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.
(The original flag is now in the Smithsonian's National History
Museum in Washington, DC.) If you can't travel there or before
a visit, the next best thing is the Fort McHenry site.
Travel with the bookmarks to Baltimore back
to September of 1814. Learn about why Francis Scott Key was on
a British ship during the battle. Find out how the Americans
defeated the British. The British had already burned Washington,
DC, and people thought they'd take Baltimore as well. However,
the citizens of Baltimore, led by a Revolutionary War officer,
used their knowledge of the water and land routes of the area
to turn the British away. Use online, text, and library resources
to learn about the star-shaped fort, the youngsters given credit
for shooting the British general, how sunken ships protected
the Americans, why an elderly physician was taken prisoner by
the British, how a lawyer came to write our National Anthem,
and more.
Fort McHenry is a very interesting sea and
land battle to study. Why not make a computer presentation about
Fort McHenry, North Point (the land battle), and the people who
made the victory possible? Who was out digging trenches, for
example? Why couldn't the McHenry cannons reach the British ships
until . . . ?
Bookmarks:
Baltimore
Fort McHenry
Fort McHenry Patriots
Virtual Tour of Fort McHenry
Pop Quiz Fort McHenry
Activity #2 Go Back in History
Grades 4-6
One of the most pleasant places in the United
States to visit is Colonial Williamsburg. Going there propels
you back to the time of the founders of our nation. Being there
is like being with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick
Henry and taking part in the development of our nation.
You can travel online to the Williamsburg
site to learn about the history and the people of this time period.
Go there and decide what you'd like to see in this Colonial town.
1. Pretend you are a child living in Williamsburg
in Colonial times. On the computer, make an illustrated diary
of a day in your life. Share your diary with your class and your
parents.
2. Printing was a very important occupation
in Williamsburg. Why do you think this is true? Create your own
Williamsburg Gazette telling the news of a day in the life of
this town. You can publish your newspaper using word processing
or desktop publishing programs.
Bookmark:
Colonial
Williamsburg
Activity #3 Visit Your National Parks Activity
Grades 4-6
You can find out how beautiful America is
by traveling online to some of your National Parks. Use the National
Parks bookmark and then stand by for a wonderful time!
1. With a group of your friends, make a database
of the places you visited. When you are finished, give the database
to the school library so that other people can find information
on the national parks.
2. Think about dividing the United States
into four regions: North East, South East, North West, and South
West. Then pick one National Park, National Historic Site, or
National Seashore, etc. in each region that you'd like to visit.
Learn all you can about these four places. Compare your choices
to those of your friends. Then, with your classmates, make a
list of favorite parks of America.
Bookmark:
National
Park Service
Activity #4 Marching Music
Grades 4-6
1. Find out about one of America's favorite
musicians by traveling to the sites that tell about John Philip
Sousa. Why was this man so popular? Listen to his marches and
see if you can find some you recognize. Find out why Sousa's
recordings were not as lively as his performances.
2. Design a program with the others in your
class featuring some of the Sousa songs and other favorite songs
of America.
Bookmarks:
The Music of John Philip Sousa
The
John Philip Sousa Homepage
Americana
Activity #5 Benjamin Franklin, Patriot &
Scientist
Grades 4-6
Benjamin Franklin was not only one of the
founders of our country, he was a scientist. You'll enjoy learning
about this interesting person by visiting the bookmarks listed
below.
1. Make of list of some of the contributions
Franklin made to our nation and to the world.
2. Take a virtual visit to the Franklin Institute
in Philadelphia to try some of the adventures. You won't want
to miss the journey through the heart and all the other exciting
activities there for you.
3. After learning about Franklin at the Franklin
Memorial and visiting "his" museum, take some time
to think about how creative he was and how interested he was
in everything around him. You have, to be sure, some great ideas
running around in your head. Write them down. Perhaps you have
an invention in mind or maybe a play or . . . ?
Bookmarks:
Benjamin Franklin Memorial
Franklin
Museum
Activity #6 America OnStage & Computer,
A USA Festival
Grades 4-6
With a group of your friends write a play
about what you like about America. To gather some ideas, go to
the bookmarked sites your teacher has provided for you, talk
with your family and your teacher, look for information in your
library, and think about your community and your family. Look
around you and online for ideas about America.
Bw sure to include music in the play. You
might want to consider "Yankee Doodle," "God Bless
America," "America the Beautiful," "America,"
"The Battle Hymn of the Republic," "This Land
Is My Land," and of course, "The Star Spangled Banner."
Use some of the Sousa marches and perhaps your state song. What
are your favorite songs of our land?
Your play and those of others in your class
might be presented as part of a USA Festival in celebration of
our nation.
Activity #7 American Travelogue
Grades 4-6
Using the bookmarks from "Celebrate America!"
and other information from your research, plan a trip for your
class around our nation. Where would you go, what would you do,
what would you see, and why would you go to these places?
Create a travel itinerary for each day. Put
it on the computer complete with maps, pictures, text explanations,
and sound. If you can, add some short video segments of the trip.
(You and your friends can produce the video segments by dressing
up and acting out parts, creating scenery, and then filming with
a video camera. You don't have to have actual video of these
places to have fun with your travelogue.)
Show your travelogue adventures to your parents,
classmates, and grandparents in a big USA Festival (see Activity
#6).
