Looking for an easy way to do some US history without a lot of planning or curriculum? Trying to keep the kiddos mentally engaged and not suffer a lot of “brain drain” over the summer months? Yea, me too! Since we’re not homeschooling full-time, I’m looking for easy, engaging, and inexpensive ideas to teach them something without a lot of fuss, tears, and resources. Here are a couple of ideas to cover some US History topics by video and small writing assignments. You can add on as much or as little as you’d like to them, but the kids will definitely walk away having learned something.

We are using these mini unit studies on Tuesday and Thursdays in our light daily learning routine I shared last week. The kids can do them as a group and they can do them pretty much independent of me. And it’s ok if the grade-levels are a little high or a little low. That just means that it’s easier for some and they can help the others. If you don’t have 3 munckins to work together, you could just space the work out a little more.

Just pick one topic and then one watch, one write, and one make assignment for that topic. Shouldn’t be more than 30 min to an hour each day you work on it.

1. Unit Study on the US Presidents

WATCH

The Ultimate Guide to the Presidents–this 8-hr mini-series hits each of the Presidents (from Washington to Obama) and discusses the evolution of the roles and responsibilities of the President throughout that timeline. We picked up the 3-disc set for a steal last year, but it’s also available on Amazon Prime to purchase or rent. I’ve also seen it occasionally included in the History Channel subscription on Prime. Each episode is only 45 minutes long, so it’s not a real burden for them to watch, but it’s good information.

WRITE

I found several inexpensive viewing guides from Teachers Pay Teachers that were perfect. I just picked one and printed it out for each of the kiddos:

Ultimate Guide to the Presidents (all episodes) — We used this one and it was great for my 6th, 7th, and 10th grader to use together. One short sheet, but the answers are spaced out though the show so they had to pay attention from start to finish.

Ultimate Guide to the Presidents Bundle

Ultimate Guide to the Presidents Viewing Guide Complete Series

Ultimate Guide to the Presidents Viewing Guide Series

MAKE

For a simple final reporting project, I decided to go with easy printable biography worksheets. After they watch all the video, I give them a pile of 6 biographies each workday and they either divide them up or work on them together. They don’t take more than 30 minutes each if they are focused. The point is that all 6 get done each workday until they finish them all. They’re allowed to google the information if they need to. The point is that by waiting until after they watch the shows, there’s a second effort at the recall to help cement the information.

Here are a couple other final reporting project ideas you might want to look at:

Biography Research Pennants (I also really liked this idea–then you have something tangible to hang up for a while. And this one includes Presidents AND First Ladies!)

FREE Presidents Day Research Organizer

FREE Life-Size President Project (Sounds super-fun! A roll of brown kraft paper is inexpensive and has about a thousand different uses. )

Presidency Timeline Research Project

These Professor Noggin card games are also a lot of fun. We like to use them on road trips.

A note about Prime Channels—I love this feature of Amazon Prime Video! You can turn different Channels on and off every 30 days without any obligation and only pay per month you have it on. So, for example, I often turn on History Vault for 2-3 months over the summer for $5.99/month and all the kiddos have access to it on their tablets and laptops for the summer. Then I give learning shows as assignments. Then I just turn it off when they go back to school. We did the same thing with the Smithsonian Channel the year we studied Astronomy for 1 month. No contracts, just on/off and you pay per 30 days you use it. Plus, they offer a lot of free trials and introductory deals on different channels throughout the year.

2. Unit Study on the 50 States

WATCH

You can find The States Documentary series from the History Channel on YouTube for free. It’s 10 episodes and each episode covers 5 states. It’s a bit older, so it’s harder to find, but there’s some DVD copies floating around too. There’s also an interesting series on History Vault called How the States Got their Shapes.

WRITE

Here’s a set of easy viewing guide worksheets:

The States Complete Series Video Viewing Guide (We’re using these. There are a few questions per state, 5 states per worksheet for each episode.)

This would also be a great time to use our FREE 50 States US Passport template to make some passports and state stickers and give them out after each episode! How fun!

MAKE

Here are a couple project options that are inexpensive and print-and-go ready–I think we are going to use the Trifold Brochure one:

50 States Report Notebook pages

Tourism Director State Project–this sounds very fun, but maybe for only 1-2 states for each child. It would be a lot to do more than one state at a time.

50 State Research Bundle (These are easy 1-2 page “reports” that older kids will have no problem completely for all 50 states.)

50 State Trifold Brochure Reports (Love this idea, and it would be easy to make up your own!)

3. Unit Study Covering the Story of America

WATCH

America, The Story of Us is available FREE on Prime Video, or you can get the DVD set for a decent price as well. It’s 12 episodes over 10 hours covering the history of America from Jamestown to the new Millennium. Obviously covering 400 HUNDRED YEARS of history in 10 hours means that it’s a very high-level overview. But there’s value is seeing the big picture.

WRITE

Some guided worksheet bundle options:

America, the Story of Us (this is the one we’re going to use)

America, the Story of Us Complete Series Guide (this one is good, but a little more intense on the questions and amount of work per episode)

American–Story of Us Episode 1-12 Bundle (I like the way this one is fill in the blank)

MAKE

This is a HUGE span of history to try and cover with just one project, but I found this US History Timeline project and it looks like a perfect fit. It goes from the 13 Colonies to 1945–and it would be easy to add in other events that are not covered yourself once you get started.

This American History Timeline Research workbook would also be a good choice for some independent learning. Or these US History Interactive Map puzzles.

The other idea for a timeline would be for the kids to each pick an event for each decade and make a timeline with just those events. It would be interesting to see what they found or picked out for certain time periods as most important or most interesting, or had the biggest impact. That roll of brown kraft paper would be helpful here too–we’re using one for our Ancient Greek timeline right now.

4. Unit Study on the American Revolution

Ah, one of our favorite periods! Our part of Virginia is just chock-full of Revolutionary history, so we’re able to do a ton of hands-on exploring for this period. But even with out field-trips there are a lot of easy resources to cover the American Revolution.

WATCH

Either Liberty Kids or Sons of Liberty, depending on your age group. We’ve used both and enjoy them both.

I think Liberty Kids spans a much wider age-group than it gets credit for. Right now I don’t see a great deal on the DVD set (we got ours years ago for $10 for the whole series), but you can get it on Prime Video with a STARZ subscription for a month while you do the unit study. Just watch the STARZ subscription–they’ve got a lot of stuff that’s great for kids and a lot of stuff that is NOT. We use the Parental Controls on our kiddos Fire Tablets to help with this stuff. It’s also available on YouTube.

Sons of Liberty is a good deal on DVD at the moment, but is also available on Prime.

A note about Amazon Fire Tablets for kids…I love them as a preliminary technology option to a laptop. They’re not great for typing, but any type of video watching with worksheets would be fine. The “kids tablet” is really just a regular Fire Tablet with pre-set kid selections and extra parental controls already in place for you. The kids use your Amazon account to access anything you make available on Amazon Prime. You can manage, block, or pre-set websites they can visit and how much time they’re allowed to have on the device. The best feature is that you set each tablet individually– so you can make permissions directly related to each child’s needs and maturity. I love being able to set a Watchlist up for them of documentaries on whatever unit study we are doing and then monitor whether they’re watching or not. You can also turn website blocks on and off at will, so I can allow YouTube for one day because we’re watching history videos and block it the next so it’s not abused.

WRITE

FREE Liberty Kids Viewing Guide worksheets

Liberty Kids Viewing Guide (some Episodes are free, some are a small fee)

Liberty Kids Bundle (Includes worksheets for EVERY episode and some additional activities. This is the one we’ve used previously because it’s print-and-go.)

Sons of Liberty Viewing Guide (This is the one we’re going to use when we go over this series again this summer before our trip to Boston.)

Sons of Liberty DVD Guide (All Episodes)

MAKE

Here’s a fun project with direction to make trading cards about the Revolutionary War or one to make their own board game. We are probably going to use the idea of a Newspaper for some of our ancient history studies. Here’s a newspaper project about the Revolutionary War, but there are a ton of free newspaper templates around to just make your own as well.

5. Unit Study on American Innovators and Explorers

WATCH

Watch Men Who Built America (FREE on Prime), or Men Who Built America Frontiersmen. I’ll list out a few viewing guides, but these shows are awesome! More good picks are Cars that Made America (about the start of the big 4 auto-makers); Harley and the Davidsons (about the development of the motorcycle as an invention as well as the actual company); or The Food that Built America (about Heinz, Hershey, Kellogs, MacDonalds, and more).

These are all jam-packed with solid historical information and made in a docu-drama format that makes them very easy to watch. Honestly, these shows are so interesting I would only use the viewing guides if I was not supervising, just to keep the kiddos honest. If they’re actually watching, I’m sure they’ll get a lot out of them without needing to take notes.

WRITE

Men Who Built America Viewing Guides (all episodes)

Men Who Built America worksheets bundle (With puzzles and tests included. We don’t do tests. {smile})

MWBA Frontiersmen Viewing Bundle

MWBA Frontiersman Viewing Guides (There’s a lot of questions in this one, so best for older students.)

Food that Built America Viewing Guide

Food that Built America Bundle

MAKE

I think these shows would be perfect to follow up with some simple biography projects. Here’s a basic blank template for Famous Science and Engineering biographies And here’s a great set of editable biography templates that could be used over and over again for any of these projects.