Pioneering Unit: Settleing the West

Have you ever made butter? How about try your hand at maple sugaring? Or even spun your own wool? I've never done most of those things my self, minus the making butter. Would I like to do the rest? Hmmmmmm.......I'd like to give it a try.

This was unit on the Pioneers was probably one of the best we've done.  Or at least I think so.  I didn't make any added notebook pages or lapbooks like that.  Mostly it was due to the fact I was so busy and other technical reasons (aka computer trouble). But here are the things that we used and I did manage to add in.

  
Books We Used & Read:

We have been watching a mini-series called, "Into the West".  This mini-series has 6 parts and went along great with our studies. We watched the first episodes.  (These 3 go well what we covered so far in our study of pioneers and the settling of the west.)

In to the West fallows the lives of two families The Wheelers (a white family from Virgina) and an Lakota Tribe.  The show is told from both sides as it slowly unfolds.  Starting with Lakota people and there relationship with the buffalo.  Then it goes into the Adventures of the early Mountain Man, Jedediah Smith.  Continuing on until finally concluding at the aftermath of the Battle of Wounded Knee.

I recommend watching these 3 first.  (We are saving the rest for when we cover railroads and the Indian Wars next year. One the second half of American History.)

• Episode 1 - Wheel to the Stars 
• Episode 2 - Manifest Destiny 
• Episode 3 - Dreams and Schemes

Here is a preview from the first episode.


We also watched The History Channels: The Story of US episode "Westward".  There are 9 parts that make up this video if you watch it on Youtube.  Here are the first 2 parts.  (You can get it from Netflix as a disk too.)

Part 1 





Part 2

We also watched a few episodes of Little House on the Prairie. I can post the video cause it Youtube won't let me, But there is a link to the first part of the first episode. Click Here!

I even made a some of the activities from the Little House Craft book myself that I'm going to give away as gifts.  I'm not posting them just in case those who I'm going to give them to are reading this.