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Today I will be showing you our modern history notebook that we put together during our study of American history. We made two notebooks for the year: one for the Civil War and one for the true modern culture starting at the turn of the century. In our series on modern history, I have shown you many hands-on activities, field trips, and themed parties that help to bring this time period to life. Now I will focus on the written work.
We used the charts and maps from All American History, Volume II. I liked the fact that my kids had to color and cut out the flags of the different countries involved in the wars. World War I and World War II are especially important to keep separate and are often taught in the schools one after the other. I purposely spent longer than a week (3 weeks!) on World War I so that the kids understood trench warfare and early airplanes. I did NOT want the two world wars to blur together in their minds.
As you can see in the demonstration video at the bottom of this post, we decorated the cover of the modern history notebook with 3-dimensional stickers from World War II. We divided the binder into different sections:
- The Gilded Age–writing assignment was a description of a turn-of-the-century home that we visited
- World War I–writing assignments about trench warfare and Charlie Chaplin
- The 1920’s–writing assignments about the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression
- World War II–writing assignments include summaries of World War II and The Hiding Place
- The Cold War–writing assignment summarizing the Cold War
Take a look at our finished Modern History Notebook:
