Great Pioneer Projects

What was it like to be an American pioneer during the 1800s? Great Pioneer Projects You Can Build Yourself introduces readers ages 9 and up to the settling of the great American frontier with over 25 hands-on building projects and activities. Young learners build replica sod houses, log cabins, and covered wagons and create their own printing presses and maps. Great Pioneer Projects You Can Build Yourself provides detailed step-by-step instructions, diagrams, and templates for creating each project. Historical facts and anecdotes, biographies, and fascinating trivia support the fun projects and teach readers about the American pioneers’ relentless push westward. Together they give kids a first-hand look at daily life on the trail and on the frontier. Great Pioneer Projects You Can Build Yourself brings the American Pioneer experience to life.

Provides instructions for creating seventeen traditional crafts ranging from basket weaving and candle making to quilting and soap making, and discusses each craft's importance to frontier families.

Great Colonial America Projects You Can Build Yourself introduces readers ages 9–12 to colonial America through hands-on building projects. From dyeing and spinning yarn to weaving cloth, from creating tin plates and lanterns to learning wattle and daub construction. Great Colonial America Projects You Can Build Yourself gives readers a chance to experience how colonial Americans lived, cooked, entertained themselves, and interacted with their neighbors.

Tracing the vivid saga of Native American and pioneer men, women, and children, this guide covers the colonial beginnings of the westward expansion to the last of the homesteaders in the late 20th century. Dozens of firsthand accounts from journals and autobiographies of the era form a rich and detailed story that shows how life in the backwoods and on the prairie mirrors modern life in many ways--children attended school and had daily chores, parents worked hard to provide for their families, and communities gathered for church and social events. More than 20 activities are included in this engaging guide to life in the west, including learning to churn butter, making dip candles, tracking animals, playing Blind Man's Bluff, and creating a homestead diorama.

Discusses pioneer life and presents related projects and activities

Explore the Wild West! 25 Great Projects, Activities, Experiments invites young readers ages 6–9 to experience the spirit of the Wild West. Kids learn about explorers who mapped the American West, Native Americans, gold miners, cowboy culture, cattle drives, Wild West legends, frontier towns, peacekeepers, lawbreakers, and much more. Through projects ranging from making a settler’s soddie to mining for gold, kids develop a better understanding of the rich history of the Wild West in the 1800s.

The Robertsons are a pioneer family living on a backwoods farm in 1840. After a hard winter, welcome signs of spring also mean new chores: making maple syrup, planting crops, and shearing sheep. Weaving together fiction and fact, Barbara Greenwood tells stories about the Robertsons as she describes the daily tasks of pioneer cooking, slaughtering hogs, and operating a grist mill. Readers follow the Robertsons through the year learning what it was like-to attend school, make butter, or tell time by the sun-by participating in many of the activities. A Pioneer Sampler is an informative and engaging introduction to the world of the pioneers. Book jacket.

In Explore Colonial America!, kids ages 6-9 learn about America’s earliest days as European settlements, and how the colonists managed to survive, build thriving colonies, and eventually challenge England for independence. How did the colonists build homes, feed and clothe themselves, and get along with the Native Americans who were already here? This accessible introduction to the colonial period teaches young children about the daily lives of ordinary colonists and offers fascinating stories about those who helped shape the emerging nation. Activities range from creating a ship out of a bar of soap and building a log home out of graham crackers and pretzels to making a wampum necklace. Projects are easy-to-follow, require minimal adult supervision, and use primarily common household products and recycled supplies. By combining a hands-on element with riddles, jokes, fun facts, and comic cartoons, kids Explore Colonial America!, and have a great time discovering our nation’s founding years.

Amazing Ben Franklin Inventions You Can Build Yourself introduces readers ages 9 and up to the life and times of one of America’s greatest thinkers with over 25 hands-on building projects and activities. From his groundbreaking scientific discoveries and inventions to his career as a writer, printer, and politician, Amazing Ben Franklin Inventions gives young readers a comprehensive look at the man who gave us the lightning rod, the armonica, bifocals, the post office, the first public library, Poor Richard’s Almanac, and so much more. Amazing Ben Franklin Inventions provides detailed step-by-step instructions, diagrams, and templates for creating each project. Historical facts and anecdotes, biographies, and fascinating trivia support the fun projects and teach readers about the courage, creativity, and determination of Ben Franklin and a young America coming into its own.

Follow the Robertson family as they prepare for a Thanksgiving dinner to celebrate the harvest in the fall of 1841.