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Biography Report
Dress Up Earth
Use this craft to help children remember that the North Pole is Earth’s hat, the South Pole is its shoes, and the Equator is its belt.
Location Nesting Dolls
Use this activity to accompany a lesson on location. Many children struggle to understand how states are “inside” of countries, and cities are “within” states. Discuss your school’s location and have children fill out the lines accordingly. Children color and cut out the dolls, then can staple together to take home.
Community Research Project
Use this project to help students research a community of their choice. There are three versions: 1-page, 2-page, and poster board.
Historical Interviews
This Social Studies project is a fun way to research influential people in American (or any) history. It includes a rubric, template and a list of possible questions and people to “interview.” Want to make it even more fun? Print out a picture of the person being interviewed onto cardstock and tape it to a craft stick. Hold it up to make it feel like that person is really answering the questions when students share their projects as a class.
America is a Melting Pot
This activity about American immigrants is great for Thanksgiving or National Immigrants Day (October 28).
Lewis & Clark Journal
This Social Studies project involves writing and research and has 14 different assignments and a grading rubric.
Columbus’ View of the World
Use this craft to help children understand how Christopher Columbus miscalculated the size of the earth, not realizing it was much bigger and had North and South America.
Braille
Print this template double-sided, flipping on the short edge. Braille markings are intentionally backwards, so that when pressed with a pencil or paper clip end, they will be raised on the opposite side, facing the correct way.
Morse Code
Teach children about Morse code by having them create and decode messages to each other.
50 State Coloring Pages
President Report
Students can use this template to research a president as part of a Presidents’ Day class project.
Formally teaching about Presidents Day? Here is a test to use as a review:
American History Snapshot
Use this timeline to provide students with an overview of American history highlights.
Here is an extended version to put up on your wall:
And here is a version you can print onto cardstock and play as a memory matching game.
Historical Documents
Print these historical documents onto nice parchment paper to put on a classroom wall so students can access them at any time.
Bill of Rights Project
Event Pamphlet Template
Social Studies Project Ideas
- Write a Letter (From): Write a letter as if you are the person you have studied. Write it to a person or group with whom he or she communicated.
- Write a Letter (To): Write a letter to the person you have studied. Tell him or her what you think of an action he or she did.
- Conduct an Interview: Write several questions for a person you studied asking about his or her life. Answer them yourself, based on information gathered, or have a classmate answer them.
- Write a Journal Entry: Write a journal entry as if you are one of the people from an event you studied. Tell what happened over the course of several days, months, or years. Use some imagination, but make everything based on what you learned.
- Write a Dictionary: Create a dictionary for important terms you have learned in this unit. Include pictures!
- Create a Brochure: Create a brochure or advertisement encouraging people from the time you studied to choose to participate in a real voyage, business, or activity that happened.
- Make a Political Poster: Make a poster for a person who won or lost an election. Tell people why you think they should vote for him or her.
- Draw a Political Cartoon: Draw a comical picture that shows an event you studied. Use symbolism to represent what actually happened. Explain whose perspective this cartoon is showing.
- Create a Commercial: Write and act out a commercial advertising a famous activity from the time you studied. Give reasons to participate.
- Write and Act Out a Group Skit: Bring a historical event to life by acting out a scene from the time you have studied.
- Create a Then & Now Book: Find pictures online or in magazines showing life from the time you studied and today. Compare things that are the same (clothes then & now, technology then & now, etc.)
- Take a Poll: Create an opinion poll about a historical event. Ask students from other classes or family and friends how they felt about the issue. Create a graph to show your results.
- Write Your Own Would-You-Rather: Give classmates options to choose from that highlight the choices people often had to face during the time you have studied.
- Make a Collage: Find pictures from a magazine that represent what you have learned. Put them together and include captions, telling what they represent.
- Make a Diorama: Use a shoebox or a box of similar size and recyclable materials, clay, paper, and craft sticks to create a scene you have studied.
- Make a Medal: Use a paper plate, or a circle-shaped recyclable object with string or ribbon to create a medal for a person you have studied. Write a paragraph explaining why this person deserves the medal.
- Capture It in Clay: Use modeling dough to recreate a famous person or event you have studied.
- Make a Mural: As a group, draw several scenes from a person’s life or an event on legal paper or bulletin board paper. Make sure they have a common theme. Give it a title.
- Make a Comic: Retell the event you learned about in comic form. Use speech bubbles to give direct quotes spoken by the people you studied.
- Make a Pop-Up Book: Create pop-ups to tell the story of an event or a person’s life.
- Make a 3-D Map: Create a map of a place you learned about in a specific time. Use modeling dough or paper mâché to make it three-dimensional.
- Make an Edible Map: Use snacks and sweets to create a map of an important location from the time you are studying. Make sure to label important places.
- Make a Living Museum: Research a person from the time you are studying. Write a brief report about and dress up as him or her. Invite families and other classes to visit your museum.
- Have a mock debate between two people or groups who had different perspectives.
- Make a Scrapbook: Imagine the person or group you are studying likes to scrapbook. Create pages with pictures and captions that summarize the events they experienced.
- Create a medal on a cut circle of cardboard, on a paper plate, or on parchment paper.
- Create a word search.
- Create a word jumble.
- Do a news report.
- Write your own test.
- Pretend to be a time-traveler comparing notes with a person from the past about what is different in your time from theirs.
- Do a mock-interview in front of the class and create masks for students to hold over their faces by printing faces of historical figures onto cardstock and gluing onto a popsicle stick.
- Make a map of the geographical formation, city, state, or country studies out of Legos.
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