POE: Jamestown Weekly Highlights for Study

We're about to start...yes, we had planned to start this week, but Columbus seems to have set anchor here :(

Some things we have lined up, floating around in my Netflix Queue include:

The New World, Christian Bale, Collin Farrell
National Geographic: Jamestown
Pocahontas....and Pocahontas: Her True Story....and Pocahontas: The Legend....and Pocahontas (Nova Doc.)

We will touch on Pirates while studying Virgina:
The Golden Age of Caribbean Pirates....Pirates: Dead Men Tell Their Tales...The Real Pirates of The Caribbean...The Pirate Code: Real Pirates...Blackbeard the Pirate

And who can look at pirates and not think Long John Silver, with Richard Newton....or Treasure Island, the original version as well as The Muppet version :o)

We will be touching on various Indian nations, The French and Indian War, We also have America's Godly Heritage, by David Barton waiting in queue for its release.



We are waiting for some more books to arrive via Amazon:
My America: Elizabeth's Jamestown Colony Diary (there are 3 in the series)
Dear America: Standing in The Light (although it's 1763...we'll add it in later on)
Betsy Maestro books...The Discovery of The Americas, The New Americans: Colonial Times
The Double Life of Pocahontas, Jean Fritz
Pocahontas, Joseph Bruchac
The Captive Princess (we are working on the entire Daughters of The Faith series)
The Arrow over the Door (1770's, so for later)
Calico Bush
The Courage of Sarah Noble (early 1700's)

We have lots of book reading plans :o) We will be doing several lapbook/notebook pages along with our Paths studies, and several hands-on projects during arts and crafts.

Week 1: starts out with more of a background lesson, reading about some of history between Columbus and Jamestown, looking at the 'pilgrims' who came, some of the Indian history that was already waiting here, etc.  We will take a short look at Queen Elizabeth, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Smith, England during the early 1600's and so forth.  We will look at the types of ships that were in use during the time as well, and get an overview of the chronological history around Jamestown.

The olders will focus more on the religious tone of the time, as well as the governmental and economical views of colonizing America.  We'll use just a few resources that we have here, as well as the Virtual Jamestown Colony site lesson plans here, and some found here at JamesQuest.

Week 2:  We start looking at John Smith; we will look at the water cycle and map out several rivers of fame around the World; We will practice reading with Richard of Jamestown; our animal studies will start off with swans, otters, mudminnows and stickleback fish.  I'm thinking of adding Trumpet of the Swan by E.B.White in for reading...don't know yet; we will compare and contrast landmarks between England and here locally; our art lessons will focus on pond and creek life.  Would be nice if our seasonal pond had some water, but we'll adjust.We will also begin studying the state of Virginia using our Trail Guide to US Geography as a guide.  We will also look at the Virginia Company Colonies and Bermuda. I will probably look more at these museum guides and see if we can incorporate their information into our lapbooks/notebooks.

Week 3:  We take a look at tidal marsh land, clams, crabs, oysters, alligators and loggerhead turtles; our look at Indians moves to the Algonquin tribe and Chief Powhatan and his tribe (here, here, here, and here...just some of what we will look at) as well as Werowocomoco; We will map out the James River; and sketch out what we think the 'island' of Virginia looked like, based on the descriptions in our reading. We will look at the countries of note along the paths here...London, Canary Islands, The West Indies.  Somewhere in this week we will do the pirate adventures, as well as some string art ships we plan to make using these as a guide.

Week 4:  Pocahontas study; wild plants native to Virginia, as well as some herbal medicines that would have been common to the first settlers; along those same lines, we will get our the various herbal/wild plant books we have here and branch off with herbal meds.  Some of what we will use:
Shonda Parker books
Medicinal Plants and Herbs, Peterson Field Guide
Using Plants for Healing, Nelson Coon
Jude's Herbal Home Remedies, Jude C. Williams
Herbs for The Home, Jekka McVicar
Home Remedies from Amish Country, vol 1 & 2

Our nature books will start to fill in more, with various birds such as pelicans, storm-petrels, bitterns, herons, spoonbills and others.  Plant life will include cedars, palmettos, and mangroves. We will have a nice collection of wildlife and plant life by the end of this unit, even though we plan to blend right on in to the Mayflower Pilgrims.

Weeks 5 & 6:  Nature studies keep going with belted kingfishers and Canadian geese; we will continue mapping the paths the 'pilgrims' took to get to Jamestown, from London, Chesapeake Bay, Canary Islands and the West Indies, and touch on their government back in the 1600's, as well as daily lifestyle. During these last weeks, we will print off the Jamestown Replica as well. We will also do the interactive and other readings at the National Geographic site.

We will mainly use Paths of Exploration as our 'spine' for this, but will draw from several other resources as well, such as lapbooks on Colonial Life, Early American Life, Jamestown Colony, etc.
**GuestHollow has some great links...an American History Curriculum already laid out,  Historical Fiction book lists, resource ideas and more!
Literature Supplement to History Listing
The History Place
Timeline Ideas...
Jamestown Colony mini test
Jamestown short unit
Colonization of Jamestown unit  
    there are some nice "tests" to be found on this site :o)
The JamesQuest links
plenty of YouTube clips about whatever we can find that fit in!
History of The United States textbook, 1921 @ Project Gutenberg, just right for this particular unit
Academic Kids site, specifically Pre-Colonial and Colonial time...we'll put this to use through several units I'm sure.
Lesson Plan Central...specifically Colonial times for right now.
Fact Monster 50 States
   and their Fact Monster US Pages
The US 50 site
50 States.com
**The 50 States...and their Colonies to Revolution pages...this has so many things we will put to use again and again!

Oh...and for later, with the "real pilgrims" we'll use The Plymouth Colony Archive Project.  Great site!
Colonial Money
Colonial America Archive Document page
Colonial Radio Theater audio stories
Listing of The Landmark Series of books...out of print, but worth keeping your eyes open for!
Listing of The Signature Series of books...also out of print, but again well worth finding if you can!




I will keep updating as we go along, but if anyone has anything to share that might be fun with this Path, drop us a line!