Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Activity, Change, Progress

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13 Free and Fun BEST Printable History Board Games

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Today, I have rounded up 13 Free Printable History Board Games. You’ll love the other history games on my page. I think there is a great lack of fun history board games.

Besides learning history can be more engaging at times when the kids can play games with each other instead of touching an app.

13 Free and Fun BEST Printable History Board Gam

Don’t we have enough games where our kids play alone? I really try to keep the sibling rivalry camaraderie going too.

Not only do history board games fight the doldrums, but they make learning about history come alive. I know you’ll love one or two of these.

History Board Games

1. Viking Voyages. A board game about Viking Trade Routes at Ellen J. McHenry. While you’re there check out her other great games and hands-on ideas.


2. Then if you’re study Amercian history look at The Presidents Game. Find the .pdf towards the bottom of the post.


3.  Royal Game of Ur _ A History Game from Mesopotamia.  It’s a subscriber freebie. If you sign up for her newsletter, you  get the freebie.

4. Free printable Ancient Egypt Board Game by Homeschool Gameschool.

ancient egypt game

Free Printable History Board Games

Also, don’t forget to check out Home School in the Woods. They are on of my favorite hands-on history companies. I’ve used them a lot through the years.

DiggingUpGreecePic

5. Furthermore this free Printable Digging Up Greece board game by Ellen J McHenry is the perfect addition to a unit study.

Lewis and Clark Board Game

6. In addition, here is a free Printable Lewis & Clark Board game by Deceptively Educational.

Best History Board Games

s.Game for the Oregon Trail Westward Ho!

7. My Printable Board Game for the Oregont Trail is part of my free lapbook and unit study for the Westward Expansion.

More Kids Fun History Games

Moreover, you’ll love these other fun history games for kids.

13 Free History Printable Board Games. Looking for a way to make history exciting in your homeschool? CLICK HERE! You'll love these AWESOME games!

8. I also created a free printable Oregon Trail Game.

Ancient Egypt Collage

9. Next, this is pretty nifty though it’s not a board game, it is still a printable history game. or do online. In this game, your child has to spot the differences in pictures about the Hagia Sophia from Hello Kids.

The Basement Workshop Store


10. Then I created a free printable Ancient Egyptian snake game for us when studying about Ancient Egypt.

Free {Storming the Bastille} Game

11. Next,I also created one when studying about the French Revolution called Storming the Bastille that you can download too.

12. This game has to be coolest free thing I have found lately.

It is a vintage George Washington snake game which has the instructions written right on it.

George_Washington_snake_game

The game has American History pictures on it. 

For example, when you go over to see it at the link and choose one of the sizes to download, be sure to zoom in on it to read the rules. 

Though I have not printed it yet, I am thinking each part needs to be printed pretty big to read the rules.

13. Free History of Flight Printable Board Game. How fun!

And I know you don’t know mind if I add a few more!

14. Additionally, another fun one to learn the history of the city of Raleigh, North Carolina.

15. Free Civil War Board Game at 123 Homeschool 4 Me.

Free Copywork Cattle A Texas Poem For a Fun Unit Study

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Today, I want to share some free copywork Cattle a Texas poem about our home. And look at History of the Texas Cowboy, Cattle Drives, and Chisholm Trail for fun ideas.

Talking with Tiny about our pending move to South America, I decided to find a poem about Texas so he understands that we are not going to forget it. 

Free Copywork Cattle A Texas Poem For a Fun Unit Study

Excited as we are about the move, you can imagine the whole host of emotions the kids go through. 

Excited one day and then a bit of trepidation the next.  So I turned that into a mini lesson and copywork about our home.

Next, look at these fun books to add to your unit study.

BOOKS FOR TEXAS ABOUT KIDS

10 Resources for Learning About the Lone Star State & Texas Cattle Drives

Add a few of these resources to learn about the great state of Texas.

Also, look at this poem about Texas.

Free Copywork Cattle A Texas Poem

The Texas poem was written in 1932 by Berta Hart Nance called “Cattle”.  Here is the whole thing that has such beautiful imagery and language.

CATTLE

By Berta Hart Nance

Other states were carved or born

Texas grew from hide and horn.

Other states are long and wide,

Texas is a shaggy hide.

Dripping blood and crumpled hair

Some fat giant flung it there,

Laid the head where valleys drain

Stretched its rump along the plain.

Other soil is full of stone

Texans plow up cattle bones.

Herds are buried on the trail

Underneath the powdered shale,

Herds that stiffened like the snow

Where the icy northers go.

Other states have built their halls

Humming tunes along the walls,

Texans watched the mortar stirred

While they kept the lowing herd.

Stamped on Texan wall and roof

Gleams the sharp and crescent hoof,

High above the hum and stir

Jingle bridle-rein and spur.

Other states were made or born

…Texas grew from hide and horn.

Free Copywork Cattle A Texas Poem For a Fun Unit Study

To go along with this poem, I thought I would teach Tiny how to make a simple Texas chili and you know spend a bit more time together.

Tx Unit 1Tx Unit 2

Too, we have had some cold weather that is almost unheard of in May so that called for home made Texas chili.  Well, I should say part home made. 

Any good Texan would make their beans from scratch, but canned beans are fine after we had a long day selling furniture in our house.

Easy Texas Homemade Chili

Here are some things we put in our chili:

  • 1 to 1 1/2 pounds of sirloin meat.  We are meat eaters.  Love the stuff.  This is a twist on our chili because we don’t use ground beef when we make it.
  • 1 onion, 1 jalapeno if I have it, some bacon for flavoring which makes any chili come alive.
  • About 1 tablespoon of cumino, 2 or 3 chopped garlic cloves, 1 teaspoon of chili powder, salt and pepper to taste.
  • 4 or 5 cans of pinto beans, though we use home made when we have them.
  • 1 can or 2 cans of Rotel Tomatoes, a bit of beef broth or beef bouillon.
Tx Unit 3Tx Unit 4

Tiny and I share a love of cheese and a multiple assortment of delicious toppings over our chili when its cooked.

I like to add sour cream, tortilla strips,  avocado and the best recipe for home made salsa by Pioneer Woman.  I make that stuff by the bucket loads around here.

Free Copywork Cattle A Texas Poem For a Fun Unit Study

Trying to keep our school work light, this mix of homeschool lessons has been something I have not done before. 

I am finding it very gratifying to plan so spur of the moment and school on the wild and free side.  Sometimes you just a need a break from all the well laid out plans and sharing a bowl of hot Texas chili helps things too.

Free Copywork Cattle A Texas Poem For a Fun Unit Study

HOW TO GET THE FREE POEM COPYWORK

Now, how to grab the freebie. It’s a subscriber freebie.

That means when you sign up to follow me, you get my emails in your inbox and you get this freebie.

1) CLICK HERE ON THIS LINK TO SIGN UP ON MY EMAIL LIST & TO GET THIS FREEBIE.

2) Grab the freebie now.

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You’ll love these other resources too:

Cattle by Berta Hart Nance Collage

Fun Metamorphic Edible Rocks & Notebooking Pages

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

I have a fun metamorphic edible rocks activity. Also, look at my Free Earth Science Lapbook & Unit Study Ideas.

I have been trying to do easy and fun homeschooling projects. 

Well that sounds better than saying I’m a bad homeschooling momma because I have done the fun metamorphic edible rocks with my older boys, but not Tiny. 

Actually both of those statements are true.

Fun Metamorphic Edible Rocks & Notebooking Pages

Metamorphic Edible Rocks & Notebooking Pages

You know what I am talking about if you have done a lot of fun hands-on things with your older children and feel that tinge of guilt inspiration to keep it fun for your younger children too. 

I will be falling back on some of those ideas as we continue to sell our furniture and downsize.

Metamporphic Rock and Notebooking Pages

Talking about downsizing, look what went this week.

The table we used in our formal dining area for our homeschool is now gone.  

empty school room

We will move to our breakfast table for school now.

Actually, doing our hodgepodge school has been a welcomed change since we have to do a lot of start/stops in the day to show people our furniture as they call us.

Keeping it fun and easy is key for right now and making edible metamorphic rocks works today. 

Too, this fun and easy recipe is great to do with all your kids even though the older ones may know the basic differences in rocks.

First, look at some of these fun books about rocks.

Books about Rocks for Kids Who Love Rocks

I love living books when I can find them, then add other reference books to our reading diet.

6 Rock Unit Study Books & Fun Resources

Whatever grade you're teaching, you'll love adding one of these books or resources to your day.

With 3 ingredients, a spoon, a bowl and some waxed paper you probably already have these ingredients on hand.

Fun Metamorphic Edible Rocks & Notebooking Pages

We absolutely love peanut butter in our house too, but giving you a heads up now that it uses peanut butter in case you have an allergy. 

Our Journey Westward

By the way if you try this recipe with a peanut substitute and it comes out good, let me know so I can let my other readers know.

Fun Metamorphic Edible Rocks & Notebooking Pages

Like the recipe above says, just mix the mini-marshmallows, chocolate chips and enough peanut butter so that it sticks or clumps together. 

Metamorphic Rocks Edible Recipe for Kids

We added a tad more because having made these before and because Tiny is a peanut butter addict, we wanted that creamy taste in our “metamorphic rocks”.

Fun Metamorphic Edible Rocks & Notebooking Pages

Then form the clumps.  Oh yes that is right, this is earth science. 

So then at this point, just point out that these are “sedimentary rocks” and the sediments of chocolate and mini-marshmallows are cemented together with the mineral peanut butter.

Of course the next point to illustrate is how the rocks change through heat.

So put half of them back into your bowl, zap in the microwave for about 20 seconds to 1 minute depending on the heat level of your microwave.  We gave ours a gentle stir.

The Basement Workshop Store

Then turn the mixture back out onto the waxed paper or drop by globs.

Fun Metamorphic Edible Rocks & Notebooking Pages

Besides this activity having a great easy wow factor for very little time and effort which is always the best kind of activities for us, they are absolutely delicious too after they cool. 

We love to stick our metamorphic rocks in the refrigerator and have them get a bit harder too.

Fun Metamorphic Edible Rocks & Notebooking Pages

I made a couple of easy rock notebooking pages with answers and a bit of background information to help you or your kids. Download them under the picture below.

Fun Metamorphic Edible Rocks & Notebooking Pages
Metamorphic Rocks Notebooking Pages 1Metamorphic Rocks Notebooking Pages 2

  Note if you want the recipe: Just right click the recipe picture at the top and “save as” a picture.

Moving on to some more bigger pieces of furniture, we are trying to move faster toward listing our house.  I hope I can keep up with it all, but probably not.

So I will just enjoy our different homeschooling things we will be doing until we have our final date for our move.

Fun Metamorphic Edible Rocks & Notebooking Pages

More Hands-on Rock Activities

Free 2 Notebooking Pages

Next, use my pages below to add your child’s thoughts about rocks.

  1. Metamorphic Rocks – Rocks that Change
  2. How Are Metamorphic Rocks Formed

How to Get the Free Notebooking Pages

Now, how to grab the freebies. They are subscriber freebies.

That means when you sign up to follow me, you get my emails in your inbox and you get this freebie.

1) Sign up on my email list.
2) Grab the freebie now.
3) Last, look for all my emails in your inbox. Glad to have you following me!

Metamorphic Edible Rock Recipe and Free Notebooking Pages @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

50 Free History Unit Studies–History Lover’s Round Up

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Rounding up 50 Free History Unit Studies, I hope you can use one of these. Also, you’ll love my page Best Homeschool Unit Studies.

You know history is my first luv, okay maybe planners, well maybe organization or new homeschoolers.

I have a fixation on all of the above, but today like I mentioned I am sharing 50 Free Unit Studies.

Maybe you will find one or two ideas that will spark an interest for you or that you can use this summer or when planning for next year.


50 Free History Unit Studies

Also, you’ll love some of these other hands-on unit studies that I love.

And we’ve also used Home School in the Woods and love them too!

Too, unit studies are not anything unless they have hands-on projects.

I am sharing my favorite series of books that make teaching and learning about history a passion.

Look here at my Amazon Store to see my board or list for favorite unit study books.

Where possible, I tried to list unit studies that listed a few more teaching ideas, hands-on projects or maybe just had an idea or two to spark your creative juices.

50 History Unit Studies

Whether you're looking to switch up your approach or want to focus on one aspect of history while homeschooling, you'll love this round up history unit studies.

More Free Homeschool Unit Studies

Hugs and love ya,

Beware of the 3 C’s of Lapbooking

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Would you believe me if I told you after creating more than 30+ lapbooks with my children {I have lost track} that using lapbooks in our homeschool seemed like a turn off to us when we started homeschooling?

Today, using lapbooks as enrichment in our every day unit studies have kept them a delight and not overwhelming our day.  My journey did not start off that way. 

Beware of the 3 C's of Lapbooking

I made three basic mistakes when I initially folded in (corny pun I know) lapbooks into our day.

If you are the non-crafty person and have been avoiding creating a lapbook  with your kids, hopefully steering you clear of my mistakes will nudge you to try one or two.

I had to have an attitude adjustment first and I have to confess about it now.

  I knew that my kids were not the crafty loving (or so I thought) type of kids and I knew lapbooks were for those “other” homeschoolers.  You know the ones who pine to do crafts all day.

Interactive Tool or Time Waster Tool?

I just knew that lapbooks were more about crafts than conscientious and diligent learning. 

Because crafts are at the opposite end of my personality style or I should say as I understood crafts to be at the time, I missed out on several years of creating lapbooks with my older son.

Fast forward about five years after that thinking, my teaching methods were boring and blah. 

I knew worksheets didn’t take long for my children to do (I admit it, I was bad because that is all we did) and they took even less time for my children to forget about them.

Moving out of my comfort zone and wanting our homeschool journey to be a memorable one, I knew the hands-on element was missing in our every day learning. 

I wanted to capture that element of learning for my sons and gradually did more research on lapbooks.

Slowly, I started to see that the greatest benefit to my children about lapbooks is that they are a fantastic interactive learning tool. 

The interactive part to opening/closing the minibooks, turning the circle minibook and folding/unfolding to read information is much like— well— the learning that is done in museums.

Why did we prefer a day at the museum over doing a worksheet? 

Museums are a fun place to visit not because you look forward to doing a worksheet when you get there. 

Learning can be done informally and at your child’s pace while he presses buttons for information to light up, turns a wheel for more information, listens to the information and otherwise follows along to see the exhibits and read the information. 

Even adults still like this part of a museum. 

We never out grow a museum.

Beware of over Crafting!

Lapbooks are like a mini museum in a file folder.  Redefining my meaning of crafts, I first tried several months of crafts or I should say over crafting. 

I almost gave up because I tried to be something I was not and my boys weren’t having fun either.

When we would rather read something from a book than glue a bean on a paper, I knew I went too far the other way in trying to incorporate crafts.

Beware of Coloring!

That wasn’t the only mistake I made.  I remember when my sister who has all girls would meet up with us to school together when our kids were preschool.

Lapbooking Can Be for the Non Crafty Kid and Mom too!

Her girls would sit so patiently and sweetly as they couldn’t wait to color, doodle and create.  My boys ran from coloring and were outside using tree branches for swords on each other. 

Both my sister and I had a lot to learn as new teachers because we both thought the other family had something “wrong” with their kids.

Because I know boys learned differently and needed to strengthen their fine motor skills, I realized coloring was just one way to do it, not the only way.

As I created lapbooks, I understood the way my boys learned. 

For my sons the fun is not necessarily in coloring pictures so I added more and more pictures or clip art already colored to my lapbooks.

They could focus on learning the content, folding the books, and if they wanted to, they could do something crafty for the outside file folder flap. 

Still to this day, I add in color pictures and coloring pages so if the mood strikes they can choose either option or a combination of both. 

I didn’t restrain their creativity, but gave them options when they didn’t want to be.

Beware of Cutting!

I had already made two mistakes and this last mistake which was throwing a gazillion pages at my kids to cut actually did make us move away from lapbooking for a few months.  

In doing school, I had to remember I wasn’t teaching scissor skills necessarily.

minibooks - emphasize the writing and not the scissor cutting

There is nothing about cutting out minibooks that inspired my children to want to do another lapbook.  Quite the opposite, they wanted to run from it and I did too.

Realizing that I was not teaching my sons how to cut when we did lapbooks, I did a majority of the cutting for my sons in the early grades. 

What a breath of fresh air as we sat down to start the next lapbook because most of the pages were cut.

This is perfectly okay to do.  Just like any teacher would prepare flashcards or some other hands-on manipulative for her classroom, this was the part I did as a teacher for them.

 Even as they got older, I still help with cutting out the minibooks.

Focusing on my family, I redefined the meaning of crafts in our home.  Crafting now in my mind equates with hands-on and it can be virtually anything that your children enjoy doing. 

  It really is that easy and I had to understand that sometimes the house doesn’t always have to be a mess to enjoy them.

Today, my mind races with hands-on ideas, but I always weigh them against what my sons will really find delight doing and weigh the value of it against the concept I want them to learn.

Whether you have kids who desire to do crafts all day or run from them, you can still lapbook.  Adjusting lapbooking to work for your family is key to savoring them.

I certainly don’t consider myself a true lapbooker if there is such a thing.  Why?  Because the crafts, cutting and coloring are not reasons we weave them in our day.  While maintaining a hint of my classical roots while we do a fun hands-on easy lapbook, I have found a way to not miss out on something that brings learning alive for us.

It doesn’t have to be either or when you choose an approach to homeschooling, it just has to be good for your family.

Do you want to give lapbooks a try? Try one or two easy ones.

I have made it easy for you, I have divided  up my lapbooks by history time period or science topic.

Pssst..They are ALL free too!

Hugs and love ya,