Civil War Unit Study

We learn about the Civil War with Notebooking, Field Trips, Books, and Movies.

Growing up in Georgia, I learned the Civil War is important history.

Many museums and historical sites commemorate the Confederate events and battles that took place and they’re all very accessible for day trips or short vacations.

But how they do glorify the Confederacy.

You don’t see any Nazi memorials in Europe except in appropriate museums to show what never to do again…

As a child, I attended reenactments of battles at Stately Oaks Plantation, a replica of the house in Gone With the Wind. My family took vacations to visit Andersonville, Fort Sumter, and Chickamauga, along with plantation home tours.

I think every Southern state has a Civil War museum, mostly glorifying the Confederacy and perpetuating the “Magnolia Myth.”

I feel it’s very important to teach my white children real history.

We learn about all sides to the story. I feel my Georgia public school education was rather sloppy and often told incorrectly, even by black teachers who were at the mercy of the curriculum and administrators.

It’s so important to talk about history and to discuss race and current events, cause and effect. 

This book helps me teach better: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen 

Travel:

Freedom Center

Springboro Underground Railroad Walking Tour

Stone Mountain

Stately Oaks in Jonesboro, GA

Civil War Sites

• Civil War Traveler
• The Civil War in Georgia
• Virginia 150 years
• North Carolina 150 years
• Pennsylvania 150 years
• Battle of Mobile Bay
• Tennessee Civil War

Topics:

• Causes of the Civil War
• Missouri Compromise
• Foreign aid to Confederacy and Union
• Dred Scott
• Abraham Lincoln
• John Brown
• Underground Railroad
• Reconstruction
• Racism
• KKK
• Jim Crow Laws

Resources

• Adventures in Mommydom American history lessons
• Lapbooks and notebooking pages
• Homeschool Share lapbook
• Stone Mountain and The Cyclorama 
• Civil War for Kids
• Battlefields.org
• PBS The Civil War
• Slavery Unit from Our Journey Westward
• Lapbook from Homeschool Share
• Resources from the Homeschool Mom
• Addy American Girl Unit from Fields of Daisies
• War Between the States from Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool Plus
• Unit Study from Susan Evans
• Resources from Creekside Learning
• Pages from Bonnie Rose
• Lapbook from Jimmie’s Collage
• Practical Pages
• Productive Homeschooling $
• A Journey Through Learning Lapbook $

Movies

(use viewer discretion)

• Glory
• Gettysburg
• North and South
• Cold Mountain
• Gone With the Wind
• Ride with the Devil
• The Red Badge of Courage
• The Civil War by Ken Burns
• Friendly Persuasion
• The Birth of a Nation
• An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
• Shenandoah 
• Little Women
• Andersonville
• Gods and Generals
• Lincoln
• Journey to Shiloh
• North and South
• The Blue and the Gray
• Roots
• The Beguiled 1971 and 2017
• Ironclads (1991)

Books

• Civil War for Kids
• The Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom by Bettye Stroud
• Show Way by Jacqueline Woodson 
• Follow the Drinking Gourd by Jeanette Winter 
• Unspoken by Henry Cole
• The Secret to Freedom
• Henry’s Freedom Box
• Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt
• The Drinking Gourd
• Under the Quilt of Night
• The Last Safe House
• Light in the Darkness
• Before She Was Harriet
• Cause: Reconstruction
• Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule by Harriette Gillem Robinet
• 40 Acres and No Mule by Janice Holt Giles
• Freedom School
• The Monitor
• Shots Fired at Fort Sumter
• Across Five Aprils
• The Red Badge of Courage
• An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
• Welcome to Addy’s World
• The Journal of James Edmond Pease: A Civil War Union Soldier, Virginia, 1863
• When Will This Cruel War Be Over? The Civil War Diary of Emma Simpson, Gordonsville, Virginia, 1864
• A Light in the Storm: The Civil War Diary of Amelia Martin
• My Brother’s Keeper: Virginia’s Civil War Diary Book 1
• After The Rain, Virginia’s Civil War Diary Book 2
• A Time To Dance, Virginia’s Civil War Diary Book 3
• Abraham Lincoln’s World
• Abraham Lincoln: A Nonfiction Companion
• Civil War On Sunday
• Abe Lincoln at Last!
• The Perilous Road
• Freedom’s Wings: Corey’s Underground Railroad Diary Book 1
• Flying Free: Corey’s Underground Railroad Diary Book 2
• Message In The Sky: Corey’s Underground Railroad Diary Book 3
• You Wouldn’t Want to Be a Nurse During the American Civil War! A Job That’s Not for the Squeamish
• You Wouldn’t Want to Be a Civil War Soldier!

How we do history…

History Series:
American Revolutionary War
Civil War
World War I
World War II
Iraq and Afghanistan

We use Tapestry of Grace for our main history studies. You might also like: Raising Readers and How We Study History.

My girls especially love the living books and literature selections. They have a government supplement that is wonderful for high school. Four learning levels means the whole family learns together. Each unit has Internet links to relevant sites (most I’ve never heard of). The Revolutionary War begins at the end of Year 2 (from Byzantium to the New World) and the beginnings of our new nation is in the first unit of Year 3 (from Napoleon to Teddy Roosevelt).

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

Do you have resources or memories to add?

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