Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark Expedition

Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark

I’m using the terrific free lapbook and the minibook on the Louisiana Purchase from this site.

We talked about the Wilderness Road and desire to spread out that Boone and those early westward travelers showed. Then we watched this little clip about “Elbow Room” to introduce this and coming units in a simplified way.

Louisiana Purchase---Read details about it in the Complete Book of United States History, Jefferson Buys Louisiana section or another book and discuss.

To help solidify we acted out the purchase using this plan. Honestly, you could probably provide the details yourself in the context of preparing for and acting it out using these plans if a good book isn’t available.

I emphasized that this land was “claimed” by France but we had to remember that it was really the land of the Native Americans. We looked at at a map I made of some of the Native American Tribes in this area. We talked about what this might have felt like. I think this is important to stress and the acting above doesn’t really emphasize that point.

I used these hat and crown patterns.

To close:
We completed the free lapbook minibook on the Louisiana Purchase from the dynamic2moms site. Here is another free option.

The People
I will be reading the Complete Book of United States History, Lewis and Clark Prepare for an Adventure and a book I got from the library about Sacagewea. We might watch this clip.

We completed The Mission and People lapbook components from here.

We didn’t but a person could make a parfleche from this site while emphasizing her contribution to the journey.

The Journey
We read a library book on the journey. I just picked the best available from our local library.
We added What did they take and How long lapbook components.

We did this interactive. This is a nice activity to help the child reflect on the online interactive.

Closing Activity:
We could go outside and make our own nature journals or we could make a diorama of the journey of some sort. I think we're actually going to set up a little masking tape outline of the rivers, blankets and pillows for mountains, laundry basket for boat etc. so we can sort of act out the journey because one of mine particularly learns a lot from those sorts of activities.

Journey—Day 2
We watched Lewis and Clark the great journey west by National Geographic which our library has. It’s also pretty cheap second hand it seems.

We’ll complete the Scholastic Interactive 3-D Map for Lewis and Clark’s Journey and add the map lapbook component of the journey to our lapbooks. I like the map because it has some of the Native American tribes encountered and wanted to emphasize that point.

I also had the boys dictate a summary of the journey experience to add to their lapbooks.

Journey—Day 3
We focused on Native Americans and how they were vital to the journey today. I thought the video I used yesterday did a good job making that point. This activity is really good for emphasizing it I think.

We then added information about those four tribes to our lapbook using this link. I really like the Dynamic for Mom Native American booklet with pictures. However, I didn’t feel they included all the most important tribes to the mission and in fact included some (like Osage) where there was no contact. PBS and National Geographic both have information including pictures of the tribes encountered (I linked Nez Perce as an example) so a nice booklet with pictures could certainly be made. I just used the best photos of the Mandan, Shoshone, Nez Perce, and Clatsop tribes from those two sites for our cards. The boys added information about the tribe and how it helped Lewis and Clark on the back of the picture.