Up until now, we've only studied centuries during the ancient period - Before Christ. So to make the jump to the 18th century gave an interesting perspective on recorded history. Each country has major events that seemed to build on each other. But it was way too much to try and cover it all in one hour.
To add the the chaotic overkill, I and my baby were sick. Most of the kids had a presentation to give, which was fabulous, but it took up a large portion of the class time. So as I talked about what was going on in the world during that span of 100 years, I was rushed to try and hand out the timeline pictures, give a very brief accounting of the stories, as well as give instructions for the craft.
I considered locating my family history names for during this century to show the students how to include personal and family history with stuying history, but as I began to list what names I had available, I filled an entire page of names before concuding it wasn't going to work in that format.
In our Religion category, we learned about John Wesley who founded the Methodist Church.
Under Inventions - I focused mostly on James Watt, who invented the steam engine; Eli Whitney, who invented the cotton gin and the interchangeable parts for guns; and James Cook for discovering Botany Bay in Austailia.
Cultural category was loaded with musicians: Bach, Handel, Mozart, Vivaldi, & Hayden. And also authors including Jane Austen, Daniel Defoe, Johnathon Swift, John Newton, Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, Goethe, Voltaire, & Gibbon.
And finally under political, we learned about the American Revolution, the French Revolution, & Catherine the Great.
And that's only what I decided to focus on. There was so much more information but I just couldn't do any of it justice. Our craft wasa simple making a US flag out of construction paper. Simple - yes, but for some of the kids it made the whole class worth it,
