The Civil War

CIVIL WAR LESSON PLANS

	From the American Battlefield Trust, The Civil War Curriculum is a lesson plan collections, categorized by Elementary, Middle, and High School. Sample titles: “Civil War Animal Mascots,” “Civil War Reader’s Theater,” Map the Civil War,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and “Civil War Medicine.”
	Teachnology’s Civil War Lesson Plans is a long list, including such titles as “Civil War Battle Map,” “Deciphering Morse Code,” “The Cost of War,” and more.
	From Edsitement, see a list of lesson on slavery, the crisis of the Union, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. Topics include background info, images, guiding questions, learning objectives, activities, and extensions. Recommended.
	From inventive teacher Mr. Donn, Civil War has a collection of lesson plans and unit studies, most targeted at elementary- and middle-grade-level students.
	From Ducksters, see The Life of a Civil War Soldier.
	From PBS, Teaching the Civil War has a range of resources, categorized by grade, on the causes, times, and conduct of the Civil War.
	From Teaching American History, the Civil War and Reconstruction Toolkit includes discussion questions, links to primary source documents and online exhibits, courses and lesson plans.

PROJECTS AND ACTIVITIES

	Dover Publications sells several inexpensive annotated coloring books with Civil War themes, among them The Story of the Civil War Coloring Book, Civil War Uniforms Coloring Book, From Antietam to Gettysburg: A Civil War Coloring Book, Famous Women of the Civil War Coloring Book, and (for fans of Scarlett O’Hara) Civil War Fashions Coloring Book.
	For paper-doll fans, Dover Publications has several Civil-War-era books, among them American Family of the Civil War Era, Southern Belles, and Abraham Lincoln and His Family.
	Maxine Anderson’s Great Civil War Projects You Can Build Yourself (Nomad Press, 2005) is divided into two major sections: “On the Battlefield” and “On the Homefront.” Battlefield projects include making a Civil War bugle – you’ll need a garden hose, duct tape, and a funnel; constructing a pinhole camera (while learning all about famous photographer Matthew Brady); building a model ironclad and paddlewheeler; making a periscope and a working telegraph; stitching a signal flag and learning how to send messages with it; cooking a batch of hardtack; and making your own Union or Confederate uniforms. (First visit a thrift shop to look for old blue or gray suit jackets, Anderson suggests.) Homefront projects are equally inventive, among them making berry ink and homemade paper; stitching a four-patch quilt and a rag doll; making dried apples and molasses taffy; designing a Scarlett-O’Hara-style fan; and constructing a banjo and an Underground Railroad lantern. Also included are a glossary and a resource list of books and web sites. For ages 8-12.
	By the Civil War Trust, The Civil War Kids 150 (Lyons Press, 2012) is a 96-page collection of Civil War projects and activities, intended to accompany the Civil War Sesquicentennial. Among the fifty activities: make your own signal flag and send a message, make your own Civil War map, make “flat soldiers” and take them to Civil War battlefields, locate someone connected to the Civil War, and memorize the Gettysburg Address. For ages 8-12.
	David C. King’s Civil War Days (Jossey-Bass, 1999) (subtitled “Discover the Past with Exciting Projects, Games, Activities, and Recipes) follows the lives of two children through the four seasons – 12-year-old Timothy Wheeler, an African-American boy from New York City, and 11-year-old Emily Parkhurst, a white girl from Charleston, South Carolina.  Activities include making a pressed-flower scrapbook, a papier-mache bowl, and a yarn doll, learning Morse code, playing a game of mankala, and whipping up batches of hardtack and shortnin’ bread. For ages 8-12.

THE CIVIL WAR ON FILM

	Ken Burns’s nine-episode PBS series The Civil War is a masterpiece. Episodes are “The Cause” (1861), “A Very Bloody Affair” (1862), “Forever Free” (1862), “Simply Murder” (1863), “The Universe of Battle” (1863), “Valley of the Shadow of Death” (1864), “Most Hallowed Ground” (1864), “War is All Hell” (1865), and “The Better Angels of Our Nature” (1865). See the website for episode descriptions, video clips, classroom activities and lesson plans, resources, and more. Highly recommended.
	Ten Best Civil War Movies runs the gamut from Gone With the Wind to Birth of a Nation, with descriptions.
	Also see A Teacher’s Guide to Civil War Movies.
	From PBS’s American Experience, Death and the Civil War is an account of the appalling toll the war took. See the associated Civil War by the Numbers.

MUSIC AND POETRY

	By J. Patrick Lewis, The Brothers’ War (National Geographic Children’s Books, 2007) pairs period Civil War photographs with poems in the voices of slaves, soldiers, both Northern and Southern, army nurses, and families impacted by war. For ages 10 and up.
	Poet Stephen Vincent Benet’s John Brown’s Body (Ivan R. Dee, 1990) – described as “an epic blend of poetry and historical fiction” – won the Pulitzer Prize in 1929. It’s filled with wonderful characters, both real and fictional: Clay Wingate, aristocrat from Georgia; Sally Dupre, daughter of a French dancing-master; Jake Diefer, the barrel-chested Pennsylvania farmer; Jack Ellyat, a scholar from Connecticut; and Melora Vilas, raised in the wilderness by her father – a “hider” – who wanted only to avoid the war. A wonderful read; highly recommended for teenagers and adults.
	By Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, who provided the soundtrack for Burns’s The Civil War, Civil War Classics is a collection of songs of the times, among them “Lorena,” “Hard Crackers,” and “Marching Through Georgia” – ending with Ungar’s haunting “Ashokan Farewell.” CD or MP3.
	Poetry and Music of the War Between the States has many examples, categorized under Union or Confederacy.