Steps to the American Revolution

Have you ever thought about the American Revolution and how the colonists got to that point? It’s not like they woke up one morning and said, “I feel like overthrowing the most powerful government right now.”  No, there were gradual steps to the American Revolution. This made for a super fun history lesson with my kids one day as I had them gather a bunch of materials and it’s a fun addition to our American Revolution Unit (interesting I thought I had that written) for our US history lessons.

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These past few weeks we’ve been looking at the steps to war as we worked our way through the chapter in All American History.

Steps to the American Revolution

The British government declared the American colonists were not allowed to move past the Appalachian mountains.  This angered many people who were looking to move out of the “crowded” East Coast (imagine what they’d think of now!).

A high tariff was put on all imports and exports.  That’s why this needed such a scary ship to represent this.

They put a tax on sugar!  My kids all agreed this was terrible.  They had no idea the colonists disliked it because it cut down on their rum production.

They started housing soldiers in people’s homes (this angered the people so much you’ll notice this is one of the first 10 amendments).

They taxed all paper and official documents.  My kids really didn’t see why this was so annoying.

And finally, or at least all I got pictures of, they put a tax on TEA!  Oh the horrors!  I can tell you in our house we would be paying quite a high tax on that.  We go through quite a lot.  Also, there are many who think this is why American drink so much coffee, because they took to drinking other beverages in response to the tea tax.

This really helped them get the reasons.  I could tell they were remembering it because this was actually done over quite a few days.  Yeah for remembering!

Wondering what else happened in American History?  Check out my US history page.