What will you pack in your covered wagon?

Pack a covered wagon activity

Okay, even more future Ticia 2022, I updated this in 2017, and while this is truly more of a history lesson for US history, I originally made this into a great geography lesson for our Ohio Unit. While I could just jump right into the post, instead I’m going to leave you with my original story…

The problem with many of the “frontier” states, and at one point Ohio was a frontier, is there are a lot of similar books and ideas in them.  I found a couple of great stories and all of the original ideas I had I’d done before or I wanted to save until we got to a later frontier state.

Poor me.  In my head as I say that I’m hearing “Poor Wendy, poor Wendy….” from Mary Martin Peter Pan.

(Future Ticia here, I’ve been going back through and updating old posts, usually, I don’t republish them, but this week I thought to show off my cute little kids again, giant man-boys are not as cute as little kids, also I just spent yesterday at the Holocaust museum, so I wanted to look at something not at all depressing)

But I did end up with our covered wagon activity, and I figure I can repeat it later if need be.

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Our inspiration books for the covered wagon activity

Aurora Means Dawn is a great book about a family who heads out west to a promised thriving town only to find things aren’t as they pictured.  It was a great way to talk about what it would have been like with no stores, no neighbors, and few supplies.

Warm As Wool is a story about a family that is living in the cold Ohio winter and doesn’t have warm enough clothing.  Finally, the Mother is able to get some sheep and how hard they work to grow their flock.  I would have loved to of gotten some wool roving to go with this book, but then I would have had wool roving and I’m NOT going to pick up wool felting.  I have ENOUGH hobbies. (Future Ticia here, I did end up buying wool roving, but that was for another project and we did end up trying to spin yarn when we learned about Gandhi, it didn’t go well)

I really liked these books, but there’s a whole slew more I need to share with y’all about Westward Expansion.

Supplies needed for pack a covered wagon activity:

scissors, glue stick, printable (on the subscriber page, join my newsletter!)

Our pack a covered wagon activity

When I first thought of this pack a covered wagon activity I’ll admit I was thinking about the Oregon Trail game I played in school as a kid.  At the beginning of the game, you picked everything you thought you needed to survive.  Then you had to put some back because it wouldn’t all fit in your covered wagon.  I simulated the same idea by only giving them a limited amount of space and lots of fun-looking items to pack.

I set them to packing their covered wagons (link goes to the printable).  We spent a long time talking about what was needed to go West on our wagon trains.  After talking for a while and reading the books, I think the kids mostly did a good job of thinking through their plans.  The only thing they didn’t really choose that I thought would have been smart was seeds.  Otherwise they stuck to good planning.

Some more great American history ideas to go along with the covered wagon

• Civil War picture books
• Create your own Declaration of Independence
• Make a quiet doll
• Start of World War 1