World War 2
By : admin

“One land, one flag, one heart, one hand, one nation evermore.”

-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Welcome to our World War 2 homeschool unit! Here you will find ideas and suggestions for putting together a unit study for your 1st-4th students on World War 2. This unit incorporates history, language arts, science, and geography into a 1 week study. This topic is particularly heavy and can be very sad for young kids at certain points. You must decide what you see fit to teach your children, depending on their ages. At the end of the page, you can find a suggested schedule and supplies. Unrelated, but we also studied plants and flowers along with this unit. You can find the link to that unit here. Enjoy!

Books & Videos

Before every unit, I put books on hold from the library. There are so many great resources out there at the library that are completely free! I find project books, art books, science experiments, and more. For this unit, I pulled out many books on Anne Frank and WW2. For the young kids, I almost always look for a Magic Tree House book on our topic. It’s concise and easy for the kids to understand. If the book has a read-aloud from YouTube, you can click the title for the link:

  • “Magic Tree House Super Edition – World at War 1944” – Mary Pope Osborne (chapter book about WW2 in France)
  • “American Kids in History: WW2 Days” – Chris King (book of hands on projects with stories)
  • “The Cats in Krasinski Square” – by Karen Hesse (short story)
  • “Who was Anne Frank?” – by Ann Abramson (biographical chapter book)
  • “The Harmonica” – by Tony Johnston (short story)

There are also two short videos to watch about WW2 and Anne Frank. They are both from the same YouTube channel, which has two young girls explaining history. This helps my kids relate and understand the historical concepts:

Science

Using the project book, we chose one science experiment to complete during our World War 2 homeschool unit study. My children chose a simulation of how a jet powered engine works. During World War 2, most if not all of the planes were propeller-driven. However, the invention by the Germans of using a jet-powered flight was invented in the late 1930’s.

To demonstrate jet propulsion, you can do a simple experiment with a balloon. If you don’t have the WW2 project book, you can watch this video to see how to set up the experiment. The supplies required are: two chairs, one balloon, tape, cardboard, fishing line, and a drinking straw.

Make sure you have a big space in the room, as the chairs need to be set about 10ft apart. Once set up, the kids would blow up the balloon, then let it go and watch it sail across the room. Both fun and Educational! To further our study on how jets and rockets work, we also watched this Dr. Binoc short episode.

World War 2 Homeschool Unit Geography and Poland Lapbook

To study geography, I was lucky enough to find a free homeschool lapbook for the girls to make about Poland. This lapbook goes along with the book “The Cats at Krazinski Square”. You would not need to have the book to do the lapbook (we skipped all the parts about cats). The girls were fascinated by the polish culture. We also listened to some polish music while we created this book. To make the lapbook, you need a file folder and some glue. I let my kids put the items wherever they choose. This lapbook included a comparison of climate and information about the geography of Poland.

Polish Recipe

Tying into our lapbook, on Friday we looked up some polish recipes! The kids decided on making a polish coffee cake. You can find an easy recipe on this website. I will make a note: this was a rather time intensive recipe (the dough alone took 2 hours to rise!) However, it was worth the time it took to make. This worked best by starting the dough before we began our studies for the day, and then baking it at the end.

We started with mixing the dough, and putting it in a pan to rest in the (unheated) oven. After the dough had finished rising, we starting working on the crumb topping. We followed the recipe, except I did add one ingredient — cinnamon! — because what is a coffee cake without it?! After baking for 30 min it turned out really well, and I think my kids may be trying more polish food in their future.

World War 2 Homeschool Unit Writing Assignment & Wrap Up

That’s just about the end of our World War 2 unit! This topic is a difficult one for young kids to take in, but I find it a necessary unit to teach. My kids were very appreciative of the world we currently live in after reading some of the stories! Our writing assignment for the week was to write a personal narrative about something that has happened in your own life (just like Anne Frank.) For my 2nd grader, that was a simple paragraph and for my 3rd/4th grader, a 3 paragraph essay which she edited on Friday. Hope you enjoyed our unit! Below is the suggested schedule and supplies.

World War 2 Homeschool Unit Suggested Schedule:

Week 1

  • Monday: Poland Lapbook + Geography
  • Tuesday: Science Experiment
  • Wednesday: Writing Assignment
  • Thurs: WW2 videos
  • Fri: polish recipe, paper editing

Supplies:

  • balloon
  • fishing line
  • straw
  • 2 chairs
  • tape
  • cardboard
  • file folders
  • glue stick
  • paper
  • printer
  • scissors
  • flour
  • sugar
  • butter
  • cinnamon
  • eggs
  • salt
  • 1 packet of dry yeast
  • milk