Readers learn how to make their own cowboy hats, gold nugget pouches, and woven baskets as they explore the history of the American West! These crafts and more are shown to readers through step-by-step instructions and helpful photographs of the process and the finished product. The included crafts are meant to enhance the lessons readers learn about the settlement of the West, including the history of Texas and the journeys taken on the Oregon Trail. Sidebars and fact boxes provide additional information, and historical images place readers in the middle of life on the frontier.

Painting in a romantic style that owed much to Michelangelo, Blashfield (d.1936) was a pre-eminent muralist in the U.S., painting the ceilings of state capitols, courthouses, banks, hotels, churches, libraries, and residences in the Northeast and Midwest. This illustrated volume catalogues his work and includes essays on his oeuvre, the conservation of the murals, and the legacy of his students.--Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This book relays the factual details of the Oregon Trail and the United States' westward expansion in the 1800s. The narrative provides multiple accounts of the event, and readers learn details through the point of view of a pioneer, a Native American in a territory crossed by the trail, and a U.S. soldier at a government outpost. The text offers opportunities to compare and contrast various perspectives in the text while gathering and analyzing information about an historical event.

The first biography in over sixty years of a great American artist whose paintings are more famous than the man who made them. George Catlin has been called the “first artist of the West,” as none before him lived among and painted the Native American tribes of the Northern Plains. After a false start as a painter of miniatures, Catlin found his calling: to fix the image of a “vanishing race” before their “extermination”—his word—by a government greedy for their lands. In the first six years of the 1830s, he created over six hundred portraits—unforgettable likenesses of individual chiefs, warriors, braves, squaws, and children belonging to more than thirty tribes living along the upper Missouri River. Political forces thwarted Catlin’s ambition to sell what he called his “Indian Gallery” as a national collection, and in 1840 the artist began three decades of self-imposed exile abroad. For a time, his exhibitions and writings made him the most celebrated American expatriate in London and Paris. He was toasted by Queen Victoria and breakfasted with King Louis-Philippe, who created a special gallery in the Louvre to show his pictures. But when he started to tour “live” troupes of Ojibbewa and Iowa, Catlin and his fortunes declined: He changed from artist to showman, and from advocate to exploiter of his native performers. Tragedy and loss engulfed both. This brilliant and humane portrait brings to life George Catlin and his Indian subjects for our own time. An American original, he still personifies the artist as a figure of controversy, torn by conflicting demands of art and success.

Embarking on a new life in a new place, Zoe and her family journey west to the Nebraska Territory in the 1800s. They build their soddie, but in the endless miles of prairie, it can't be seen from any distance, so Zoe plants dandelions on their soddie.

The #1 New York Times bestseller by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important chapter in the American story that’s “as resonant today as ever” (The Wall Street Journal)—the settling of the Northwest Territory by courageous pioneers who overcame incredible hardships to build a community based on ideals that would define our country. As part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler was instrumental in opening this vast territory to veterans of the Revolutionary War and their families for settlement. Included in the Northwest Ordinance were three remarkable conditions: freedom of religion, free universal education, and most importantly, the prohibition of slavery. In 1788 the first band of pioneers set out from New England for the Northwest Territory under the leadership of Revolutionary War veteran General Rufus Putnam. They settled in what is now Marietta on the banks of the Ohio River. McCullough tells the story through five major characters: Cutler and Putnam; Cutler’s son Ephraim; and two other men, one a carpenter turned architect, and the other a physician who became a prominent pioneer in American science. They and their families created a town in a primeval wilderness, while coping with such frontier realities as floods, fires, wolves and bears, no roads or bridges, no guarantees of any sort, all the while negotiating a contentious and sometimes hostile relationship with the native people. Like so many of McCullough’s subjects, they let no obstacle deter or defeat them. Drawn in great part from a rare and all-but-unknown collection of diaries and letters by the key figures, The Pioneers is a uniquely American story of people whose ambition and courage led them to remarkable accomplishments. This is a revelatory and quintessentially American story, written with David McCullough’s signature narrative energy.

This 8-week interdisciplinary unit for fourth- and fifth-grade students helps children address the U.S. westward expansion in the 1840's using the interactive software program, The Oregon Trail. The unit provides connections to literature, geography, computer/mathematics skills, language arts, and research skills. The work is done in cooperative groups over the course of the unit with a variety of assessment strategies suggested. Worksheets, handouts, and student materials are included. Upon completion of the unit students will be able to: (1) locate and identify the states along the Oregon Trail; (2) identify reasons for westward expansion; (3) gain a basic understanding of some of the native North American culture; (4) participate in collaborative group activities; and (5) demonstrate knowledge of life in the 1840s--food, clothing, families, etc. Selected bibliography contains 32 items. (EH)

Illustrated with 200 stunning photographs and encompassing objects from furniture and ceramics to jewelry and metal, this definitive work from Jo Lauria and Steve Fenton showcases some of the greatest pieces of American crafts of the last two centuries. Potter Craft

Explore the Wild West! 25 Great Projects, Activities, Experiments invites young readers ages 6–9 to experience the spirit of the Wild West. Kids learn about explorers who mapped the American West, Native Americans, gold miners, cowboy culture, cattle drives, Wild West legends, frontier towns, peacekeepers, lawbreakers, and much more. Through projects ranging from making a settler’s soddie to mining for gold, kids develop a better understanding of the rich history of the Wild West in the 1800s.

Lists all the resources needed to create a balanced curriculum for homeschooling--from preschool to high school level.