World War 2 {history resources}

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World War 2 is such a huge event from our country’s history that I found it difficult to find and read and share everything with my kids that I felt was important!! So, I started collecting ideas and books in this post so that I could share them with you!!

My favorite book for this study of WW2 is Great World War II Projects You Can Build Yourself ! It is more than a project book, so the title might be a little misleading, because I also used this as a book I read to my kids! Each section or chapter had a great summary of each of the huge subjects related to WW2.

Topics from the book:

• life in the U.S. while the troops were away
• supporting the troops
• food rationing
• fashion from the time period
• prisons & concentration camps
• spies
• women in battle and in the workforce
• war technology
• important people

In addition to reading 1 section of this book each day, we also read lots of other great books about this time period.

Books We Read

• Potato: A Tale From The Great Depression
• Pearl Harbor : Ready To Read Level 3
• Who Was Anne Frank?
• Pearl Harbor Child : A Child’s View of Pearl Harbor from Attack to Peace
• A Picture Book of Anne Frank
• The Hiding Place (dvd of this story – excellent!)
• A Boy Named FDR: How Franklin D. Roosevelt Grew Up to Change America
• Who Was Franklin Roosevelt?
• The Harmonica
• The Butterfly
• Grandfather’s Journey

Movies We Watched

• The Hiding Place – if you have not read the story of Corrie Ten Boom or seen the movie, I beg you, READ IT!! Her life will inspire you to faith and greatness! These are the kinds of stories I want my children’s education to center around!! Amazing!
• The Diary of Anne Frank

More Resources

• Homeschool in the Woods ~ 20th Century Lapbook (we were privileged to review this product at exactly the right point in our american history studies!)
• The Butterfly – free unit study from HSS
• The Harmonica – free unit study from HSS
• Anne Frank website – this is really cool! You can go on a “virtual tour” of the hidden home that the Frank’s lived in.
• Holocaust Museum website – on this particular page there is video from Holocaust survivors

Activities

• The start of WW2 ~ helping kids figure it out
• Ration book activity 
• Barter activity – bring various items in for each child and have them practice bartering with each other! (one child could have 10 pencils, one child 10 hershey kisses, one child 10 sticker sheets, etc.)
• Field Trip to see my grandpa ~ my grandfather was a pilot in WW2 and is still living in Knoxville, TN! We went to visit him specifically for him to tell us about the war a few years ago. We also read Grandfather’s Journey at the time.