Instant curb appeal.

If you can claim that an educational tool has curb appeal – this one does!

 

 

Famous Figures of the American Revolution – sold by Timberdoodle individually or included in their third grade curriculum kit. I was excited to receive these cut outs in exchange for writing this review.

“Mom, can we please open those little guys?” the kids would beg.  Before I ever even gave permission to open the book and begin the cutting and pinning they had divided up who would get which historical character – Berg had his eye on Davy Crockett.  (Or was it Daniel Boone?)

 

 

I chose to do double duty, multi tasking with the historical figures when I finally did say “Yes! Open the figures.  Let’s do this project!”  While they were occupied cutting and coloring and using those extremely tiny brads to attach legs to bodies and arms to bodies and coon skin caps to heads I read a story to them.  It was the perfect kitchen table project for listening to a bulk of our Read Alouds that day.

There are many different characters and they are well drawn – with two options for each historical figure.  One figure is already colored and designed.  There is also an additional character without coloring so that you can color Betsy Ross in whatever clothing you would like – although it seems wrong to color good old Betsy in any colors with names like electric sun or burnt umber.  But whatever – I didn’t offer any rules for this coloring session.

 

 

There was a little pile up because we only have one tiny hole puncher (which you could do this project without but I wouldn’t recommend it).  The figures require a LOT of hole punching – which is quite fun for kids.  And a package (or two) of those tiny brads – also very fun for my kids.  All of the kids at my table could handle the hole punching and the brads just fine, but anyone younger than Otto at 7 might have a bit harder challenge to punch the holes and match up the brads over and over and over again.

 

 

After the reading was completed and the figures were all assembled – everyone enjoyed a rather jolly good time with the figures – dancing Molly Pitcher and posing Thomas Jefferson.  Their legs are satisfyingly bendy and that’s all my kids need to create a whole flat world for their flat history people.

 

 

You could really do a lot of creative narration and learning with these figures.  Having them out during the reading of their lives and time periods lends itself naturally to narrations from Benjamin Franklin.  Photographs with the famous fellows and ladies or video work with them is another simple but fun idea. Stories acted out and retellings from their tiny paper mouths are just a couple of ideas your kids could do with these figures.

 

 

Storage of the finished pieces can get a little tricky if you’d like them to stay in shape.  You could use a folder or you could get a shoe box sized storage box to keep them in as well.

There are plenty go them to keep you kids occupied during many Read Alouds and it’s always a successful idea to engage children in history through creative play.

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