War of 1812 craft

Hi, Future Ticia 2025 here, and I’m updating this ancient post. I still love this book, but I also admit it’s probably out of print, and while the War of 1812 craft is a fun one, it’s easily adapted to pretty much every war we’ve ever been in, so this history lesson can easily be adapted to any time period now, and isn’t quite as limited to an expanded American Revolution Unit or Westward Expansion Unit, depending on how you classify it. Are you an expanded American Revolution considering the War of 1812 just the American Revolution part 2 or are you considering it part of our Manifest Destiny and our push to get to the West Coast?

Okay, I turn you over to Past Ticia 2011, I’ll pop back in as I update this post more, and turn back in from time to time.

Now, how many of you went “What War of 1812?”  Honestly, now?  This is a slightly lesser-known bit of homeschool history lesson, but I quite enjoyed the lesson with my kids.

And then, how many of you thought of this song?

Or maybe I’m the only one who actually knows this song.  But it came up within the first two hits on my search.

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Our inspiration for this War of 1812 history lesson

Cornstalks and Cannonballs was a surprisingly cute book about a small town in Delaware during the War of 1812, and how they scared off the British army.

It’s a great example of ingenuity and how you can do quite a lot with limited resources.

Now, I’m gonna admit that you probably won’t be able to find that book, so let me find you some other resources.

War of 1812 resources

I’m going to start with my YouTube videos, and I have it as part of my American Revolution playlist, so that answers your question of where I mentally put this.

That does mean the two time periods overlap because the concept of Manifest Destiny starts during Jefferson’s presidency with the Louisiana Purchase (you could argue it starts even before we became a country when we start arguing with England over moving into the Ohio territories, but that’s another discussion to get into).

The War of 1812 happened during the Madison presidency. Wait, no, it’s Monroe.

Bother, I don’t feel like verifying this. It’s one of those Virginians. I’m being lazy. I should know this.

These videos are geared more for junior high or high school. I would recommend previewing them because a few of them have humor in them that you might not like.

First is a lecture from a high school teacher for his AP classes, I wish he had more of these up because I love them.

Next, we have Tom Green’s Crash Course US history.

The rest of my War of 1812 videos are specific to certain battles and would get way too specific for what I’m doing here.

So, we’ll ignore this.

Okay, now let’s look at some general books to help out.

Hmmm…. It looks like my library no longer has any good overview books for the War of 1812 for younger kids. It has books on how we got our national anthem, and on how the White House was burned down, and how people helped save specific national treasures, but nothing on the war itself.

Deep sigh.

Oh well, never mind.

War of 1812 craft

Supplies: old-fashioned clothespin, markers

 

After reading this I thought it would be fun to make our own little soldiers.  The kids agreed, too.

It’s a very simple craft.  I took some old-fashioned clothespins and pre-painted them skin tone, though you could easily leave them wood colored.

Then they kids had fun drawing their soldier on.  Superman, happily drew a happy side and a sad side.  He also drew some other things which I had to talk to him about.  Boys!

If you can find a copy of this book, I highly recommend it.  It’s not scary, it provides a good amount of detail about what’s going on without getting into too much detail for little kids.

Adapting to other time periods

Okay, so this is easily adapted to other time periods by just drawing the uniform of the other time periods, right?

After all, I very much remember having an assignment way back when I was in elementary school where I was given one of these clothespins and told to make a “traditional dress for the country my family was from.” I did a terrible job of creating the traditional dress of Sweden, and another child from my class had an amazing doll that almost certainly was created by her parent that was from Japan. It looked like it was from a store.

In retrospect, I recognize her parents completed her assignment for her, but at the time I was so jealous of the fact that she had such an amazing project and mine looked so terrible.