National Endowment for the Humanities
Neh: Edsit Ement: Then and Now Life in Early America
Select from lesson plans that challenge learners to compare everyday objects from colonial times to present day objects. Links to sites with photos and other primary sources will assist students in their comparison.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Becoming American: The British Atlantic Colonies, 1690 1730
Primary resource material on the ideas, scientific and religious, of the colonial period from 1690 to 1730.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Becoming American: The British American Colonies, 1690 1763
Explore these primary source documents detailing the growth, peoples, economies, and ideas relating to the British American Colonies in the 18th century. Features notes and discussion questions.
Other
American Centuries, View From New England
A multi-purpose site that provides information on history and historic artifacts from New England. There are also some interesting games that serve to enhance learning about New England. Be sure to watch video demonstrations of Early...
Other
New York State Museum: Colonial Albany
Provides information about life in the colonial village of Albany. Includes many resources about important structures, happenings, and people. A great resource for information on colonial America as a whole.
![History Project: Identifying Colonial Diversity Through Passenger Lists [Pdf] Lesson Plan](https://d15y2dacu3jp90.cloudfront.net/images/attachment_defaults/resource/large/FPO-knovation.png "History Project: Identifying Colonial Diversity Through Passenger Lists [Pdf] Lesson Plan")
University of California
History Project: Identifying Colonial Diversity Through Passenger Lists [Pdf]
Lesson plan using primary sources in which students examine colonial ship passenger lists to identify diversity in the colonies.
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Colonial Williamsburg: Experience Colonial Life
Experience colonial life through a variety of narratives. Topics include the African-American experience, animals, Christmas, clothing, family, food, gardening, manners, politics, religion, tools, and trades.
Other
San Francisco Unified School District: Colonial Faire Project
A large collection of high-quality resources for learning and teaching about the Thirteen English Colonies. The main page outlines examples of student project possibilities. There are individual pages for primary resources, people from...
Stanford University
Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: King Philip's War
[Free Registration/Login Required] Lesson in which students analyze original documents to evaluate the conflict between colonists under King Philip and Native Americans.
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Colonial Williamsburg: Meet the People
Meet the people of colonial Williamsburg! Content includes a focus on the life of African-Americans, colonial children, tradesmen, and elite members of society. Special focus is also placed on the lives of George & Martha Washington,...
PBS
Wnet: Thirteen: Colonial House: For Teachers: 'Tis a Very Dirty Manner of Life
Interactive adjunct to the popular PBS series Colonial House, which follows the efforts of modern-day families attempting to live as early colonists in seventeenth-century Maine, focuses on the language and expressions common to that...
Organization for Community Networks
Academy Curricular Exchange: A Practical Experiment in Colonization
A detailed lesson plan depicting life in the early American colonies.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: English Ii, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Three seventeenth-century homes in Pennsylvania and New York and three accounts from those English colonies of the factors leading to prosperity and permanence.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: English Iii, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Three seventeenth-century buildings, two portraits, and three original accounts from Virginia and the Carolinas about the qualities and conditions of life in these southern English colonies that led to success and growth.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Rebellion, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Five documents that examine a range of reactions to colonial rebellion and associated resistance to royal authority in English colonies in Barbados, Virginia, and Massachusetts.
National Endowment for the Humanities
Neh: Edsit Ement: American Colonial Life in the Late 1700s
In this very detailed lesson plan, students will explore what life was like during colonial life in the late 1700s. Students will use what they have learned to write fictional letters to a cousin.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Teacher Serve: Religion, Women, and the Family
This National Humanities Center site from the University of Delaware discusses family life, childrearing, and the importance of religion in colonial America as written about in various books.
University of Groningen
American History: Outlines: Colonial Period Society
This site provides an explanation of the influence of the frontier on the landed gentry and the role of education in the society.
Digital History
Digital History: Social Class in Colonial America [Pdf]
By examining primary sources such as diaries and tax records, and a chapter from a secondary source, learn about the social classes apparent in colonlial America. Suggested student exercises guide crtitical thinking assessment of the...
Digital History
Digital History: Diversity in Colonial America
Read about the diversity in colonial America and the ways founders of colonies tried to encourage settlement in their colony.
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Colonial House
Colonial House video segment in which Colonists and the Passamaquoddy people encounter each other for the first time in a reenactment of a New England settlement in 1628. [4:38]
Scholastic
Scholastic: Teaching With Dear America: Colonial Period
Activities useful in presenting American colonial life. Find references to novels, a colonial home, and a diary entry activity.
Yale University
Yale New Haven Teachers Inst: Architecture of New England and Southern Colonies
This site is part of a curriculum unit containing in-depth and detailed information comparing the architecture of colonial New England and the colonial South. It discusses how the archictecture relects the lives and the society of the...
Schools of California Online Resources for Education
Local Court Procedure and Personell
A descritpion of court personell and each of their roles in Colonial court proceedings.