Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Colonial Williamsburg: Redefining Family
This site from the Colonial Williamsburg Museum explores the different "families" of colonial Williamsburg. Content includes a focus on each cultural group: white, Native American, and black.
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]
PBS
Pbs Teachers: Benjamin Franklin: An Extraordinary Life (Teacher's Guide)
Go directly to the teaching resource that accompanies the PBS series "Benjamin Franklin: An Extraordinary Life, An Electric Mind" to find eight lesson plans that support the study of Benjamin Franklin and his place in history. Lessons...
Other
New Netherland Institute: New Amsterdam Kitchen: Domestic Life in New Netherland
Provides information about the foods eaten by settlers in New Amsterdam and how they prepared it. Describes the different utensils and dishes that were used for cooking and for food consumption.
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Colonial Williamsburg: Gardening in the 18th Century
Site offers young scholars the opportunity to design their own gardens. Several disciplines can be used through this imaginative group instructional activity.
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Colonial Williamsburg: Religion in Early Virginia
This examination of religion in Virginia gives you an idea of where Anglicanism fit into colonial life there.
SMART Technologies
Smart: Colonial Life
Factors that shaped British Colonial America. Compare and contrast life in the New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Southern colonies.
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Colonial Williamsburg History
This page goes directly to the homepage of Colonial Williamsburg, which historically reenacts the life of early English settlement in Virginia.
Library of Congress
Loc: Teachers: Geography and Its Impact on Colonial Life
Beginning with a discussion on how people adapt to or relocate to environments, this lesson encourages young scholars to explore why the Colonists settled in specific regions. In groups, students examine primary documents, analyzing...
PBS
Africans in America: Phillis Wheatley
This website briefly describes the life of Phillis Wheatley, poetess and freed slave.
PBS
Liberty: Chronicle of the Revolution: Diversity
A brief look at the population increase in colonial America. Find out where all these immigrants came from and what they did in the colonies. From PBS.
Independence Hall Association
U.s. History: Beginnings of Revolutionary Thinking: What Is the American?
Even colonial America was a melting pot of people from far away. Read about the diversity of the population and why it had an effect on the possibility of rebellion and revolution.
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of American History: You Be the Historian
Exercise involves learners in figuring out what life was like two hundred years ago for the colonial American Springer family by examining objects and documents they left behind.
The Henry Ford
The Henry Ford: A Colonial Family and Community
Students are asked to be historical detectives. Using primary documents, they uncover information about the life and community of the Daggetts of northeastern Connecticut in the 1700s.
Library of Congress
Loc: America's Story: Roger Williams
Highlights the life of Roger Williams, his defense of religious freedom in Boston, and the foundation of Rhode Island. Offers photographs of several important parts of his life.
History Teacher
Historyteacher.net: Late 17 C and 18 C American Society: Quiz (1)
This 11-question multiple choice quiz is immediately scored and includes a variety of questions covering life in the early colonies.
Georgia Department of Education
Ga Virtual Learning: Colonial Literature: Slave Narratives
This lesson focuses on Colonial period slave narratives including the autobiography, "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano" by Olaudah Equiano. Links are provided to the narrative and the website Africans in America:...
Other
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation: Charles Cornwallis (1738 1805)
Charles Cornwallis began his career sympathizing with the colonist's views before the Revolutionary War, but loyalty to the king won out when called upon to suppress the rebellion in America. Learn about major events in his life, battles...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: Abigail Adams and "Remember the Ladies"
Lesson using primary resource to explore how Abigail Adams's famous appeal to "Remember the Ladies" is a reflection of the status of women in eighteenth-century America.
Curated OER
Wells Thorn House: 1600 1740: Early Colonial Style: Interior Room
An interior view of an early American colonial parlor.
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.
Varsity Tutors
Varsity Tutors: Archiving Early America: Early Virginia River Trade
Learn about the waterways in Virginia that colonists used to expand their way of life, especially for tobacco sales.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Harcourt: Biographies: Anne Hutchinson (Spanish)
A review of the events in the life of Anne Hutchinson, a brave, early American settler. Learn how Anne Hutchinson felt about religion and the way people should worship God. (In Spanish)
Read Works
Read Works: Growing Up Long Ago
[Free Registration/Login Required] An informational text about the typical life of a child during the 1800's. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in reading comprehension.