Having Fun and Learning with Historical Stories of Survival- The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

I’m really excited to share “Having Fun and Learning with Historical Stories of Survival- The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.” It’s a brand new study from Justine Gamble of Making Homeschool Fun. You may remember I reviewed one of her unit studies for the American Girl books about Josefina. My kids LOVED that study. Now, she has a whole new series for the popular I Survived historical fiction book series by Lauren Tarshis.

Today we have a sponsored review post from Making Homeschool Fun. All opinions are honest and my own.

Historical Stories of Survival- The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

The curriculum is a PDF download of 64 pages. It’s perfect for any age student who enjoys the I Survived books. The first thing I did was read through the entire unit study and make some decisions about which activities we were going to do and which ones we were not going to do. There are so many choices!

The basis of the whole unit study is the book I Survived the San Francisco Earthquake, 1906, so be sure to order it or check it out of the library first.

As with most unit studies, you relate your topic to many different subject areas. Justine includes activities for the following:

• Science
• Geography
• Arts and Crafts
• Field Trips and Physical Activities
• Meal/Party Planning
• Additional Books and Resources
• Character Studies
• Language Arts (writing, spelling, vocabulary, biographies)

Extra Links

I really enjoyed the extra links she included that really added to the learning, such as a Virtual San Francisco Museum site that has actual photos from the times of the earthquake in 1906. There are also lots of wonderful book ideas about the actual San Francisco earthquake, about earthquakes in general, and about earthquake science, safety, and survival.

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Lesson Plan

One great idea for how to use this unit study is to follow the 6-week lesson plan that’s included. It’s laid out very nicely for what you are to accomplish each day of each week. For example, on Monday during Week 1 you read chapters 1-3 of I Survived the San Francisco Earthquake, 1906, start the lapbook (color and paste the cover picture to your lapbook), introduce spelling and vocab for week 1, and complete a chapter summary page from the expansion pack.

Remember, you don’t HAVE to follow the suggested plan. I didn’t. What I did since we were doing this during the summer when we weren’t having regular school was read I Survived the San Francisco Earthquake, 1906 at night before bed. Then, we picked a few activities to do during the day.

Here are a few of the activities we chose:

• Made pudding (one of the foods popular from 1906)
• Lapbook
• Mapping
• Notebooking page about California
• Checked out the virtual San Francisco Museum site

Making Pudding:

The Lapbook:

Some others we would have done if during a regular school time:

• Made a model of the Golden Gate Bridge
• Played the File Folder Game
• Wrote a letter as a “survivor” of the earthquake for creative writing
• Watched a DVD about earthquakes

The File Folder Game:

My Take-Away:

This is a really fun way to do some history and science studies in your homeschool. I love the great variety of activities and am and glad that there are notebooking and lapbooking printables. It’s an easy way to use a fun book (I Survived the San Francisco Earthquake, 1906) and learn all kinds of new things. By the way, the I Survived books were written for the author’s sons who don’t like to read. If you have a son like that, this might be the spark they need to get excited about learning!

Other Historical Studies of Survival available:

79 AD: Pompeii