Routes to California

We just started our unit in social studies on the Gold Rush. It is by far my favorite unit in social studies!  We do lots of hands on activities to enhance our knowledge. Here is one of the them!
We start by reading the corresponding lessons in our text book to build our back ground knowledge.  These two lessons include topics about who and where gold was discovered, the routes taken to California, life in mining camps, and tools that miners used.  After we are done with our reading, we take a trip to the computer lab where we read more about the routes people took to get to California on PBSkids.org  

You can check it out here

Journey of the Forty-niners

Students completed the following worksheet with basic information about the routes and then have to evaluate whether or not they would want to take that route and why.  

We take these worksheets and put them in our "California Binder" which is a collection of work from social studies this year.

The site has other information about the gold rush that students can read if they finish early! My students always love an excuse to go to the computer lab and this activity keep them quiet but engaged for a solid half hour!