A reading of Tanya Lee Stones' biography of Ella Fitzgerald lets middle schoolers get up close and personal with the First Lady of Jazz. Stone recounts details of Fitzgerald's life from her early days through her experiences as a teenage...

Score a home run with this packet of information on the very first player of the Negro League to be elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame — cultural groundbreaker and sports legend Satchel Paige. These worksheets include a...

How does or society punish people who break the law? What effect does guilt have on a person's life? In what way does or society demand we conform to certain conventions? Such questions, found in this study guide, are sure to...

Do you want to hear a joke about nitrogen and oxygen? NO. We all know there is oxygen in the air and that plants produce oxygen, but how was it discovered? Scholars read a handout, answer questions, and analyze material in the...

A timeline can be a powerful learning tool because it reveals a pattern in events. While few would consider St. Augustine, Florida a hotbed of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, a selection of background information and a timeline of...

The America that greeted the first Europeans was, thus, far from an empty wilderness. It is now thought that as many people lived in the Western Hemisphere as in Western Europe at that time -- about 40 million. Estimates of the number of...

At this site from Encyclopedia Brittanica, Inc. you can follow brave-hearted women through a timeline of unbelievable "Herstory." Impressive site tracks the unsinkable American woman from Early American adventurers like Sacagawea and...

Among the most famous women in early American history, Pocahontas is credited with helping the struggling English settlers survive.

The early 1600s saw the beginning of a great tide of emigration from Europe to North America. Spanning more than three centuries, this movement grew from a trickle of a few hundred English colonists to a flood of millions of newcomers....

Hired by the Dutch East India Company, Henry Hudson in 1609 explored the area around what is now New York City and the river that bears his name, to a point probably north of present-day Albany, New York. Subsequent Dutch voyages laid...

The first Native-American group to build mounds in what is now the United States often are called the Adenans. They began constructing earthen burial sites and fortifications around 600 B.C. Some mounds from that era are in the shape of...

By 1640 the British had solid colonies established along the New England coast and the Chesapeake Bay. In between were the Dutch and the tiny Swedish community. To the west were the original Americans, then called Indians.

The religious and civil conflict in England in the mid-17th century limited immigration, as well as the attention the mother country paid the fledgling American colonies.

Time-worn pueblos and dramatic cliff towns, set amid the stark, rugged mesas and canyons of Colorado and New Mexico, mark the settlements of some of the earliest inhabitants of North America, the Anasazi (a Navajo word meaning "ancient...

History reference page for elementary students provides an overview of early American history from the age of Columbus through the Civil War and abolition of slavery. Includes links to teacher resources.

Had history taken a different turn, the United States easily could have been a part of the great Spanish or French overseas empires. Its present inhabitants might speak Spanish and form one nation with Mexico, or speak French and be...

The early 1600s saw the beginning of a great tide of emigration from Europe to North America. Spanning more than three centuries, this movement grew from a trickle of a few hundred English colonists to a flood of millions of newcomers....

Time-worn pueblos and dramatic "cliff towns," set amid the stark, rugged mesas and canyons of Colorado and New Mexico, mark the settlements of some of the earliest inhabitants of North America, the Anasazi (a Navajo word meaning "ancient...

The success of the Revolution gave Americans the opportunity to give legal form to their ideals as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and to remedy some of their grievances through state constitutions. As early as May 10,...

By 1640 the British had solid colonies established along the New England coast and the Chesapeake Bay. In between were the Dutch and the tiny Swedish community. To the west were the original Americans, the Indians.

The religious and civil conflict in England in the mid-17th century limited immigration, as well as the attention the mother country paid the fledgling American colonies. In part to provide for the defense measures England was...

Whatever early colonial prosperity there was resulted from trapping and trading in furs. In addition, the fishing industry was a primary source of wealth in Massachusetts. But throughout the colonies, people relied primarily on small...

For a variety of reasons, those who came to settle the early colonies sought a new homeland. Puritans, for example, established several settlements in Massachusetts. These English colonists were a pious, self-disciplined people who...

Such social reforms brought many women to a realization of their own unequal position in society. From colonial times, unmarried women had enjoyed many of the same legal rights as men, although custom required that they marry early. With...