Lorraine Jean Hopping • Hopping Fun Creations

I teamed up with my sister Louise Hopping, a veteran middle school social studies teacher, to create and classroom test these American history games. All the games include easy–to–copy and assemble boards, cards, rules, and other components. There's also a two-sided poster with a colorful Courageous Colony game board and historical photo game. For grades 4 to 8.

Students keep asking to play these games:

Passport to America Immigration Guessing Game
Famous Quotation Bingo
State Capital Map Search
West Quest Timeline Game
Hear Ye! News Story Relay (Revolutionary War)
North or South? Civil War Fact Game
Courageous Colony game (based on early Virginia colonies), including a poster-sized, full-color game board
Muckrackers Game (progressive era), also including a poster-sized game board

Louise and I wrote this second activity–packed American history book by starting with primary sources—narratives, eyewitness accounts, photos, statistics, maps—and weaving them into 15 creative, ready-to-go activities, including plays, readings, a TV broadcast, movie story boards, graphing activities, and more.

A few of our favorite activities:

Freedom in a Box News Broadcast (based on a slavery narrative by Henry "Box" Brown)
Coming to America Dramatic Reading (immigrant stories)
Tea Party Story Boards (Revolutionary War eyewitness accounts)
Factories on Trial Simulation and Reenactment (using actual transcrits from three child labor hearings)
Connect the Depot Dots Map Study (transcontinental railroad data)
Million Mile March (using data to map and calculate slavery escape routes)

This jam-packed, cross-curricular activity book explores inventors and inventions of the past and present, inventive thinking skills, and how inventions are made and marketed. I was thrilled when the book received a rave review from Scope, the social studies teacher magazine. For grades 4 to 8.

Kids love extremes! The top and bottom of the Earth are about as extreme as our world gets. These engaging activities cover history, geography, science, language arts, and math. For grades 3 to 6.