At the end of the year, you might want to have your students compile their journals into a book to be placed in the school library. They might want to add a report summarizing what the students have learned about the contributions of everyday people during the war. If this project is done with as part of a colonial unit, you could actually follow these families all the way through the history of the nation, watching how generations of the family live. Create your own school saga. After an intense unit like this, students will understand that history is about people, not just battlefields and dates.
Every person has an effect on the progression of our nation.
The generals mattered, but so did the mother who let her son go to battle, the wife who kept the family business going while the man was away, the child who helped to hide a slave and the grandmother who figured out how to feed a family during food shortages. The woman who wrote the book about slavery is as important as the legislatures who allowed it. There were millions of people doing amazing things who never made the history books.