The Roaring Twenties for Kids

What was life like in the 1920s?

In the aftermath of World War I, the 1920s roared with change and excitement. The Industrial Age was booming! Prohibition, jazz, the Shimmy, the Charleston, the car craze, talkies, speakeasies, flappers, gangsters, bubble gum, traffic lights, electrification, the Scopes Monkey Trial, the Red Scare, the Teapot Dome Scandal, Mickey Mouse, the Harlem Renaissance; it was an exciting new era.

World War I was over. Factories no longer needed to produce supplies for the war. Factories began producing consumer goods - things for people to buy. There were new inventions, like refrigerators and cheeseburgers. A new type of music, jazz, was invented in New Orleans and rapidly spread. Silent movies were no longer silent, with the first talkie - The Jazz Singer. Prohibition, a new law, made it illegal to transport or sell alcohol. As a result, speakeasies, illegal bars where people could drink, dance, and listen to jazz, sprang up everywhere. Flappers, young girls in the 1920s, wore their hair short, their dresses loose, rode in cars, and worked outside the home. Women got the vote! Gangsters got the speakeasies! Immigrants got the tenements!

Welcome to the Roaring Twenties for Kids!

Jazz! Games for Kids

What Sounds Like ... Jazz Game

Awesomeness - Jazz Beats and Rhythms

Lyrical Solarium Jazz game

Harlem Renaissance for Kids, games

Interactive - Paint the Harlem Renaissance

Langston Hughes for Kids

Prohibition for Kids

1920s Slang (from The Great Gatsby)

The Great Gatsby Game - Rags to Riches

The Great Gatsby - Games, Matching, Flash Cards, Review

Roaring Twenties Dance Craze (quick video)

Scopes Trial Monkey Trial, Butler Act - in 5 minutes, video

Women get the right to vote (1920, School House Rock)

Native Americans get the Right to Vote 1924

Walt Disney - the 1920s project, the birth of Mickey Mouse

1920s ... and along came Babe Ruth!
(Baseball started during the Civil War in the 1860s.
President Lincoln built a baseball diamond on the White House grounds.
But Babe Ruth made baseball history in the 1920s)

Silent Movie Short: Charlie Chaplin - The Lions Cage

Silent Movie Short: Buster Keaton - Funny Horse

The First Talkie - The Jazz Singer

The Stock Market Crash of 1929

Comparing the 1920s to Today in a nutshell

Take the Quiz, Interactive (with answers)