At some point during the students' time in social-studies courses, they likely will be required to answer document-based questions. Usually known as DBQs in schools, these types of essay require students to draw conclusions from several articles, political cartoons and so forth. After analyzing the articles, students are required to answer an essay prompt incorporating a certain number of the documents. Consider handing out documents to third-grade students and having them work in groups to decipher the meaning. Political cartoons and short excerpts are appropriate for this age level. Working in groups is helpful because this will probably be the students' first exposure to such an assignment. You do not need to require them to write an essay.
Through PowerPoint, you can introduce students to components of social studies as well as technology that they can utilize. Assign each group of students a different aspect of a state or country to research. Ideas include geography, culture, history, citizenship and so forth. For a small project to introduce the PowerPoint technology, have each group of students complete only one slide. End-of-the-year projects or midterms can require more slides, depending on your students' abilities.
This is an idea that the entire class can do together, assuming that you have access to a kitchen in the school. For example, you could bake a pumpkin pie from scratch, as opposed to purchasing one, when you study Thanksgiving. To make the activity a bit more educational, you can talk about how and why the colonial people used each of the different ingredients. Create handouts so the students have a take-home reminder of what they've learned.
Have students work on hands-on projects that they can do without assistance from an adult. For example, you might have them work on crafts coming from different lands, such as a Kente cloth, Rasta-inspired jewelry or a dragon float representative of the Chinese New Year. Another idea is to have students create a postcard from a different area of the world in modern times, so that they can learn about the present civilization there.