Card sets, mats, and teacher keys
The hands-on pieces that go with Launch Control lessons — cut-apart card decks, placement mats, and the teacher key for each. Print straight from the page. Nothing to download, no email, no account.
Every set works on its own, too. If you teach the Columbian Exchange or colonial labor systems from any curriculum, the cards do not care which planner you use.
Columbian Exchange Pathway Cards
24 pathway cards · Atlantic placement mat · 5 conquest-factor cards · teacher key
Students place each transfer on the Atlantic, label the mechanism that moved it, and explain one consequence — so the lesson lands on unequal effects, not a two-column list of foods.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 1.2 · ReadyRegional Evidence Cards
21 cards · 4 pages at 6 per page · seven regions · cut on the dashed lines
Twenty-one evidence cards across the seven regions, a placement mat, and a teacher key.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 1.3 · ReadyExploration Cause Cards
19 cards · 4 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Nineteen cause cards, a three-tier hierarchy mat, and a teacher key.
Print the set → APUSH Topics 1.5–1.6 · ReadyColonial Labor System Cards
12 cards · 2 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Four labor-system case cards, eight evidence cards, a causal chain board, and a teacher key.
Print the set → APUSH Topics 2.1–2.2 · ReadyFour-Empire Strategy Cards
22 cards · 4 pages at 6 per page · four empires · cut on the dashed lines
Sixteen strategy cards, six constraint tokens, a four-empire comparison mat, and a teacher key.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 2.2 · ReadyClaim Audit Cards
16 cards · 3 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Four claims about colonization, twelve evidence cards — several of which cut against the claim they sit near — a verdict mat, and a teacher key.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 2.3 · ReadyJamestown Decision Cards
15 cards · 3 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Fifteen cards — pressures, decisions, and consequences — plus a four-stage decision board.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 2.3 · ReadyThree-Region Evidence Cards
18 cards · 3 pages at 6 per page · three regions · cut on the dashed lines
Eighteen evidence cards across New England, the Middle Colonies, and the Southern Colonies, a systems mat, and a teacher key.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 2.4 · ReadyAtlantic Trade Cards
18 cards · 3 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Eighteen cards — commodities, policies, and consequences — plus a five-stage causal network board.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 2.6 · ReadySlavery Development Cards
16 cards · 3 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Sixteen cards and a causal-ranking board.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 2.7 · ReadySociety and Hierarchy Cards
18 cards · 3 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Eighteen cards covering who held power in colonial society and how migration, religion, and print changed it, plus a mat and a teacher key.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 2.8 · ReadyEvidence Tournament Deck
20 cards · 4 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Twenty evidence cards, a category board, and a teacher key.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 1.6 · ReadyWorldview Evidence Briefs
15 briefs · 3 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Fifteen briefs on how European, Indigenous, and West African peoples understood land, kinship, religion, authority, and exchange — with a comparison mat and a teacher key built to stop the caricature this topic invites.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 2.5 · ReadyConflict and Diplomacy Cards
18 cards · 3 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Eight case cards covering conflict and alliance across colonial North America, ten source-provenance cards, a sourcing mat, and a teacher key.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 2.6 · ReadyRegional Slave Systems Cards
18 cards · 3 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Eight labor-setting cards and ten resistance and community cards, with a regional caseboard and teacher key.
Print the set → APUSH Topics 4.2–4.3 · ReadyFederal Power Hearing Cards
18 cards · 3 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Eighteen cards — cases, constitutional arguments, and consequences — with a hearing board and teacher key.
Print the set → APUSH Topics 4.10–4.11 · ReadyRevival Cause Cards
18 cards · 3 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Eighteen cards — causes, methods, and consequences — with a network board and teacher key.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 4.12 · ReadyBlack Freedom and Community Cards
18 cards · 3 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Eighteen cards on the institutions free and enslaved Black Americans built, the constraints they faced, and the arguments they made — with a board and a teacher key.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 4.13 · ReadyCotton South Cards
18 cards · 3 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Eighteen cards tracing how cotton demand became the forced migration of roughly a million people within the United States — with a systems board and a teacher key.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 4.4 · ReadyEarly Republic Diplomacy Cards
18 cards · 3 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Eighteen cards on how a young republic pursued security, trade, and territory — including the Native diplomacy that most treatments skip — with a strategy board and a teacher key.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 4.9 · ReadyNational Culture Gallery Cards
18 cards · 3 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Eighteen cards on how Americans built a national culture — and on who was written out of it — with a provenance mat and a teacher key.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 5.1 · ReadySectional Crisis Strand Cards
16 cards · 3 pages at 6 per page · four strands · cut on the dashed lines
Sixteen cards across four strands — slavery expansion, the party system, sectional economies, and ideology — with a four-strand board and a teacher key.
Print the set → APUSH Topic 5.2 · ReadyManifest Destiny Motive Cards
18 cards · 3 pages at 6 per page · cut on the dashed lines
Eighteen cards — motives, justifications, and the competing claims expansion overrode — with a claims mat and a teacher key.
Print the set →What is not here, and why
Every card-based material named in Periods 1 through 5 now exists. What is deliberately not here: historical maps, census tables, and primary-source sets — those are real documents, and each pack page says which ones to supply yourself rather than faking them.
Want one sooner? Email thesimulationlabedu@gmail.com and say which lesson.
Why this page exists
Launch Control lesson plans name the manipulatives a lesson is written around — pathway cards, evidence decks, placement mats. Some of those were described in the plan without a matching file ever shipping, which sent teachers hunting through the download for something that was not there. Rather than delete the activities, the cards are being built for real and posted here, free, whether or not you own the planner.
If a lesson you are teaching names a card set that is not here yet, the lesson still runs: the four files inside every lesson kit — Teacher Run Sheet, Student Activity Packet, Evidence and Source Guide, and the Opening, Assessment, and Exit Sheet — carry the organizers, prompts, and response space. The cards are the hands-on upgrade, not a dependency.
Back to the APUSH Skills Lab · See the full catalog
Written and reviewed by Josh, classroom history teacher and Simulation Lab creator. Published and reviewed August 19, 2026. Print and copy freely for your own classroom. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the College Board.