History.

This has happened before:  As soon as we get well settled into the rhythm of the school year, I'm thinking of the next one.  Not because I'm super organized -- I think it's a form of procrastination.  There are a dozen more urgent projects on my plate right now, and it's just so much more pleasant to leaf through the curriculum catalogs and dream about far-off third grade.  (I think this is one of the reasons that, despite it being my favorite season, I've never managed to celebrate Advent in our school year  more than the bare minimum of wreath-lighting.  When the first Sunday of Advent arrives I've been too busy thinking about next September, and I'm ransacking the attic for the stub-end of a purple candle while Mark is setting the table for Sunday dinner.)

Anyway, what's been on my mind mostly is history.  It's time to take the long range view and see how studying different periods of history will fit together.  I made up my mind to cover world history in the cycle suggested by the Pandia Press History Odyssey sequence: ancient, medieval, early-modern, modern, repeat.  This doesn't leave room for a history year dedicated to U. S. history, so I think I'm going to break U. S. history into three chunks -- somehow -- and cover it concurrently for third, fifth, and sixth grades.  Fourth grade we'll do Minnesota history. 

The Minnesota Historical Society publishes its own elementary school state history curriculum, which I likely will use.  The whole country is another story.  I'm not optimistic about finding a satisfactory U. S. history curriculum complete with text -- though if anyone knows of a well-written "living" survey text of U.S. history, even an older one, along the same lines of A Child's History of the World, please pass it on.  I think I'm going to cover U. S. history "topically," roughly chronologically, for the elementary school years, mostly with books from the library.  I took a similar approach this year when we decided to study earth science.

I'll start by getting a college-level survey text or study guide.  The Barron's The Easy Way series is what I used for earth science; they have one for U. S. history and I suppose I will check it out first.  That's just to guide me in the selection of material to cover so I don't inadvertently leave anything out.  Then I'll break the chronology into topics and set a rough schedule of how long to spend on each one.  Finally I'll work from lists of high-quality, living books to develop a list of read-alouds and independent reading that cover each topic.  Primary sources will be a big chunk of the read-alouds.   I expect to use more biography than anything else, in part because Oscar likes biography, in part because there are plenty of biographies of significant Americans written for children, and in part because biographies tend to be some of the better-written history for children.    I think I'll use a fair amount of historical fiction too.  I doubt we'll need to do much work beyond reading, narration, and discussion, though some interesting projects may present themselves along the way.

One thing I would like to do is choose a common thread of development on which to hang all of the historical facts, some tiny area of history that evolved continuously and which can be followed all the way through, something in which changes drive other changes.  Mark and I came up with a few of those on our way down.  Agricultural technology is one idea, and one I like a lot for these years because it's concrete.  Monetary policy is another one, vastly important and something I would like to know more about, but I think too abstract for elementary school.  Military technology and theory is a third one, also appealing.  There is the collective concept of the scope of political rights, how they have expanded and contracted over the years, how they might expand or contract in the future.   Another good one might be the shifting of power among the three branches of government, or among municipal, state, and federal government plus international alliances.

Comments

[Christy P]

You might want to check out http://historytools.org/

My friend David is a historian at UW-Green Bay and likes to think about how to teach history. His focus is not elementary school, but you might find it useful nonetheless.

[Linda]

Try reading historical fiction aloud and keeping a timeline. The timeline puts things into a concrete context for children and the stories help them connect to the people of the time. Use lots of non-fiction picture books for some hands-on illustrations and you're all set. I used this in a modified form when teaching for a (public) school board; used it (with Catholic commentary) while homeschooling my daughter and her friends; am using it now in a private school set up by homeschoolers with multiple grades (again with Catholic commentary). For ancient history, look for "A Place in the Sun" (Egypt) and find a retelling of The Odyessy for ancient Greece. If you enlist your childrens' librarians, they will have a long list to help you.

[bearing]

Both of those are really good suggestions. There are a number of good primary sources at Christy's link, plus a good overview reminding how to read them.

I used _Black Ships Before Troy_ -- a most excellent and exquisitely illustrated retelling of the Iliad -- with my kids before beginning ancient history this year, and it has been one of their favorite read alouds of all time. The same author and illustrator have an Odyssey, which I plan to read to them later this year.