First and second grade history: What I did.

Commenter SteveG asked in the previous post how I approached history and geography in first and second grade.

Well, first of all, this is my first time through it -- my oldest is finishing second grade now.  I didn't have an overall structure in mind when I started, although one is forming in my mind now.

For first grade, I used an idea from a lovely little spiral-bound preK-12 curriculum plan called Natural Structure:  A Montessori Approach to Catholic Education at Home, which unfortunately seems no longer to be available (I bought it three or four years ago from Catholic Heritage Curricula).  First grade, was for an introduction to the idea of "the past" through biographies.  I chose a handful of American saints for whom I could get decent kids' biographies.   They were (let me think) --  St. Katharine Drexel, St. Frances Cabrini, Bl. Damien of Molokai, Bl. Junipero Jose Serra, and St. Isaac Jogues.  I chose this assortment because they spanned American history pretty well and because they lived out their lives in lots of different geographical areas.

We studied each saint over a five-week period:

• Week 1, we read the biography together.  (I arranged the saints in order from shortest book to longest). 
• Week 2, we discussed the saint's family and community life in childhood and adulthood, and talked about how the saint's family helped him or her grow in holiness and discern his vocation.  Who were his parents? Did he have siblings? What kind of house did he live in? What kinds of things did he wear? What did he eat? What language did he speak? How did he arrive at his vocation? What virtues were present in his home? After leaving the home of his parents, how did he live out his vocation? Did he live in a family, in a community? What was family life or community life like in the places he went? What were the usual expectations for boys and girls, for men and women, in his time? What virtues did he display? How did he come to our attention? How did he come to be beatified (and canonized?) Of what or whom is he the patron and why? Are there any well-known prayers to this saint?   My point was that the family is where we learn how to live out our vocations, where we learn how to go out in the world and become a part of society at large.  A truly Catholic approach to "social studies" has to emphasize repeatedly that the basic unit of society, and the origin of all its values, is the family.   
• Week 3, we used maps to find the places that the person was born, lived, worked, traveled, and died, as well as any significant places that were named after the saint. 
• Week 4, we made a timeline for the saint's life, and marked the saint's birth date, death date, beatification and canonization (if applicable) on the big timeline.
• Week 5, the plan was to discuss other things that were going on in the world at the time the saint was living.  I wound up not doing this very much, though, probably mostly because I didn't prepare by acquiring a good historical resource, something that's pretty easy to open up to the right time period and talk about.  It would be much easier if I'd had a pictorial history encyclopedia -- I've since acquired a couple.  The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History is a good one.

Second grade, I decided to study ancient history.  I've not studied very much history and had forgotten my own world history (my high school course was woefully bad, and my college course was fragmented), so I chose to follow a purchased curriculum.  I picked   History Odyssey by Pandia Press.  This curriculum is a set of lesson plans.  It uses Story of the World, A Child's History of the World, and the aforementioned Usborne book as main texts; supplies a set of blackline maps with instructions for using them; and suggests many other activities that you can pick and choose from as you like.  We mostly stuck to reading and discussion, copywork (definitions mostly), and map work, doing a handful of the suggested crafts and art projects as we had time, and occasionally reading some of the suggested literature.  If I had it to do over again (and in a way I sort of do, as I'm going to use History Odyssey again for medieval history next year) I would do all the lesson plans but not in the order they are given in the book.  The topics are arranged in the order that they appear in the Usborne encyclopedia, which causes you to skip around in SOTW and CHOTW.  Instead I'd arrange the lessons in the order that causes you to read SOTW from beginning to end.

I like to use the method of "narration" at this stage to aid recall and memory.  That is, I stop in my reading aloud and ask Oscar to tell me back what I just read, explain why something or other happened, things like that.   Every once in a while I take down a longer narration that he dictates while I type.  (For example, this.)   He wrote his definitions in a history notebook; in that, we also pasted the completed map worksheets and recorded narrations.  If I was more into scrapbooking it would probably look pretty cool.

We haven't got there yet, but in a week or two when we finish the ancient history curriculum we will spend a week making a timeline poster.  I intended to keep a poster that we added to throughout the year, but unfortunately the baby ripped it up after a few weeks and I never got around to repairing it.  So we're doing it as a "capstone" type project at the end.

Comments

[SteveG]

Whoah! Great stuff and thank you for taking the time to post this!

I am going to read this a bunch more times and share it with my wife so we can digest it and use it as a good reference.

Now though, of course you know I want to pick your brain even more.

Two other questions jump to mind and I hope you don't mind my continuing to ask (and please, if you decide to respond, do so at your leisure).

First, you mention using good Pictorial Encyclopedias for history, and specifically reference Usborne and History Odyssey....but do you have/use a more general Encyclopedia as well (beyond history)?

We'd been pondering getting the Childcraft Encyclopedia's, but we've heard both good and bad things about them. Do you recommend them or something like them?

Both the boys (7 and almost 5) are in the mode of constantly asking 'how does that work?' or 'how do they make that?' type questions. The response is often...'We'll have to look into that.' But more often than we'd probably like to admit, life gets in the way of follow up.

It would be great to have a resource that's more handy (that doesn't involve a screen) that we could readily turn to.

Finally, off the history topic itself...the other place where we feel we need to beef up what's going on is in the area of writing.

Reading...we are doing great.
Math...even better.

Writing...not so much.

What's your general approach in this area?

[bearing]

Steve, I answered your encyclopedia question in a separate comment.

As for writing, we have not done any "written" composition at all at this stage. He is still working pretty hard on orthography now. Oscar is doing copywork (I choose examples of good writing for him to hand-copy neatly and correctly), dictation (I read short passages for him to write out, then we correct his spelling and punctuation).

He does oral narration for his "composition." For example, I might ask him to summarize a story we just read, or explain what led up to a historical event, or tell the steps of long division -- whatever. He tells me out loud. I take down what he says. Then together we clean it up so it says exactly what he wants it to say.

The narration technique allows him to express himself at greater length than he would be able to do if he were hand-writing a composition. His handwriting is still physically quite slow and a long composition would be frustrating. Meanwhile, the copywork helps him develop the ability to write long passages. I plan to bring it together next year -- the next stage is "intermediate double dictation," where he dictates his composition, I write it out correctly, and he hand-copies the correct composition.

[SteveG]

Thank you so much for the responses! TONS of useful stuff.

I really like the plan you've laid out for enhancing writing skills and we are definitely going to be borrowing some of this.

He's just 7 and he's probably still a good bit behind even in the orthography mastering, but if nothing else it's nice to know that he's about where he should be.

[steveg]

by behind...I mean behind your 8 year old.

[bearing]

SteveG, google "Charlotte Mason" for more information about narrations and copywork.