Literature-based American History through 1812 for the Grammar stage. Part 1: First immigrants and native peoples.

The introduction to this post is here.

When it comes to choosing the books for a literature-based study, "First immigrants and native peoples" was one of the hardest American History topics.  The authors of many otherwise good books used frankly offensive language to describe native Americans.   Even when the language wasn't deliberately offensive, there's often a more subtle emphasis on, say, skin color -- our society is oversensitive to skin color as it is, it's not the main thing I want to point out to my kids, I want them to grow up indifferent to it.   And often the illustrations are even worse, e.g. naked childlike natives cowering in the bushes while triumphant armored manly conquistadors march onto the shore, for example.   (I'm thinking that the real conquistadors didn't look so manly after months on a boat.)   Images are more powerful than words to the child's mind, so I put a really high value on a book's not having awful illustrations.

Since I plan to use my books mainly as read-alouds, I can put up with a certain amount of offensive language and offensive illustrations.  I can choose not to display a particular illustration.  I can choose to substitute one word for another (e.g. "people" for "savages").  Nevertheless I found myself mostly choosing modern books for this topic.

Concurrently with American History  through 1812, I plan to teach Medieval History using Story of the World Volume II by Susan Wise Bauer.   It turns out that the end of SOTW:  Volume II covers the beginning of American History pretty well.  SOTW is not perfect with respect to language about ethnic groups, but it is reasonably balanced and lacks illustrations, so I chose to borrow these chapters from medieval history and move them to the beginning of American History. 

Even when I'm doing a literature-based study, I like to use a survey text to pick up loose ends.  Almost any survey text that covers the necessary time period will do.  The one I chose was Seton Press's The Catholic Faith Comes to the New World. (referred to as "Seton" below).  I am not using the whole text (for instance, I did not like the chapter about Christopher Columbus at all -- it presents him as an unalloyed hero, and even if you think his heroism worthy of emulation, you have to admit that he is a controversial figure today).   

So, over four weeks, we'll read

• Seton, Chapter 1, "The Dawn of History"
• SOTW, Chapter 32, "The American Kingdoms"
• The Wigwam and the Longhouse by Yue
• Hiawatha, Messenger of Peace by Fradin.  Describes the Iroquois prior to European contact.
• Seton, Chapter 2, "The Norsemen"
• SOTW, part of Chapter 14, "The Arrival of the Norsemen"
• Treasure Chests The Vikings (ISBN 978-0762401475)
• SOTW, Chapter 33, "Spain, Portugal, and the New World."
• Optional extra:  Leif the Lucky by D'Aulaire. 
• Optional extra:  First Book of American History by Henry Steele Commager, Chapter 1; read carefully and consider omitting or substituting certain words and phrases.

Next up:  "Europeans Get Interested In The Americas."

Comments

[SteveG]

Hi Erin,
I am finding these posts really fascinating and bookmarking them for future reference.

I am also wondering if you have any posts on what your approach was for 1st and 2nd Grades.

We are just finishing 1st grade with our eldest, and we mostly used a very 'loose' version of the Catholic Heritage Curriculum.

By loose I mean, we followed the reading, and math curriculum fairly closely, but customized the rest and leaned toward more of an unschooling approach in other areas.

Recently, we just finished listening to a set of tals by John Taylor Gatto, and we are both feeling motivated to do something even MORE 'customized' next year.

I find your literature based approach really appealing since all our kids just love to read and be read to.

If you have anything, and if you wouldn't mind sharing it, I'd love to see how you approached 1st and 2nd grade.