Today's history selections.

Week one of literature-based 20th-century U. S. history:

• I passed five blank cards out to each child and asked them to write the following dates on the cards:  1492, 1776, 1860, 1865, 1900.  We discussed each of these dates and why I want them to remember them.  (1900 is just a big round number, useful for that reason.  Last year, I made them memorize that McKinley was president in 1900.)
• I passed out another card and had them write "1918" on it.
• First we read about World War One.  We used Joy Hakim, History of US, volume 9, Preface, which explains the start of WWI and the Americans' entry into it.  Then I read selections from three library books -- almost any random WWI books will do -- to talk about trench warfare, submarines, and poison gas weapons.
• Then we discussed the "Spanish influenza" epidemic.   I read the short children's novel Hero Over Here by K. V. Kudlinski, which is the story of a boy who has to take care of his flu-stricken family and friends when the epidemic hits his town.  It's about 55 pages.
• Then I had them repeat the two things I want them to remember about 1918:  the end of WWI, and the flu epidemic.

It went by pretty quickly.  Next week:  WWII.  Part of it, anyway.

Comments

[Hannah]

And... they kept pretty glued to the reading, too!

[bearing]

I know! I have learned that drawing little bitty planes and tanks and bullets and ships on scraps of paper doesn't necessarily mean they are not listening :-)

[bibliotecaria]

Just to help with first-person sources, you might want to go to the Veterans History Project (www.loc.gov/vets). They do actually have some oral history of some of the last WWI veterans, plus they have other digitized material of diaries and photos, etc. They have LOTS more for WWII, etc.

[MelanieB]

I love this highly focused look at one day's lesson. Too often homeschooling blogs give you the big picture but don't show you the nitty gritty of how those plans play out in a single day.

About the little bitty planes and tanks and bullets and ships... I can so relate!
Once in college a philosophy professor pulled me aside after class to express his concern about the very elaborate drawings with which I was decorating my notebook margins during his lecture. I told him the time to be concerned was when I was _not_ drawing. I really do listen better when doodling. Mine tended more towards flowers and Celtic knot designs though. Not so much on the tanks and bullets.

[bearing]

Yeah, I draw the line at "pow pow" sounds though.