Seeds of Change: Semester Review
Download the PDF for this coloring page here.
Friends! We’ve made it through a whole semester of our virtual accurate history class together! This experience has been an experiment in what material we can cover with elementary kids- what to include and what to soften, how we can present complicated stuff in engaging ways. As far as I’ve found, there is not currently a homeschooling curriculum of accurate (not white-washed) American History for young elementary kids (our group had kids from Kindergarten to 5th grade). After spending the semester working to put together lessons with hands-on activities for these kids, I think it’s fair to say that this kind of curriculum can work with this age group. The kids seemed the most engaged when we showed them a bad children’s book or YouTube video on the subject we were studying and we asked them to point out what the author/illustrator/video creator got wrong. Over the last several months we have tried to tell the stories we were taught in school with the relentless repetition of the three questions listed above: Who writes the stories? Who benefits from the stories? Who is missing from the stories? I am really proud of these kids, and the compassion and insight they have shared with us each week as we’ve worked through the history of Pre-Columbian North America and colonization. We didn’t make it very far in the historical timeline (only up to 1621), but this is because we didn’t want to start the conversation when the white people entered the room. The story really started way before that. The people in those stories are just as much a part of American history as the white people who took Powhatan land in Virginia and Patuxet in Massachusetts. I fully believe that these kids will finish this semester with an enhanced ability to think critically about historical materials they come across. Even if they don’t know the full story, I think that they’ll know what questions to ask.
I wanted to use this last blog post to share a condensed list of some of the invaluable resources we’ve used to make these classes every week. In most cases, these resources will need to be modified a bit to work with a young elementary audience, but we think they’re a great foundation for continued study and learning.
Books
An Indigenous People’s History of the United States for Young People
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
Stamped
A Young People’s History of the United States
Websites
Khan Academy US History - I have been so impressed with the videos in this course. Check out this video on Spanish colonization in the 15th century to see what I mean. I’ll be using this resource a lot in the future.
American Indians in Children’s Literature - Or literally anything else by Dr. Debbie Reese. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram, read her blog. I have learned a lot from her this semester.
Zinn Education Project - Tons of lesson plans on accurate history subjects. These are mostly intended for traditional in-person classrooms but can be modified to work for virtual/homeschooling.
National Museum of the American Indian - Great lessons, videos, and FAQs about Indigenous nations of North America.
TEDEd - There are some great videos on TED Ed, like this one from Historian Hasan Kwame Jeffries and this one about fracking that I linked to in our lesson about the Dakota Access Pipeline. But beware! They’re not all winners. They link to a Kids Academy video about Jamestown that is so egregiously bad that we used it as an example of garbage history for the kids to pick apart.
Thank you for being a part of our Seeds of Change class! It has been such a great experience for me to relearn this history alongside so many wonderful families.
