Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Local History & Geography - Lake Tahoe

The Local History & Geography block (grade 4 in Waldorf) is a really fun one because every time I teach it to someone they are living in a different part of the U.S. And so I get to learn about all different places!

Right now I am working with a child who used to live in Tahoe and she wanted to do her LH&G block on Lake Tahoe. (Live Education suggests renaming this Local History & Industry to keep it separate from U.S. History, which Waldorf does later. The industries of the region drive a lot of local life.)

So I am going to keep some notes here as we go through this topic. She wants to begin with some of the local animals, which also works for Grade 4 because it's the Zoology year.

Note: Which Way To The Wild West? Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About Westward Expansion by Steve Sheinkin was our main text for this block.


Geography - Introduction


Native People - Washoe


Birds


Mammals


History - Introduction


Which Way to the Wild West?

chapter 1: How the West Moved West


chapter 2: Did Someone Say "Manifest Destiny?"


chapter 3: War, Land, Gold, Trouble


chapter 4: Welcome to the Wild West

    look at 1856 Map of the United States and compare with the state borders of today

    look at 1856 Map of the Western States and compare with the Western states of today

    revisit map of the Oregon Trail and find the gold fields

    revisit map of the California Trail and find Tahoe

    read Tjatjakaymatchan (Coyote) legend
    available online for free at the International Children's Digital Library
    (read after reading "Advancing Civilization?," pp.84-85)

    do United States of America Order of Statehood activity (revisit 1856 map and 1889 map partway through)

      this blank US map with states numbered in order of statehood is available on TpT for $2.50

      In fact, she designed it based on my suggestion! When I was teaching Westward Expansion, I would always have my students sit down one day and color a blank US state map in the order that the states joined the Union. We just use one color of pencil for this. It is fun to watch the color move slowly across the page. It is really fun to see West Virginia stay white for so long (WV broke off from VA over the issue of slavery... WV became a free state while VA stayed a slave state).

      When I gave feedback to the seller for her very nice blank US state map, and told her how I was using it, she created a new map which has the states numbered in order of statehood! This is really handy if you are working with a child who doesn't feel confident recognizing the states if you just called out the names in order.

      The next time I do this, I think what I would like to do is to have two colors. Color the original 13 in one color (this was the starting size of our country) and then color the remaining 37 in a second color.

      It may also be interesting to fill out the map key page with the 2 letter postal abbreviation beside the year the state joined the Union. That way children can see the passage of time in a different way. List of States by Statehood Date (PDF)

    note: when we got to "Indian Territory" on the 1889 map, she asked to see a map of the current Tribal Lands in the US (there are 574):
    Indian Reservations in the Continental United States

    we revisited the Topography of the United States as well (the Navajo people, the only indigenous people allowed to return to their homeland, were living on desert land that wasn't good for farming)

    Map of Original Navajo Homelands


chapter 5: Out of the Way of the Big Engine


chapter 6: Race You to Utah


chapter 7: Cowboys vs. Farmers

    I loved her "Cowboys" 2-page spread in the MLB. Her illustration was of a campfire with musical notes all around it, and we listened to Git Along Little Dogies (AMERICAN FOLK SONGBOOK by Suzy Bogguss) while she was drawing. She loved it so much she added all the lyrics to her MLB (two more 2-page spreads)!


    Cowboys and Cowgirls: Yippee-yay!
    by Gail Gibbons

    read desired chapters after "It's Not Getting Easier," pp.164-165:


    by Laura Ingalls Wilder
    chapter 25 "The Glittering Cloud"
    chapter 26 "Grasshopper Eggs"
    chapter 32 "Grasshoppers Walking"

    chapter 37 "The Long Blizzard"
    chapter 38 "The Day of Games"
    chapter 39 "The Third Day"
    chapter 40 "The Fourth Day"


    The Long Winter
    by Laura Ingalls Wilder
    chapter 21 "The Hard Winter"
    chapter 23 "The Wheat in the Wall"
    chapter 24 "Not Really Hungry"

    Georgia O'Keeffe was our artist study this week, and it seemed to fit in really well!


    My Name is Georgia
    by Jeanette Winter
    Georgia O'Keeffee (1887 - 1986)


chapter 8: The Road to Little Bighorn &
chapter 9: The End of the Wild West


You will have to decide how much actual history is suitable for this block, depending on the age of your child. For example, if you are homeschooling in a mixed-age environment, your older child might do some of the lessons from Stanford History Education Group and your younger child would not.

Here is the full List of Reading Like a Historian Lessons.

Some lessons which would tie in well with Which Way to the Wild West?:

    Louisiana Purchase

    Lewis and Clark SAC

    Texas Revolution

    Manifest Destiny OUT

    Gold Rush and San Francisco

    Irish in 19th-Century America

    Evaluating Sources on Juana Briones

    Reconstruction SAC

    Thomas Nast's Political Cartoons

    Great Plains Homesteaders

    Battle of Little Bighorn


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