Planning Modern History Study

You can't buy books if you don't have some idea of what you're planning to study. So I'm trying to figure out what we're going to study in the final year of our first trip through our history rotation. It'll be quite some time before we get to actually learning this stuff, but it will also take some time to figure it out and then we have to buy the books. So now is a good time to start figuring out what we're going to learn. We'll be using Story of the World 4 as our spine. Books I do not have are in italics. Church History in the Fullness of Times is abbreviated CHFT.

Unit 1: Britain's Empire (Sepoy Mutiny 1857)

Read-alouds: The Secret Garden
Biography: At Her Majesty's Request: An African Princess in Victorian England
Church History: Danish translation of the Book of Mormon (1851). Note family history connections.
Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young (bio. sketch, choose any chapter)
A Short History of Wisconsin ch 1-2
Presidents & Prophets: William Henry Harrison, John Tyler



Unit 2: West Against East (Crimean War 1853-1856)
History Reading: Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun
Biography: Florence Nightingale(On My Own Biographies)
Church History: Handcart companies rescued (1856) and Johnston's Army (1857-1858)
Family History: Watch Mountain of the Lord. This includes the account of Johnston's Army, the burying of the Salt Lake Temple foundation, and the problems this caused, as well as Archibald Gardner's council to dig it out and start again.
Short History of Wisconsin ch 3-4
Presidents & Prophets: James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor



Unit 3: British Invasion
Literature: The Jungle Book
Biography: David Livingstone: Courageous Explorer
Presidents & Prophets: Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce


Unit 4: Resurrection and Rebellion (Taiping Rebellion 1850-1864)
Church History: Tabernacle completed (1867) Read an address from conference on Oct 6 1867
Additional topic: Fugitive Slave Law/The Underground Railroad. What was the Underground Railroad. The Last Safe House by Greenwood
Dread Scott Decision (We the People: Civil War Era)
Literature: My Indian Boyhood by Little Standing Bear
Short History of Wisconsin ch 5-6
Presidents & Prophets: James Buchanan



Unit 5: American Civil War (1861-1865)
Church History: CHFT chapter 30 deals with the Civil War. Joseph's prophecies to Douglas
Lincoln-Douglas Debates (We The People: Civil War Era)
Biographies: Ulysses S. Grant by David C. King, and in the series, also Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee.
Additional Reading: (Little Women). Behind Rebel Lines, Abraham Lincoln & Frederick Douglas: The Story Behind an American Friendship. More from A Short History of Wisconsin.

Church History: Abraham Lincoln and the Church from this BYU essay.
Short History of Wisconsin ch 7-8
Presidents & Prophets: Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln:  the Gettysburg Address

Additional topics: Read Riders of the Pony Express by Moody, Old Yeller by Fred Gipson, Germ Hunter: A Story About Louis Pasteur


Unit 6: Two Tries for Freedom
Presidents & Prophets: Andrew Johnson
Additional Literature: Mountain Wolf Woman: A Ho-Chunk Girlhood


Unit 7: Two Republics, Three Empires, One Kingdom

Movie: The Scarlet Pimpernel

Presidents & Prophets: Ulysses S. Grant


Unit 8: Becoming Modern
Biographies: DK Biography: Thomas Edison
Literature: Ten Mile Day And the Building of the Transcontinental Railroad
Church History: CHFT chapter 31 deals with the coming of the transcontinental railroad; All That Was Promised by Yorgason
Family History: The diary of Robert Gardner includes a section on his family's sacrifices to provide wood for the St. George Temple. 



Units 9 & 10: Two More Empires, Two More Rebellions;
A Canal to the East, and a Very Dry Desert (Suez Canal 1869)

Additional Reading: Krakatoa by Nardo
Family History: The Life of Archibald Gardner


Units 11 & 12: The Far Parts of the World;
Unhappy Union
Additional Reading: Feed the Children First by Lyons

Additional Topic: Booker T Washington: Great American Educator
Church History: Signers appear to Wilford Woodruff; Death of Brigham Young. CHFT 416-421.


Unit 13:Old Fashioned Emperor &  the Red Sultan


Unit 14: Two Czars & Two Emperors

Additional Reading: Before the Communist Revolution by Kallen
Discuss commentary on communism by prophets and apostles in A Glorious Standard
Church History: A Decade of Persecution (1877-87), CHFT 422
The House of the Lord: Cache Valley and the Logan Temple(DVD) (1884)

Additional Topic: Statue of Liberty (1885) Lady Liberty: A Biography


Unit 15: Small Countries with Large Invaders

Teachings of the Presidents: John Taylor (bio. sketch, choose any chapter)

Additional Reading: Ellis Island: An Interactive History Adventure
Additional Topic: Segregation/Plessy v. Fergussin (1896) Plessy V. Ferguson: Separate But Equal? (Landmark Supreme Court Cases)
Church History: The Case of Brigham H. Roberts of Utah & The Reed Smoot Hearings CHFT465-470



Unit 16: Expanding United States

Additional Reading: Caddie Woodlawn by Brink; Little House in the Big Woods by Wilder. People of the Big Voice: Photographs of Ho-Chunk Families, Native People of Wisconsin, They Came to Wisconsin. More from A Short History of Wisconsin.
Church History: Salt Lake Temple - Mountain of the Lord(DVD) Note family history connections.


Units 17 & 18: China's Troubles
Europe and the Countries Just East
Church History: The Manifesto, CHFT 439
Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Wilford Woodruff (bio. sketch, choose any chapter)

William McKinley 2 Inaugural Addresses (1897, 1901)
Additional Topic: Klondike Gold Rush (1897). Call of the Wild by London
Church History: President Woodruff dies; Lorenzo Snow becomes Prophet: CHFT 452
Solving the Church's Financial Problems: CHFT 454-456
Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Lorenzo Snow (bio. sketch, choose any chapter)


Unit 19: China, Vietnam - and France

Legend of the Teddy Bear by Murphy
Additional Reading: Water Buffalo Days by Nhuong

Church History: 1909 Statement by the First Presidency on the Origins of Man & Evolution CHFT 488-489
Additional Topic: The Wright Brothers: A Graphic Novel
Biography:  DK Biography: Marie Curie

Additional Literature: Cheaper By the Dozen

Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph F Smith (bio. sketch, choose any chapter)


Unit 20: Revolution in the Americas... War in the World

Additional Reading: Where Poppies Grow by Grandield
Stubby the War Dog by Bausum
In Flanders Fields by Granfield
DK Eyewittness: World War I
Woodrow Wilson's 2nd Inaugural Address (1917)


Unit 21: A Revolution Begins, and the Great War Ends

Additional Reading: Cher Ami: WWI Homing Pigeon by Dunn

Additional Literature: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Cricket in Times Square
Biography: Albert Einstein by Wishinsky,


Unit 22: National Uprisings

Additional Reading: Gandhi by Demi, The Kingfisher Treasury of Irish Stories, by James Riordan




Unit 23: "Peace" and a Man of War

Additional Reading: The Russian People in 1914



Unit 24: The King and Il Duce
Additional Reading: Fascism by Downing


Unit 25: Armies in China

Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1st & 2nd Innaugural Addresses (1933, 1937)


Unit 26: The Great Crash and What Came of It

Additional Reading: American Voices from the Great Depression by Ruggiero
Church History: The Church in the Great Depression CHFT 509-516. The First Presidency and the New Deal: Letter to the Treasury in 1941 Speech: The Law of Consecration by Victor L. Brown
Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Heber J. Grant (bio. sketch, choose any chapter)


Unit 27: Civil War & Invasion

Additional Reading: Armistice: 1918


Unit 28: The Second World War

Additional Literature: Number the Stars by Lois Lowery, World War II by Willmott
Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: George Albert Smith (bio. sketch, choose any chapter)


Unit 29: The End of World War II

Additional Reading: 1000 Paper Cranes, The Berlin Wall by Grant
Dwight D. Eisenhauer's Inaugural Addresses (1953, 1957)

Unit 30-34: skip

Unit 35: The Cold War

Additional Reading: The Space Race by Collins
JTeachings of the Presidents of the Church: David O. McKay (bio. sketch, choose any chapter)
Speech: Socialism and the United Order by Marion G. Romney


Unit 36: Struggles and Assassinations

Additional Reading: SB Fuller: Pioneer in Black Economic Development; SB Fuller's speech: "It's Not Racial Barriers That Keep Blacks From Prospering." Linda Brown, You Are Not Alone

Lyndon B Johnson's Inaugural Address (1965)


OK. That looks like plenty. More than enough. It's so hard to guess where we need to be in a year and a half or more. Maybe I should enroll myself in "Overachievers' Anonymous." But hey, no matter what I plan, we'll likely do less, so it makes more sense to me to make ambitious plans and have good achievement, than it does to make moderate plans and do only an adequate amount. In any case, we'll adjust as we go along when we get there. And planning now lets me buy the books a bit at a time. My budget likes that.

The Poop Parts

"Look! It's the poop parts!"

"Yep. Those are called intestines, and they make poop."

He digs around in the body some. 

"Look! More poop parts!"

"Well, actually, those are pee parts. They're called kidneys."

Gotta love spontaneous science!

My Little Talker

My little Dragon is a precocious talker. He has a ton to say, and has an excellent grasp of language for his age. Only, he's got the ordinary little kid challenges with saying his consonants, and so it's often hard to understand him. According to this chart, it's completely developmentally normal that he can't quite twist his tongue around an S, F, L, SH, CH, and a couple of other sounds. Problem is, he doesn't know it's normal, all he knows is that sometimes he can't get an answer to his questions because the Daddy and I can't figure out what he's saying to us. Drat the asynchronous development!

Ordinarily, I wouldn't be too concerned, but he's getting frustrated enough with this situation that if I don't catch the question the first time, he'll cover his eyes and refuse to repeat it. I really don't want him to feel like asking questions isn't worth his effort, so I've been looking for some ideas to help him figure out how to get his tongue to twist around some of those tricky sounds. To that end, I've been looking at some speech therapy websites for ideas. Happily, there are some things we can try.

For instance, I don't know how informed the author of this eHow article is, but the idea of using a mirror makes a lot of sense (and can easily be a funny game), and he loves a straw, so we can do that too. And this one, from a speech website, has some good ideas for how to practice the sounds so that it's most effective. I like that too.

So, the plan is to look at the development chart and pick a sound that should be developing relatively soon anyhow, and see if we can't play some games to help him figure it out. Hopefully, it'll work and his frustration level will be reduced, cuz it just kills me to see him so frustrated and irritated that he's stopping trying to say what's on his mind.

More Mathy Stuff

My 5yo thinks that negative numbers are cool and wants me to explain fractals. Fractals! I have no idea what a fractal is, beyond having seen a few pretty pictures. Needless to say, I spend a goodly amount of time trying to figure out mathy stuff so that I can help him satisfy his immense thirst. It's an interesting journey for me, since I left school convinced that I was math-impaired, and even went so far as to choose my major partly based on which of the options required zero math classes. (I studied Japanese. The math totally scared me off of astrophysics; I'm not so sure that I chose correctly.) Teaching this kid is fascinating because I'm learning so much. It has rocked my math world, and I'm discovering that this math stuff isn't so scary after all, and in fact, can be pretty interesting. Fun, even!

So, here are some of the things that I've been reading this week:

First of all, Let's Play Math is going into my feed so that I get to look at their stuff when they post it. That blog is fascinating.

Apparently, multiplication is NOT repeated addition. That idea (they say) works for integers, but no so much in other number sets. Like fractions. And mysterious things called "triangular numbers." And some other things that I don't believe that I've ever heard of. But, since Hero is starting to explore both multiplication and fractions a little, I'm trying to wrap my head around this idea at least a little bit before he decides that these topics are really interesting and inhales them. So here are a few of the articles I've been reading about this:

If It Ain't Repeated Addition, What Is It?
What's Wrong With Repeated Addition?
PUFM 1.5 Multiplication (This one has the pretty picture that spawned the, "What's a fractal?" question.)
It Ain't No Repeated Addition (This one's from a real live mathematician.)

We also watched some of Education Unboxed's videos. Education Unboxed is another awesome resource that I'll be visiting and revisiting. It's done by a homeschooling mom who started with Miquan, and has continued to collect teaching materials for doing math in that style, and made videos to share what she's learned. They're pretty cool. For instance, after watching this, Hero wants to build a pyramid with our rods tomorrow.

Cuisenaire Rods - Playing With Square Numbers from Education Unboxed on Vimeo.

And this one, also from Unboxed, is how I'll probably do multiplication with him the next time we play with that.


Introducing Multiplication and Division Concepts from Education Unboxed on Vimeo.

Though it may be a bit before we do that. He's enjoying doing "tricky math" which is 2 and 3 digit addition. He thinks giving me huge numbers, so I have to use our 1000 cube to answer his questions is pretty awesome. And he's getting pretty good with the addition, including carrying, though he hasn't seen it written out yet. We'll do that part soon.

Another thing I want to hit at some point with him, probably several points, is mental math. Only, I suck at mental math. Turns out, there are strategies for doing the stuff, and this post has a bunch of them.


Aaand, this one is not math, directly, but still related. It's a fun game to play with kids: How To Train Your Robot. Looks pretty awesome.

Oh, and those fractals he wants to know about? Turns out they're some kind of geometric shape. Like rectangles and pentagons, only different. And this site is for teaching kids about them. I'll definitely be going back there to check that out.