I'm really glad you made this, I love this approach and I can't wait to try it with my kids! My seven year old loves history and is totally fascinated by the wars -- this gives me a good handhold for the kinds of questions to ask, the things to hold in tension, etc. And the idea of approaching your own family members is exactly right.
We're reading Johnny Tremain right now (I kind of forgot how tragic it was? But both of us are now in way too deep to get out 😐). Forbes does this incredible job highlighting the existing relationships between the people of England and the Americans in the colonies, which adds this component of complexity and heartbreak and hardships that gets missed sometimes in the historical overview. ALSO -- made a discovery at the library the other day -- Edwin Tunis? (The book I found is called Colonial Living) My first thought was, "Either Dixie knows about and loves this person or she definitely would."
I did not know about him! Thanks for the recommendation -- wow, his books look really intriguing! I'll check our library holdings for them.
I'm so glad this resource is helpful! I have found this activity really good for connecting kids (and parents) backward imaginatively but also factually. Johnny Tremain is a good example of that being done in fiction! Still, when my husband superglued his fingers together by mistake the other day, he straight up refused to let me "pull a Johnny Tremain" on him and cut them apart with a knife (as Johnny finally allows the doctor to do to his fused fingers).
Where is your historical imagination when the rubber hits the road, Chris? WHERE IS IT?
There is a certain level of commitment that comes along with reading those historical fiction with young protagonists... we usually read the Declaration of Independence on the fourth of July, but I can't remember ever being so excited about the idea of doing that as I am right now because of the rascal-of-an-apprentice-turned-Whig that is Johnny Tremain
This is really cool. I wish I knew more about my family history to do this. But maybe there would be more that we could find than I think 🤔. I really appreciate the idea of the kids situating themselves in history, vs. taking sides. We’ve had lots of these conversations around Western expansion, especially because we were living right in the middle of some of those historical places. Telling facts carefully is so important to history, and almost always they are pretty complicated because they involve people.
That's a nice way of putting it: "situating themselves in history."
A lot of people don't have a ton of knowledge about their families during this time, whether or not their ancestors were in the U.S. I have found that this activity still works if you either A) take what you do know and apply it imaginatively, or B) take your situation *now* and apply it imaginatively backwards. And example for A would be that if you knew your family were farmers (even if they were, say, farmers in Italy!) you could then imagine what they might have done as farmers living in your current state during the war. For B, apply your own current nuclear family backwards.
So, for example, since I grew up in CA and my husband grew up in NY but we live in VA, we've had great conversations about how we might feel bound to fight for the Confederacy because of the level of destruction being done by Union soldiers here, but that likely all of our family (in CA and NY) would be on the other side. Or would we have kept our Union sympathies, and used my husbands high degree of education to get a job up North and move??
What a lovely view of history as a work of mercy!
Thank you! Yes, Chris is so good at communicating this sort of thing, too.
I'm really glad you made this, I love this approach and I can't wait to try it with my kids! My seven year old loves history and is totally fascinated by the wars -- this gives me a good handhold for the kinds of questions to ask, the things to hold in tension, etc. And the idea of approaching your own family members is exactly right.
We're reading Johnny Tremain right now (I kind of forgot how tragic it was? But both of us are now in way too deep to get out 😐). Forbes does this incredible job highlighting the existing relationships between the people of England and the Americans in the colonies, which adds this component of complexity and heartbreak and hardships that gets missed sometimes in the historical overview. ALSO -- made a discovery at the library the other day -- Edwin Tunis? (The book I found is called Colonial Living) My first thought was, "Either Dixie knows about and loves this person or she definitely would."
I did not know about him! Thanks for the recommendation -- wow, his books look really intriguing! I'll check our library holdings for them.
I'm so glad this resource is helpful! I have found this activity really good for connecting kids (and parents) backward imaginatively but also factually. Johnny Tremain is a good example of that being done in fiction! Still, when my husband superglued his fingers together by mistake the other day, he straight up refused to let me "pull a Johnny Tremain" on him and cut them apart with a knife (as Johnny finally allows the doctor to do to his fused fingers).
Where is your historical imagination when the rubber hits the road, Chris? WHERE IS IT?
This story is killing me 😂
There is a certain level of commitment that comes along with reading those historical fiction with young protagonists... we usually read the Declaration of Independence on the fourth of July, but I can't remember ever being so excited about the idea of doing that as I am right now because of the rascal-of-an-apprentice-turned-Whig that is Johnny Tremain
Do *not* tell your children about the superglue story or you may find yourself presented with superglued kid fingers before too long!!
Oh, how fun about the Declaration!
This is really cool. I wish I knew more about my family history to do this. But maybe there would be more that we could find than I think 🤔. I really appreciate the idea of the kids situating themselves in history, vs. taking sides. We’ve had lots of these conversations around Western expansion, especially because we were living right in the middle of some of those historical places. Telling facts carefully is so important to history, and almost always they are pretty complicated because they involve people.
That's a nice way of putting it: "situating themselves in history."
A lot of people don't have a ton of knowledge about their families during this time, whether or not their ancestors were in the U.S. I have found that this activity still works if you either A) take what you do know and apply it imaginatively, or B) take your situation *now* and apply it imaginatively backwards. And example for A would be that if you knew your family were farmers (even if they were, say, farmers in Italy!) you could then imagine what they might have done as farmers living in your current state during the war. For B, apply your own current nuclear family backwards.
So, for example, since I grew up in CA and my husband grew up in NY but we live in VA, we've had great conversations about how we might feel bound to fight for the Confederacy because of the level of destruction being done by Union soldiers here, but that likely all of our family (in CA and NY) would be on the other side. Or would we have kept our Union sympathies, and used my husbands high degree of education to get a job up North and move??