American History: Early American Settlements: Jamestown 1607

After studying many of the early American explorers, including Sir Walter Raleigh--the Englishmen that first explored and settled the Chesapeake Bay area, we began a new segment of American History: Early American Settlements. Now I realize that the Spanish, the French, and others built settlements in America before the English, but for our purposes, we decided to spend more time on the prominent English settlements. And of course, the first of these (if you don't count Roanoke) was the amazing Jamestown colony. Oh Jamestown! How I have learned to love Jamestown! I could go into so much detail explaining why Jamestown is significant and how God played a hand in it's survival. (See the chapter on Jamestown in Seven Miracles That Saved America for more info.) I could give a full discourse on the necessity of Jamestowns' survival to the later pilgrimage of the real "chosen" immigrants--the Pilgrims and Puritans. (For instance, just think for a minute about the motives of the two separate groups, the composition of their immigrants, and their eventual outcome historically!!) But rather than bore you all with my personal historical analysis, suffice it to say that we (me mostly) thoroughly enjoyed our class on the Jamestown Colony. And I will be forever grateful that we managed to squeeze it in before we rolled into the modern Jamestown Colony Parking lot. (Though I do confess that we just barely shut the book as we got out of the car!) And oh how fun visiting Jamestown was, especially since Uncle Eric and the kids' cousins Mikey and Matthew could join us for all the fun. It was another day of Hoskins homeschooling at its best!!

And here are the pictures to prove it.

First, a few shots of us crossing the river on the ferry. We felt just like the early settlers who also came by boat!







And now the shots at Jamestown. First at the archeological dig site,















And then at the refurbished settlement.

































And even though we didn't really get into its historical significance too much, (we're not that far into American history yet) I just have to include a few shots of our family at Colonial Williamsburg as well.









And yes, this is Mason studying horse poop! Don't ask me why, but he was a bit obsessed with it while we were at Williamsburg. Kind of like Emma couldn't be torn away from the fish guts at the Indian camp in Jamestown. Whose kids are these anyway!?

American History: Early Exploration

Well, as I said in our Geography/History update, after realizing that we were going to be traveling through some pretty historic areas of the country, I decided to go ahead and get a jump start on our American History Class. This turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. Not only did our history class compensate for our lack of friends and neighbors in Florida, but it felt significant to be studying early American history, especially early exploration of American soil, right where much of it began--Florida. I couldn't have picked a better place, and I had no idea how many historical sites right in Florida we would get the chance to visit. It was fantastic.

Before I get to our field trips; however, let me give a little bit of background on our actual class time. I knew going into our history class that I was going to have to make some purchases I had previously avoided making in my homeschooling adventure. You see, as a great blessing from heaven, I met two first grade teachers during my year in Pennsylvania. Over the course of those short eleven months, I picked their brains on all of the teaching topics I could think of. They taught me so much, and I was also very blessed because they passed on several of their old teaching supplies to me, free of charge. Most of the things they gave me were for teaching reading, i.e. phonics books, decodable readers, etc. They were perfect. By using these resources, as well as the information they gave me, I was able, through a lot of work and divine help, to develop my own reading program. It encompasses all of the phonics rules up through third grade, yet, I have been able to adapt it to learning from kindergarten through first grade. My personal belief is to teach all of the phonics first, to give kids the power and knowledge to read any word that can be approached phonetically, then get into grammar and reading comprehension later. I also use sight words, but my focus with sight words is two fold. First, for early readers, a list of high-frequency words to help them kick start their reading is important. However, other than this basic list, I try to use sight words strictly for non-phonetical words. In this way they can learn to read what can be read, and memorize only what must be memorized. Once their reading is progressing, then, and only then, will I focus on reading comprehension and the more laborious task of grammatical deconstruction. Anyway, you've gotten an earful on my reading philosophy, but my real point is, for reading and writing I have just developed my own programs and avoided having to review or purchase costly teaching aids. With math, I have been lucky to find resources online, as well as simple and inexpensive workbooks to use as teaching tools. And with our science and special unit classes, we have utilized the library and the world around us to learn and discover. I feel that history, on the other hand, is going to have to be approached much differently.

For history, I decided I wanted a textbook of sorts, something I could read from and to the kids.
So, for the first time in my homeschooling career, I was forced into doing some research on actual curriculum. While I figured I could come up with my own activities, I had to find a text to teach history from. Ahh! The moment I had been dreading with homeschooling had arrived. So, how to go about it? Well, I started by asking teachers I knew what they liked. Then, by combining that input with ratings and reviews I was able to find online, as well as with sincere prayer, (The Lord asked me to do this, and He knows my limited time and resources--so I figure I can petition Him for any help that I need. And thankfully the outpouring of love and inspiration has in fact been great! In fact, I have felt and recognized the workings of the Spirit in my life ten times more abundantly since I followed the prompting to home-school than before this was part of my life. And that inspiration has been for both schooling, as well as general life! Indeed, prayer is powerful, and God is good!) I was able to narrow down my choice to three different texts. Once I was down to only three texts, I bought them all. I spent a few days looking through them, and then ended up keeping two of the three sets. The sets that I purchased were: The 11 volume award winning children's history series: The Story of Us, by Joy Hakim, the three-volume Story of the World, by Susan Wise Bauer, and a set of American History children's stories put out by the Christian company Beautiful Feet Books. After looking them over, I sent the Story of the World back, deciding is wasn't focused in enough on American history to be useful to me at this point. Then, I set out to read the books I had bought.

Now I was ready to give teaching American History a go. Before we could get into early explorers; however, we first went over the seven continents and the major oceans. We bought a map of the world and hung it on the wall in our Florida condo. Then we dove in with our first lesson on Leif Eriksson. We had a Beautiful Feet book all about Leif and the vikings that we took a day or two to read and discuss. Then we opened up that Story of Us to the viking chapter and read it as well. This is actually chapter 13 in the first volume of the Story of Us. For the sake of time, and historical speculation, we skipped the first 12 chapters on the secular theories of the first Americans. Before we got to Leif; however, we did talk a little about the popular theories of how the first Americans got here. Rather than discussing those theories in much depth, though, we instead talked about how we KNOW some of the first Americans got here. In other words, about the three groups that the Book of Mormon teaches came to America. We also spent quite a while discussing the scriptures in 2nd Nephi (1:5-9) that talk about the Lords preserving this land. That only those who He allowed to come here were able to. This was an awesome discussion, and one I feel with all of my heart and soul is true. God preserved America for a choice time and a choice people. I believe in American exceptionalism--but hey, we'll save that for a Fourth of July post!

So, back to Leif. After we read up on Leif, then we created what I believe was one of my better teaching ideas--a mini Viking boat. Instead of a sail, we made a Norwegian flag. (Most Vikings originated in Norway.) Then we placed the boat in the ocean along the route that Leif Eriksson sailed when he came to America. If I was really cool we would have drawn the route right onto our map, but I want to keep and re-use the map so we just put the boat on instead. Then we took a day to read about Norway, past and present, and color a Norwegian coloring page. This would be our pattern for each early explorer.

Here is a picture of our early American exploration wall.



As you can see from this picture, the explorers we covered were:

1000 Leif Eriksson
1423 Zheng He (I bet most of you have never heard of him!)
1488 Bartolomeu Dias
1492 Christopher Columbus
1497 Vasco de Gama
1497 John Cabot
1499 Amerigo Vespucci
1510 Vasco de Balboa
1513 Ponce de Leon
1519 Ferdinand Magellan
1519 Hernando Cortez
1532 Francisco Pizarro
1540 Francisco Coronado
1562 Jean Ribault
1577 Sir Francis Drake
1587 Sir Walter Raleigh

Quite a crew, I know. With some we had more detail than others. For instance, we spent a long, long time on Columbus. We read our Beautiful Feet book on Columbus, we read the chapters from our History of Us book on Columbus, we read excerpts out of Columbus' journals, (I bought them for myself for some light Summer reading! I wish light!) and I read the kids part of a book I had just finished reading called the Seven Miracles that Saved America. Then of course we read out of the Book of Mormon about the prophecy of Columbus, (1st Nephi 13:12) and read some of the famous quotes that talk about Moroni's role in helping Columbus. (See the Don Quixote of the Seas quote) It was awesome. And with each new country we encountered, (country they sailed for, not country they were born in) we made a new ship and did a new coloring sheet. The kids loved this class. And I loved it. I vaguely remembered most of this stuff from my own school days, but teaching it helped me put it all together in a way I hadn't previously done. It has also inspired me to do a lot of studying on my own as I teach these topics. I want to know this stuff for myself, inside and out. I also want to be sure I am teaching them the truth, and sometimes it's hard to find out what that is without giving it some time and energy.

Our early exploration unit was really, really great; however, no history class in our home school is complete without a few field trips. So, here are a few photos of us studying history first hand.

Our first stop: Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth. The supposed location of the fountain of youth was about a half an hour south of our condo in Jacksonville. On site they have a large statue of Ponce de Leon,



an all natural spring that they give small samples of,

and all sorts of tropical plants and animals. The kids especially liked the peacocks.

They also had live cannon firings--an event Spencer quite liked. It's hard to say whether he liked watching the cannon being fired, or admiring the worker's sword more, but either way, he was in heaven.



At the end of our visit to the Fountain of Youth we watched a really neat presentation on the early explorers. The presentation had this huge globe and using black light and lasers showed the routes of all of the early explorers while offering a brief history.



Following this presentation we entered the planetarium on site and got an introductory look at ocean navigation using the stars. I wish we had more time and I would have inserted a unit on stars at this point in our class; however, hours in our days are somewhat limited. We will have to get to the stars and outer space as part of our next year's science classes.

Our Second Stop: Old St Augustine. St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied
European established city and port in the continental Untied States. It was first explored in 1513 by the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon,who claimed the region for the Spanish crown. Then the French exploration of the area began in 1562, under captain Jean Ribault. Ribault explored the area where St. Augustine was later settled, but soon sailed north and established the settlement of Charlesfort in present-day South Carolina. In 1564 some mutineers fled the colony and turned pirate, attacking Spanish vessels in the Caribbean. The Spanish used this as a catalyst to locate and destroy the French settlement, fearing it would serve as a base for future piracy and wanting to dissuade further French colonization. They quickly dispatched Pedro Menendez to go to Florida and establish a base from which to attack the French. The Fort he established was St. Augustine.

Still present in Old St. Augustine are:

the original city walls,





an old wooden school house--the oldest on American soil,



and the original fort.





It was amazing! Our visit to Old St. Augustine was during our last week in Florida and I felt sad we hadn't discovered this little treasure somewhat sooner. Lucky for us, we'll be back in Florida next year and we can do more exploring of the area then. We didn't leave without a trip to the "new" St. Augustine light house and beach though. We got there right at sunset and closed out an exceptional day of Hoskins-style homeschooling.



Our next stop: Savannah, Georgia--The Old Pirate House. This early exploration field trip was actually after we left Florida and were making our way north to Jamestown, Virginia. The brief discussion we had on pirates (not to mention Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean ride and gift shop) was not lost on our little Spence, who immediately decided he was going to go pirate himself. So, in honor of our little pirate, we found this awesome restaurant and tour to take during a dinner stop in Georgia. Here is the entrance to the restaurant,



as well as a front shot of the whole house. The little building in between the two taller buildings is actually the oldest standing building in Georgia. It was the herb house of the original Pirate House Pub and Hotel. The rest of the building had to be refurbished, but the herb house is still standing as it was originally built.



Inside they have each room named as it originally was. We ate Georgian pecan fried chicken, mashed sweet potatoes, and fried pickles, not to mention fresh Georgia Peach Pie right in the Captain's Room.



Then we got a tour from one of the female pirates lodging in the Old Pirate House that night. She told us all about the building, about the real pirates who had lived in this area, and about the "haunted" city of Savannah. Apparently the city was built right on top of hundreds of burial sites leading to its claim to be the most haunted city in America. It was good for a laugh, but I have to say, after being in Salem Massachusetts right at Halloween time, I'd say Salem has them beat!







The kids loved the Old Pirate House, and so did I, especially since it helped break up our long drive. And speaking of our drive, I think our last field trip to Jamestown deserves a post of its own. While part of our study of Jamestown fell under the heading of Early American Exploration, I think it more appropriately falls under the heading of Early American Settlements.