Culture+Studies+for+Very+Young+Students

Culture Studies (a way to introduce history for the very young)
When kids are very young, they are interested in so many things. I think it’s important to start then helping them learn how to understand other people. This lays the foundation for being empathetic later in their lives, it helps them grow in an understanding of themselves as individuals in a certain time and place, and it lays the foundation for the appreciation of history (because people of the past are pretty much like people in another country).

We started our co-op called Culture Studies to do these things with a small group of kids. The social aspect of learning is important, especially at the earliest ages. We focused on learning about other cultures, both their past and their present, through their traditions and art. The idea was to have fun and provide an outlet for creativity, as well as to learn to work with other children who might be different in ability or interest from you.

Over the course of three years, I participated in two different Culture Studies co-ops. The first was nice but the moms had slightly different ideas about learning so the fit wasn’t quite right. Over the course of connecting with other Culture Studies co-ops, I found two other moms who had my same philosophy about learning and whose older children were close enough in age to mine (the younger kids just played while we had “class” and then in the later years they joined us in the co-op too!). This double-fit (kids and moms) is important if you plan on starting or joining a co-op.

You can do these things yourself, but it truly is much more fun with at least one other family, because you get to share what you learn. And the field trips are cheaper with group rates! And having the other moms for moral support when you’re feeling like you’re doing “it” all wrong—well that’s priceless.

Here are the various “cultures” we studied over those four years and some of the activities we did. Because even then I knew that someday we would explore these cultures in much more depth, we kept to the fun and interesting stuff, not worrying about memorizing facts (though I did insist on some geography—have to know where these countries are in the world!).

Where do you find resources to guide the learning? Well, web sites abound and many are geared to K-2 students. See [|www.delicious.com/jeanweller] and search on the tags for whatever “culture” you are looking for and then narrow the resources with the tag “k-2”

Our first year we were very laid back and did not do a lot. We focused on studying Asian cultures and did a whole unit of multi-cultural winter festivals around Christmas.

Asia:
One of our crafts was to create sand paintings of mandalas (printed out simple patterns, let the kids cover with glue, then sprinkle different colored sands—very messy but fun). We made 3-fold Japanese waterpainted screens and beautiful paper cuts. We decorated a piece of paper we then accordion-folded into a fan. We studied some Japanese language and made Japanese food.

// The next year we recruited other groups to work with us--each studying on our own but then coming together to share what we had learned in a "festival." These coordinated festivals offered the kids a chance to communicate what they had learned to others, but also just have plain fun. We created a "passport" for all five cultures we planned to do and the kids got a sticker for each festival they attended, or each culture they studied. //

Egypt:
Egypt is a fun culture to study because mummies and pyramids seem to already be fascinating!

There are so many great resources for kids on the Internet for studying Egypt—places to get your name converted to hieroglyphics, places to solve mysteries about mummies, virtual tours of the inside of pyramids. There are a lot of fun hands-on books for this age group, too, and you’ll see many of them in the “sale” section of bookstores. Check your local public TV station as well as cable channels for specials.

At the group festival, we shared crafts and things we’d learned. We’d decided it would be a great time for the kids to learn about “barter” so we had the kids create some “good” they wanted to trade. Before they did this, we played a barter game I created. Since some of the kids weren’t good readers yet, we kept things simple and I used symbols to help them out. They all enjoyed that game and it was a good mixer since they didn’t all know each other. The kids got to dress up in their robes (old sheets or pillow cases work great!) and “finest” jewelry. We also let them make their own cartouches, using cardboard ovals covered with foil and writing with the dull tip of a pencil. The highlight was their "market" where they all traded the goods they had created with others.



China:
We used Chinese proverbs, which are quite different from our culture’s, to put in some fortune cookies we made (“One cannot refuse to eat just because there is a chance of being choked.” “An inch of time is an inch of gold, but you can’t buy that inch of time with an inch of gold.” “Flies never visit an egg that has no crack” and “Without rice, even the cleverest housewife cannot cook” were some favorites). One activity I found in a workbook was writing a Cinquain poem about a dragon. Of course, we had to all find out what our Chinese horoscope animal was. We made New Year banners with Chinese characters for “wishing you a good fortune” and made tangrams. We also made paper using a paper-making kit I had on hand. We visited a Chinese self-defense studio, where they demonstrated how to do a dragon dance for us.

Our group festival was held at an accommodating recreation center to celebrate Chinese New Year, where the kids shared crafts, activities and fun. Two groups each created a dragon for a dragon dance competition, and the crafts included ribbon wands, making paper lanterns, making paper butterfly kites, creating lucky red envelopes, and showing off the activities we had done within our separate groups. There are many activities you can find to do with kids to learn about Chinese culture—just pick a few!

Medieval Europe:
For the most part, we used book activities for medieval times. There are many out there—it’s high-interest for young kids usually. One thing we did was create a "book" of songs (some weren't quite authentically medieval but it was fun none-the-less) with very fancy calligraphy initials on the cover, like the kind you would find in illustrated books. Another idea was to create a family coat of arms, based on family history and things the family valued.

We lucked out with this group activity, because a family decided to host a real “medieval festival.” We studied knights and ladies, of course, and everyone made costumes to wear. Our group put together a puppet show and sang choral songs (Greensleeves being one of course). The host family had several crafts for the kids to do—making lances and shields out of cardboard, shooting Nerf arrows through hoops, and bright flower headdresses for the girls to make and wear. And of course we had the regular feast to share.



Greece:
We made pottery with the red and black designs typical of ancient Greece. We also told the story of Athens and Sparta, two very different city-states in Greece and how the people lived. We studied about the different gods and goddesses and read several myths. This also led into looking at the constellations and the stories that surround them. We even delved a little into philosophers and what they are and how they were the first "scientists" because they were trying to understand what made the world "work." We learned the Greek alphabet to see how much it influenced our alphabet today. And we did a little weaving using small hand looms.

For this group festival, we decided to host an Olympic competition on a big farm. We had several activities going at once that the kids could cycle through, including races and discus (Frisbee) throwing. For the less athletically inclined, we had an Olympic tongue twister contest. The kids wore Greek togas (the Egyptian clothes were easy to recycle this way!) We put on two very short and silly Greek plays about the goddess Artemis (I believe these came from a resource book but I don't have the reference now). All made paper laurel leaf crowns to wear. And we of course had a feast of Greek food!

Mexico:
For studying Mexico, we focused on the natives by making Aztec-style masks of bright feathers (use paper plates as base). We studied the ancient Mayan and Aztec myths and compared their view ofo the constellations with the Greeks. We made God's Eyes and paper flowers. We also did a little bit about the Spanish influences on today’s culture, including the Spanish language. We had a Mexican feast (this was an easy one!), of course. As we were just beginning this in late spring we ended up no having a festival for this culture (too many other conflicts!).

India:

We have an Indian Festival where we live, so we went to that and enjoyed the dancing, music and food. We also read a comic book version of the Ramayana, and read a few folktales from India (the Jakarta tales are much like Aesop’s fables). We celebrated Diwali, creating little boats, putting candles in them and letting them go down a little creek near one of our co-op member’s house.

Native Americans:

This unit started a more structured study. We decided it was time to start adding in the sense of “history” (or time) along with the sense of place. Field trips were an important part of this unit as there are so many places to go to learn about Native Americans. One of the best was Jamestown because of the recreation of a Powhatan village. We also took a field trip to the Mattaponi reservation to see their museum and talk with present day Native Americans about their life.



We covered the topics in the following way. We did an overview of some aspect of Native American life and then one of the families would cover a specific type of Native American tribal grouping. A couple examples of the “facts” we covered are below. Each group dressed as their tribe did, led a craft activity and read a story from one of the tribes in their geographic area.

Use [] to find good resource sites for these topics—search by the tags ‘nativeamericans’ and ‘forkids’

Week 1: Houses, Environment (plants, animals, pets), Clothing Craft: Plains, Buffalo capes ([]; []; [])



Week 2: Food (Crops, Meals), Daily Life, Containers Craft: Northeast, Pine needle baskets ([]; [])

Week 3: Spiritual beliefs, Stories, Ceremonies (Dancing and Music) Craft: Southwest, Sand Art ([]; [])



Week 4: Peaceful/Warlike?, Weapons, Tools Craft: Southeast, Tomahawk ([]; [])



Week 5: Games, Transportation Craft: Northwest, Games ([]; [])



Week 6: Wrap-up Craft:Arctic, Scrimshaw ([]; [])

Some other resources: [|Arctic peoples.doc]; [|Southwest Peoples.doc](these were resource sheets our family created for the others-they did the same for us); [|indian groups.doc](tribal names by regions we used to study)

Ancient Celts:
This was a fairly short unit, studying the group of people who settled in ancient Europe. We learned about how they came to settle in the area and how England wasn’t an island always. We learned a couple of the Celtic legends. The kids created Celtic brooches and shields based on models from museum collections (The British Museum has the best collection and I could print out pictures for them to see). The shields were made from heavy cardboard and rope glued on for designs, then spray-painted gold. The brooches were made from bakeable clay and painted gold. We also started a timeline during this unit, using different colors for different cultures we had all studied. We did this on a long roll of paper and put it on the wall of a room, so the kids could actually understand the relative times that each culture we studied flourished.

Rome:
Because the growth of Rome from a small city to a huge empire is a great story with basically a beginning and an ending, it was easy to approach history as “story” for this unit. Some of the things we did: · We started of reading the two myths about the founding of Rome (and even sang songs: two founding myths.doc). We studied about the gods and goddesses and noted how they were just like the Greek gods and goddesses! · I read a “story” about how the Empire grew from one little city to all of the “known world” and then how it shrunk back to a small country. The kids used a pencil to shade in maps as I went to show where the Empire grew and then erased when it started shrinking. · We figured out how to read Roman numerals. · We learned about the architecture of Rome and how that still influences a lot of architecture today. We learned how arches work (and why they were such a major innovation) and how aqueducts allowed for a very comfortable way of life for the wealthy Romans. I challenged the kids to find Roman architecture while they were out and about for one week—and of course they found plenty of examples! · We studied Latin root words to find words that we use today that came from way back then. · We learned about Caesar and the Ides of March (we happened to be meeting on that day!), plus a few other expressions that we still refer to today and what they mean (like “crossing the Rubicon, “All roads lead to Rome,” “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” “I came, I saw, I conquered,” etc.). · We learned about the daily lives of the people of the Roman Empire and all the kids created a project to show something they were interested in studying on their own. · We made cookie maps of Italy to study geography, using chocolate chips for mountains, decorating gel for rivers, and icing to mark significant cities. · The kids made Roman costumes to wear while we at Roman style (lying on pillows our sides) a Roman feast! · We studied how Roman roads had been built so well that many still exist today. Then we made our own Roman roads out of various sweet things (layered following the way Roman roads were built). · We also studied about Vesuvius and how what happened there preserved Roman civilization so that we can know more about them today than we ever have before. We made mosaics after looking at pictures of some of the ones from Vesuvius and other Roman sites.

Vikings:
We chose to end the year by studying Vikings for a very simple reason: the Smithsonian had a visiting exhibit on the Vikings. (The site for the exhibit is still available: []) We learned about runes, and Viking mythology, as well the sagas. We talked about daily life of the Norse people and why some were “vikings,” or pirates. We also explored the influence the Norse culture had on modern language (especially place names). We talked over the controversies about Viking settlements in North America, the hoaxes as well as the real discoveries. And then we were able to finish up by visiting the excellent exhibit at the Smithsonian.