I'm wondering how many of you are teaching the stereotypical Columbus Day stuff today or if you're teaching the real story? I'm personally not teaching anything about him to my boys yet, because I'm not ready to get into the "He was actually a slave trader and murderer" bit with them (since they're a little young for harsh realities).
I did not even really touch on Columbus today. This spring we will be doing explorers and we will talk about him then, just the basics due to dd's age. I think the full story is more of a high school thing.
I had forgotten about Columbus day until I read this. We are all slightly sick today. Not sick enough I feel justified taking the day off, but sick enough I haven't been motivated to get to work on anything or make the kids get to work. So when i saw this I founds some Columbus Day printables and am going to do them with the kids as soon as Between the Lions is over. So, yes, I am going to do stereotypical Columbus stuff. I am nt going to teach that he was a wonderful man, nor am I going to tell horrible things he did. Just the fact that he sailed west hoping to find Asia, but found new land instead. My kids are fairly young. There will be plenty of time to learn more later.
Won't be teaching that for a while. We'll touch on it when MoH gets there, but we probably won't dig into it until the 2nd or 3rd go-around.
We only cover Columbus when we get to him in our history books. Today is like any other school day, we cover what is next in line.
I mentioned it briefly to my kindergartener - I basically just told her his name, where he came from, and when he got here. About halfway through my explanation I thought to myself "Why DO we even celebrate this holiday?" My five year old is also not really aware of the differences between races yet, so I didn't want to get into how he was possibly the first white man to arrive here. She does know about American Indians though, and that there WERE people already living here. When they are old enough I will try to teach them the most accurate version of the story.
*Looks around eerily...questioningly...* WHAT?! You're telling me everything I learned in Public school about our buddy Chris Columbus...ALL 12 YEARS of it...was WrOnG?! *eye twitching* This makes me wonder what I think I know about this. Any links, Amie?
We looked up the holiday's origins. I was happy to find a page that noted that Columbus' coming was not neccesarily a good thing, and that some areas do not observe the day or have changed it to Native American day instead. We did not go into all his attrocitys though. I'll save that for when we study the early explorers.
my kids have already had the cartoon version and also know that he killed off alot of Natives with small pox. But what really confuses them is why we celebrate an entire day for him when the Vikings get no mention for being here 1,000 years earlier.
Start here: http://www.reconsidercolumbusday.org/Home.html It's admittedly a site with an agenda, but the facts are relevant regardless.
We only cover the basics about him...he sailed west, found new land...thats about it for now while they are still young.
We will cover it in depth when we get to that point in history which will probably be in middle school. It wasn't Columbus Day for us anyway. We celebrated Thanksgiving
We take the day off, we studied the columbus day stuff before and after they 'decided' he was a bad guy> We really found out that it is not even certain that his name is what we call him. There may have been more than one person that the diary journals are discussing, lol so it turns out it is a good lesson in the actual accounts of world history *which it comes under.. and the thanksgiving story the world tries to ruin too, its about coming together to give thanks to God, but some people just want to make everyone in history bad guys for some reason.
We took the day off since dd14 had no ps. We're currently studying the explorers though and just covered what an average 7 year old needs to know. Nothing more.
OH to all who read my post, forgive me for becoming a political nut there for a few moments, I get on a tangent now and then and had just come from a heated discussion lol!
Well, I don't celebrate Columbus day. I don't understand why we need so many days off. At the rate we are going we are going to have more special days then regular which kind of defeats the purpose. My children get age appropriate history so the younger ones know very little and often the discussion turns to lifestyle, technology, and a lot of daily life stuff. As they age they get more. My daughter hasn't been as excited about the middle ages because she learned more of the gruesome stuff at times with her brother. The oldest and I are doing are own book and discussion but she has been known to walk in when we are discussing so and so's eyes being put out or something else not so pleasant. One of the big things we discuss is how does that relate to today. We sometimes are less emotionally involved with the past and more likely to judge it better then we do are own times. I like to point out similarities and differences. Some things are better but many are not and seldom do others care about others. Columbus was a product of his time, (one must remember this was the time of the Spanish Inquisition) and had many faults and failings. We often discuss that just because society at large says "a specific thing" is right or wrong doesn't mean we should accept it. I find (and I hope that this continues) that they are more empathetic then many I know (especially adults) and I hope they learn to look at things from another person's point of view. I also agree with TeacherMom, history is not a sure thing as some would make it out to be. Of course, one particular things may have happened but you are going to get different stories from different people and everyone is biased. If it is difficult to figure out who killed someone yesterday, then it is more difficult to find out about things centuries ago.
I'm coming in way too late on this conversation, but I had Monday's schedule all planned out. I had NO idea it was a "holiday"! My mom informed my DS that Monday was a holiday, so he should be able to spend Sunday night with her. I didn't want to be the bad guy, so I allowed it. I would just feel much better about it, if it was called (as MomtoFred mentioned) "Native American Day" instead.
I just wanted to bump this thread and see if there is anything new to add. I just found out about the other side of columbus and am kind of re-examining how I plan to teach history in general. Does anybody have any resources for young kids that approach american history from an accurate POV, not just the typical fluff? Not that I want her learning about the atrocities in detail or anything, just so that it's not presenting Columbus in such a glorified light. Thoughts?
We're not anywhere near the Age of Exploration in any of our grade levels this year, so we kind of ignored it. Anyway, I'm one who believes that "x-Day" is on a certain date, not "move everything to Monday for the long weekend". So IF we were to acknowledge (not celebrate) Columbus Day, it would be on 10/12. Period. We do not celebrate, take vacations for, and mostly barely acknowledge MLKJrDay, President's Day (might mention Lincoln on the 12th or Washington on the 22nd of February -- or not), Arbor Day, Secretaries' Day (or Administrative Assistant's Day), Bosses' Day, Teacher Appreciation Day, might mention St. Patrick's Day (or Patrick the Missionary's, or Patrick the Evangelist's Day), we don't do Black History Month (we tell the truth about history as far as we are able, every day, don't need a special month for it), mention Memorial Day and Veterans' Day (if there's a parade we might go because local parades go right by our location on Main Street), nor Mardi Gras, nor American Heritage Day. (Our local public school system takes off 3 days: American Heritage Day is the day before Mardi Gras so they get a long weekend, they take off for Mardi Gras which we never did back in the day, and they put a teacher-in-service day on Ash Wednesday.) We take off Labor Day, a week for Thanksgiving, two weeks for Christmas/NewYear's (not "winter break"), and a week and a day for Easter (usually Good Friday and the week after Easter). That's IT! So we start as late as possible in August, and end by the last weekday of May, or the last Friday of May, whatever date that falls on.
