Indiana history

Several entries ago, I promised pictures of Alex's Indiana history notebook that he is doing with the rest of the 4th graders in our co-op.  Here are pictures of what they have studied so far.

This is just the general stuff about Indiana - location, state bird, state flower, state tree, state motto (The Crossroads of America), state flag and a county map.

Then we moved on to Indians and the Mounds builders.  I still plan to add pictures for our field trips.  We left pages with pockets for brochures that we pick up during our field trips.

This is all about La Salle, the French explorer, and his journeys that brought him to Indiana (South Bend - actually, he named South Bend). 

More information about Indians - Little Turtle and Tecumseh and their battles with William Henry Harrison in the Battle of Tippecanoe.  The history behind Little Turtle signing the peace agreement that the Miami Indians would no longer fight the whites for land - an agreement that was kept by Little Turtle until his death.  However, Tecumseh and his brother The Prophet were not Miami, so they fought and lost.  Then moving to the Battle of Mississenewa, which was an attempt to remove the Indians from along the river, which was a major path of communication between American forts. 

Another pocket for our field trip.

Just recently, we talked about pioneer life - what their houses were made of, how hard they worked to feed and clothe themselves, and what kind of schools the children attended.  Alex wrote as if he were a pioneer child writing in his journal - what kinds of things he would've done during the day.   Some things were: chores, play games like tag and hide & seek, sing and go to bed.

Lastly, we talked about Levi Coffin, the president of the Underground Railroad.  As a young boy from North Carolina, he saw slaves being treated unfairly.  When he got married and had a child, he decided he did not want his child growing up in a slave community, so he moved to Indiana.  The house he moved into was right along the way of slave escape and it had rooms upstairs with no windows, so his house became a stop along the Underground Railroad.  Saturday, we are going to visit the house, so look for pictures!