Playing House—Homemaking for Children

Image
Annotation

This collection presents five digitized instruction manuals published between 1877 and the 1930s targeted at teaching girls the art of homemaking. These manuals include Elizabeth Stansbury Kirkland's Six Little Cooks, or, Aunt Jane's Cooking Class (1877) Mabel Louise Keech's Training the Little Home Maker, by Kitchengarden Methods (1912), Elizabeth Hale Gilman's Housekeeping (1916) and Things Girls Like to Do (1917), and Betty's Scrapbook of Little Recipes for Little Cooks: Saved from Wisconsin Agriculturist and Farmer (1930s).

These books focus on cooking, cleaning, laundry, household management, and instruct girls in the proper way to, for example, make a bed, decorate a table, serve a meal, make furniture, or prepare for the Christmas season.

All volumes can be browsed in their entirety, or keyword searched. Several are accompanied by photographs and other illustrations. This collection is useful for the history of domesticity, family life, cooking and food, as well as childhood and girlhood.

The Progressive Era

Teaser

Explore the ins and outs of turn-of-the-century labor law, business, housing, and immigration.

lesson_image
Description

Access primary sources, activities, instructional tips, and assessments for a unit on the Progressive Era.

Article Body

This unit on the Progressive Era consists of seven teaching activities, which build upon each other and culminate in an optional service learning project exploring modern day progressivism. Each part of the unit can be downloaded as an individual PDF, or the entirety can be downloaded at once. Overall, the complete package is age-appropriate, while also challenging students to develop historical thinking skills.

Activities 3, 4, and 5 utilize primary source documents and photographs, and ask students to analyze documents and draw conclusions from them. Activity 3, for instance, prompts students to examine child labor and its impact by looking at two collections of photographs—Kids at Work and Kids on Strike. It then asks students to consider questions such as "How did the people that wrote these books put their stories together?" and "What sources did they use to be successful history detectives?"

While each part of this lesson builds on the last, teachers can pick and choose among the seven activities. For teachers looking for more direction, the lesson includes a narrative script that can be used to frame each activity. It also includes a vocabulary list, a student learning chart/grading rubric, and a collection of links to selected websites.

Topic
The Progressive Era, immigration, industrialization, capitalism
Time Estimate
1-7 days
flexibility_scale
4
Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship

Yes

Rubric_Content_Historical_Background

Yes
A brief overview of historical background for each activity is included in the "Narrative Flow, Teachers' Background."

Rubric_Content_Read_Write

Yes
Students are asked to read primary documents, and there are opportunities for original student writing based on document analysis.

Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations

Yes

Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing

Yes
The unit includes close analysis of both text and photographic primary sources.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate

Yes
The scaffolding is very well-done, including student-friendly language and examples.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking

Yes
The process for each activity is clear.

Rubric_Structure_Assessment

Yes
A rubric is included that focuses on both content goals and process goals.

Rubric_Structure_Realistic

Yes
The rubrics are divided into content and process goals.

Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals

Yes
Lesson is also open to teacher adaptation.

Promise of Gold Mountain: Tucson's Chinese Heritage

Image
Annotation

This is a collection of material about the history of Chinese-Americans in Tucson, Arizona. It is one of five sections in an exhibit about ethnic diversity in Tucson. The site includes four 600-1,200-word biographies of Chinese-Americans in Tucson. Chinese-American history in the Tucson area is discussed in three 600-word essays about the railroads, farming and small business, and the development of Chinatowns in Tucson. Highlighted text in each essay links to three to ten photos. There are seven video clips of interviews of 20 seconds to two and a half minutes with and about a Chinese-American woman who grew up in Tucson in the 1940s. A page of sources lists eight books and articles about Chinese settlement in the west. The site will be useful for research about Asian-Americans, the west, and ethnicity in general.

When They Were Young: A Photographic Retrospective of Childhood

Image
Annotation

These 66 photographs capture the diverse experiences of children from many different parts of the world from the 1840s to the mid-20th century. The collection includes early 19th-century daguerreotypes, turn of the century studio portraits, and 20th-century prints and stereographs of young people. The portraits of children include those born into privilege, such as Tad Lincoln, son of the President Abraham Lincoln, and a young Theodore Roosevelt, as well as children of tenant farmers in Florida, California, and Texas during the Great Depression. There are also images of children from around the world, including children in Paris, Puerto Rico, Greece, and the Virgin Islands. There are poignant photographs of Cheyenne and Apache children from the Pacific Northwest, Mexican girls in Texas, and African American boys in Harlem.

The collection includes photographs culled from the American Red Cross Collection and the W.E. B. Du Bois Collection, in addition to pictures of African Americans in Washington D.C. by renowned photographer Gordon Parks. Four short descriptions (50 words) by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Coles and information about his book, produced in conjunction with the exhibit, When They Were Young, accompany the collection.

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

Image
Annotation

This website serves as an introduction to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, IL.

In addition to logistical information on visiting the library and museum (including floor plans, photographs, tips on planning school visits, exhibit information, and archival collection descriptions especially useful for researchers), the website also presents a substantial amount of digital material on Lincoln's life and times and Illinois history more generally.

New users may want to begin with an extensive timeline documenting major events in Lincoln's life. Teachers will be especially interested in the resources available in the website's Education section, which includes extensive guides to teaching the Gettysburg Address, teaching with objects, women's history, African American history, and celebrating Christmas at the White House.

The website also includes a Boys in Blue database of many Illinois soldiers who fought for the Union during the Civil War, as well as an oral history project documenting the lives of Illinois citizens from all walks of life. Current topics include war veterans and agriculture, with plans to include hundreds more interviews on statecraft, war and terror, family memories, and African American history.

U.S. Steel Gary Works Photograph Collection, 1906-1971

Image
Annotation

This site presents more than 2,200 digital images of the Gary Works Steel Mill and the corporate town of Gary, IN. The "tour" includes 36 photographs with interpretive text documenting the creation of the steel mill and city life in Gary. The main body of the site contains thousands of digital images and users can search by keyword or browse by subject and date for various aspects of this planned industrial community. The subject headings include the steel mill and its workers; factories and furnaces; houses and office buildings; women, children, and welfare facilities; and work accidents. The "Contextual Materials" section is a good starting place for historians and researchers interested in the Industrial Revolution. It includes an approximately 2,200-word introductory essay, "The Magic City of Steel," by Steve McShane; four magazine articles dating from 1907 to 1913; six book excerpts, including the 1911 work by John Fitch, The Steel Workers; 14 pages from Raymond Mohl and Neil Betten's Steel City: Urban and Ethnic Patterns in Gary, Indiana, 1906-1950 and the Carl Sandburg poem, "The Mayor of Gary."

This section is rounded out by a nearly 80-item bibliography and links to additional information about Gary, steel making, and 30 archival collections. There is also a "Teacher's Guide" with ten primary and secondary school lesson plans and other online activities. A great site that is easily navigable for researchers, teachers, and students.

Picturing Modern America Project

Image
Annotation

It is difficult at times for young people (and people in general) to understand the past, even the more recent past of the past century or so. It seems almost banal to observe that many aspects of life have changed dramatically, and perhaps not so banal to note that many things have in fact not changed as much as we think. This fine site contains a number of interactive exercises (drawing on the vast collections of the American Memory Project at the Library of Congress) that will help deepen students' understanding of common topics in the study of modern America from 1880 to 1920 and to build their skills in analyzing primary sources.

Teachers and student alike will appreciate the "Investigations" area, which contains exercises such as "Picturing Social Change", "Modern Women", and "Picturing Prairie Life". Through the exercises, visitors will be asked a variety of questions that draw on the visual materials contained within each thematic section, such as "What brought people to the prairie?" or "Why might people have left the prairie?". Visitors also have the opportunity to build their own exhibits by choosing their own theme or question about modern America, and through choosing their own images and documents for their exhibit.

With an Even Hand: Brown v. Board at Fifty

Image
Annotation

This exhibition commemorates the 50th anniversary of the pivotal 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas case. It offers 116 images, including book covers, letters, political cartoons, and photographs. Exhibition Overview is a 300-word introduction to the exhibit and its significance.

The website is divided into three sections: A Century of Racial Segregation, Brown v. Board of Education, and The Aftermath, all of which consist of links to documents, detailed paragraphs on selected documents, and events related to that section. "Discover" buttons are dispersed throughout these exhibit sections; and, when clicked, reveal more information and answer a particular question, such as "What is 'separate but equal?'"

The Exhibition Checklist includes links to all images used on the site. The site is an ideal resource for students interested in the historical developments that led to the Brown v. Board decision.

American Memory Learning Page

Image
Annotation

Designed to provide support for elementary, middle, and high school history teachers, this site makes the entire American Memory collection at the Library of Congress available for classroom learning. Using the more than 7 million digital sources available through American Memory's 100 collections, the creators have written and collected 140 lesson plans for teaching American history. Organized chronologically and thematically, the lesson plans are detailed suggestions for classroom activities. Each has a recommended age group and uses primary sources collected by students or teachers from American Memory.

Especially useful are the included guides on using primary sources, using American Memory resources, and using digital or Internet sources in the classroom. A "Professional Development" section offers online workshops and tutorials to improve teachers' digital literacy. An excellent resource for the classroom, this site would be useful to both student and teacher.