Year 1 History/Geography - what are your children doing at the moment?

[StarlightMcKenzie]

Just wondering really. I can't get a word out of my ds, but I know he does it as a subject.

TIA

Geography is more general, like that the earth has different countries, the oceans, mountains etc.

They focus a bit on the local area but nothing really big. Summer term topic is Seaside though.

History: no period yet, more general changes over time. First half of Spring term was light and how we went from fire to candle to lightbulb. This half they have houses, so changes in the way people live.

They visited a huge stately home and learned about Henry VIII and Elizabeth I for that. DD is history mad, so a bit disappointing for her so far, she wants more,

Thank you. That's helpful and interesting. We had to send in pictures of the children as babies but that's all the information I have.

Houses and Victorians and Dinosaurs are the topics I know about. I assume they're history.

History - Autumn term was Victorians. This term it has been civil rights campaigners of recent history - Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandella, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King etc.

Geography - They are a fair trade school, so do about world geography within that. I am sure they will have done more, but DD hasn't really mentioned it.

DD is Yr1, but in a mixed Yr2/3 class (with a couple of other kids from her year).

Because the children are "doing it in school" that doesn't mean they have to go right down into the nitty gritty does it? Some children are mad about cars and probably know what a carburettor is and does at four. But that doesn't mean in Reception and Y1 when the children are doing "transport" they have to cover engine design, does it.

If some four or five year olds are nerdy about subject a or subject b their parents can do the nitty gritty and home and let school plod away in the normal schoolish way.

I'm sorry learnandsay, i'm not sure what you're getting at.

It's not really history that they're doing, is it? Isn't it more like talking about a few historical things. It's not maths that they do either it's arithmetic and so on. But it's all fine because they're getting "some idea". There are children out there who really love maths and like arguing with their primary school teachers about the nature of infinity or whether it should be BEDMAS or PEMDAS and their teachers have no idea what they're talking about. They're doing all this learning at home. And that's fine. The primary school curriculum is just a taster of what the world has in store.

In geography they learnt about their local area, which had a history element to it too. And next they're doing rainforests.

In history they learnt about toys, but I'm not sure exactly how that relates to history - maybe the history of toys?

We had toys in autumn and yes, they looked how toys developed over the time. They had books with toys from the Victorian time and early 20th century, toys the parents played with and even how a teddy bear developed over the time.

I think at that age they are learning the concept of history in a way they can relate to. Not a lot are able to understand history as an abstract concept unless they have parents with huge personal interest in history and a house full of books. DD is allowed to browse through our books and all questions, how gruesome they are, are answered. I doubt that knowing how Mary Queen of Scots was executed is common knowledge with 5.

So much of the aristocratic stuff is gruesome and no doubt best left till later. I wanted to mention the discovery of Richard III and the recent plague pit to my daughter but thought better of it. We do talk about history and she has a timeline from caveman right up to us. But it's all nice stuff. She knows the Vikings wore blankets and slippers but not that they sacked Lindisfarne and that the Romans lived in villas with white walls and red roofs but not that they crucified Jesus. But it really helps our conversations. She asked me the other day if a picture on a wall was an Disraeli picture, we call all Victorian stuff Disraeli stuff, and it wasn't. The caption beneath read 1778. She's never heard of the Hanoverians but was perfectly happy with the explanation that the kings in between Oliver Cromwell and Disraeli were all called George. It seemed to make sense to her. (She has heard of James I but doesn't seem particularly interested in him, unlike the monarchs that she does care about.)

My DS's yr1 class doesn't really split things into specific subjects like geography, history etc, they tend to have topics that encompass elements of many subjects.

At the moment they are learning about growing, life cycles and different environments (e.g forests, deserts, arctic) so I guess that covers science, geography, PSHE stuff. They will also use that topic for writing in literacy e.g poems about animals; and in art they looked at and recreated van Gogh sunflower paintings.

I recall DD doing history of toys one year, her homework was to ask my about the toys I had as a child

He's on p levels for history and want to help him. After doing his own time-line (we've live in 5 different places and he has attended 4 schools) I was thinking of doing a project in the holidays on London about the London underground and the Great Fire and including a few buildings that I know he would like to draw plus a bit of geography around the Thames.

I agree it is the concept of history that is important and I don't think I'll ever have it in me to talk about kings and queens except as a marker for a period of time.

I was just hoping that what we did would help him at school. Not so much the specifics but the general concept.

I know he would be not be even slightly interested in the history of toys though.

Kings and queens is a funny one. No doubt there are a lot which will get skimmed over in our house but there are a few which can't be ignored, what about William the Conqueror whose body exploded, Edward II red hot poker up the wazoo, Richard II introduced the spoon and cookery books to court, and Edward III (the one who looks more like a druid than a king) decreed every man has to practice archery on Sundays (which is still law as far as I know.)

learnandsay I have never heard of BEDMAS and PEMDAS - do they learn that in school these days? I am quite old it has to be said and had to re-sit my O-level maths. Just looked it up on Google and find it all rather fascinating if a tad confusing!

DS1 is doing explorers at the minute. Especially Captain Cook, so it is Geography and History rolled into one.

I think Kings and Queens can be either very boring, and believe me you English have it easy. I am German and its gets a lot more complicated as we didn't have a united state until 1871. Or you make it interesting.

You can take one monarch as a start and explain religion. We had a discussion about meat recently, why do we say pork and not pig or beef and not cow. All back to the French coming in 1066 and changing society.

We tried to explain wars and Viking raids. DD knows why Jesus was crucified and by whom. We explained about Boudicea and we spoke about WWII. We left concentration camps out so far though, there is only so much you can talk about when your child is not even 6.

Ooh. That's a good one McKayz. DS woukd probably like that one too.

Ds doesn't really understand queens though. I doubt he even knows that we have one. He understands buildings and time so i reckon I need to start there.

No idea what DD does in either history or geography in Y1, sorry.

But she does have a book called "This is Paris" by Sasek, he's also done one about London. The Paris book is lovely, full of illustrations with snippets of historical information about each place - and an updated page at the back telling you how things have changed since the book was published. I'd highly recommend the series if you wanted to take a look.

Thank you Rue. That does look interesting.

DS1 is really enjoying it Starlight.

I could be looking at kings and queens the wrong way, but up until Victoria when the civil service which we're familiar with today was created, when monarchs were genuinely advised by their counsellors the lives, works and concerns of British monarchs is deathly boring! And even after that, the only person I can think of who people are interested in for his own personality, or the flaws in it, is Edward VIII (and Wallace)

I think that's why most people know so little about our kings and queens because they're so bloody dull!

dd2 is Yr1, our school is like Scruffalo's. Think their last topic was elephants so they learned about where they come from, made elephants out of milk bottles, did an exercise where they had to figure out how to rescue an imaginary elephant ( but sounds fun) Right now I think they're still doing Florence Nightingale although, tbh, dd2 doesn't really keep me all that informed

dd2 does everything through topic work atm. last half term th topic was toys, so history was done via olden days.today comparisons of childhood and expectations etc. science was done via materials used for toys in different eras, and so on.

this half term's topic is Africa, so more geography being done (climate, maps, environment) as well as animals, music etc.

not sure that she really does the subjects as separates though - all rolled into one, really (other than literacy and numeracy)