Week one, last week was a bit of a bust but the lad did some reading on World War 1.
We had a specific focus: the assassination of Duke Ferdinand.
The way we originally set this out what that we’d research for one week, and then the following week we’d follow Rabbit trails and do different projects like art, science, etc. Since last week was a bit of a bust we’re doing two weeks for research and then next week we’ll doing hands on, putting knowledge to work.
I had the lad read six different books about this event. These are the books we used.
Anyways, he really like doing this saying, “it was really interesting reading about it so many times. Everyone says it a bit differently and some will add bits that the others don’t”.
Questions!
Why are people so confused about why the driver what he did? Some say he was part of the Black Hand, others say he was just trying to follow the route, some say he made a mistake and others say he deliberately went down that road.
Answers!?
Answers we came up with
1. Couldn’t they have just talked to him? Different parts of Serbia and places around there had different dialects so maybe his words were misunderstood
2. Could the shock of it all made him partially forgetful? Like in situational amnesia?
3. Maybe he was a part of the Black Hand and he didn’t want anyone to know, so he made up a story and it just got all confused in the rush and busy-ness of the time.
We can’t really know without seeing original documentation.
The lad found a quote that he really liked by the terrorist Cabrinovic “If I had forseen what was to happen, I should have sat down on the bombs and blown myself to bits”
The lad’s response. Okay… so we want to get Bosnia out of Serbia so we can do that peacefully by killing the duke, then Bosnia will leave. INSTEAD people get upset and the ONE PERSON who can calm them down has been assassinated. GOOD THINKING Black Hand!
The lad and I really enjoyed this one. The lad is hoping he did up more videos on the war.
This one helped us understand the failed bomb and the alternate route. Made us wonder how many people were killed by the mis-aimed bomb.
This one gave us this quote by Otto Von Bismarck “One day the great european war will come out some damned fool thing in the balkans”.
And four theories: nationalism, disturbance in the balance of power, Tangled web of alliances, and offensive military theory.
The lad wants to explore those four theories next week.
We didn’t know the Duke’s Wife was pregnant. It made me wonder if that was part of the reason she was killed as well? But the lad corrected me, saying the fellow who killed them had also tried to kill the governor who was travelling with the Duke but missed hitting his wife. Then he took his cyanide pill but it wasn’t strong enough to kill him so he was arrested.
We learned how World War 1 changed history for all time. The seminal catastrophe of the 20th century. It gave us a good perspective on the leaders of the day. We want to watch more of these videos.
Resources used:
- First World War.
- The Story of the First World War for Children.
- All About The First World War.
- The Great War.
- Desperate Glory the Story of WW1.
- Eyewitness Books World War 1.
Also using resources from various unit studies. A page here or there from different studies.
Additional links:
black and white map of Europe 1914.
Duke Ferdinand assassination map. Plus details known about this assassination found here. Presentation of events.
The lad’s Research:
The lad chose to research more about the Black Hand. I actually needed to walk him through how to research this group as Black Hand is apparently a game or part of a game as well so he kept getting false leads. Telling him to use the search terms Black Hand 1914, and Black Hand Serbia helped. He did a verbal report on what he learned. Most were imprisoned, they had assassinated someone else, most members came from the army and they existed to unite Serbia and the people belonging to it whether they lived in Serbia or not.
He also worked on his world map. It’s taking longer than he thought it would. But he works on it steadily. He won’t need it completed for another couple of weeks so if it takes a bit it’s just fine.
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