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Do you recall that we are learning about the World wars this year? Last time we learned about the assassination of ArchDuke Ferdinand. Over the past week the lad has been studying up the Pre-War alliances.
The lad read from these books.
The story of the first world war for children.
The war to end all wars.
The First world war.
First World War.
Canada in World War One.
Roots of the conflict.
Maps
We discovered this map of the Pre-war alliances. We thought about creating our own small one but the lad wants to add flags to the large map that he is working on. This is his brief run down on what he wants to do.
This is the progress he has made this week.
The lad took the time to explain what some of the countries are.
Videos:
We watched some videos, in particular these from The Great War
There are three parts, I’m not linking them all here. 🙂 but it’s a fascinating series so you really should check them out. We found videos 2 and 3 ran together.
Vocabulary Learned:
Nationalism: an extreme form of patriotism, especially marked by a feeling of superiority over other countries
Militarism: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests.
Imperialism: a policy of extending a country’s power and influence through diplomacy or military force.
Anti-Semitism: hostility to or prejudice against Jews.
Taking it further:
We had a science class this week. We did electrolysis (taking the hydrogen out of water). The lads were fascinated and found it a lot of fun. The lad has been busy expanding his knowledge of this process since then.
I was talking with the lad today about how the war was like electrolysis. You had countries that naturally were drawn together and yet you can change one thing and they are forced apart. You should have seen the startlement in his eyes and his understanding deepened. Neat way to connect dots I thought.
Research?
Normally after a week of research the lad works on a research project to further his knowledge, but this week he said all the questions he had got answered by the different books he read or by the videos we watched. He was able to narrate why the different countries had the alliances they did. For instance Britain made one with Belgium because Belgium was a way to protect a piece of their lad. He compared this with the Canadian sale of Alaska to the USA because the USA wanted to protect a point of entry. People liked Russia because of it’s sheer size. And some of the other countries liked each other because of proximity or what they could gain etc. It’s always good to listen to a lad explain his understanding. We’ve decided we’re going to have him start writing a report of everything he is learning so we can track it better.
