Happy Monday to you and Happy Columbus Day to boot! We had a lovely weekend with company but now it is back to the grindstone, as they say. As soon as I empty my camera card of wedding photos and recharge my battery, I may have something to blog. Until then, I thought I would share a few Columbus Day goodies.
While we use a chronological approach to history, I do take a break from our normal history programs on particular holidays to study the importance of certain days and to do related crafts and activities. One interesting thing about Columbus is just how misrepresented the man (and the holiday) is. Some people claim he sailed around the world to prove it was round. Some people claim he was the first to 'discover' the Americas. Some people claim Isabella funded the entire trip with her jewels. Some people claim he was a vicious, awful person who encouraged the slaughter of the native people. All of which are entirely false. Columbus is often approached all wrong.
~ Here is a great book on the true story of Columbus: The Last Crusader: The Untold Story of Christopher Columbus. (This is a grown up book, mind you.)
~ Lots of free homeschool links and resources here- for various age groups and maturity levels. These include links for Columbus as well as other aspects of American History. Worth checking out.
~ A very good youtube video about Columbus set more as a slideshow than a movie- mostly for readers, since the words must be read, not heard:
~ The Homeschool Mom has all sorts of Christopher Columbus links- including games, crafts, unit studies, videos) to peruse which you can even filter by age group. Handy Dandy.
~ If my printer worked right now, I would totally have the children make this Christopher Columbus Puppet.
~ Readingwell.com has many audio recordings of different books in many different genres. Here is the link to American History where you will find the Voyages of Christopher Columbus (but don't stop there. this website has lots of goodies!)
~ I like this ship in a bottle paper craft.
~ I REALLY like this ship in a (REAL!) bottle craft!
~ Lots of free printable worksheets related to Columbus Day (including grammar and math!) for Columbus Day at Enchanted Learning.
~ Columbus' Letter to the King and Queen of Spain- for an older child/teen/adult.
~ Extracts from the Journal of Christopher Columbus-for an older child/teen/adult.
"Tuesday, 25 September. At sunset Martin
Alonzo called out with great joy from his vessel that he saw land, and
demanded of the Admiral a reward for his intelligence. The Admiral says,
when he heard him declare this, he fell on his knees and returned thanks
to God, and Martin Alonzo with his crew repeated Gloria in excelsis Deo,
as did the crew of the Admiral."
6 comments:
Very disappointed to read this Rebecca since I consider you a fair person. Christopher Columbus was a product of his times and was into slavery, cut off the limbs of people, greedy for gold and so on. He was an awful person. His crimes were crimes against humanity. I do not want to go on about my opinion, I am including a link to a classical homeschool forum where many strong, christian women post and who are not shy about their faith tackling this very question.
http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/491230-christopher-columbus-from-a-christian-perspective/
Columbus was not a saint by any stretch of the imagination and was motivated by money, as were many of the explorers. However, I personally am never impressed by commenters who basically attack the blog host but won't even sign their name on their comment.
To Anonymous: it may well be that Columbus was a product of his time, and a sinner for sure. But that doesn't mean one cannot talk about his importance in history. And who are we to judge him? In today's world nothing has changed since columbus. We are still greedy for money, and because of that there is a lot of slavery still today. We may not be the ones cutting the limbs off of people, but we are the ones who want clothes, coffee, chocolate and plenty of it for a price who leaves the ones in production without any decent income as slaves to huge powerful companies who exploit them, because they have no other option. And how many of you 'strong Christian woman' shout out about that and refuse to buy things that are produced through slavery? The world hasn't changed and we are all sinners. It's not an option to simply try and hide those things from our children by not teaching. The opposite needs to be done. We still have to teach them about columbus, not making him a saint, but addressing the issues of his sin and the same sin that is existing in today's world. And that means we may have to make some radical changes to our product choices.
And then maybe it's time to study William Wilberforce and his book 'Real Christianity'...
Excellent, Rebecca, thanks for the links.
Anonymous- I appreciate that you consider me a fair person and do hope that I am under no different light now. It is in fact BECAUSE I am a fair person that I had to shed off my preconceived notions about Columbus by further study.
I would highly encourage all of you ladies you to read The Last Crusader (the first book I recommended on the subject of Columbus.) by George Grant.
While I will admit that Columbus is a sinner like us all, I would grant that same truth in regard to every person in history. I don't think too highly of him, but I do want to shed him in the proper light. As Lydia so aptly pointed out, it is our duty to teach not only the good that people bring to history-but the bad, as well. All people, including Columbus, make/made mistakes that we can learn from- I do not dispute that. But the historical accuracy of some of his 'bad' is often misrepresented and sometimes, entirely erroneous.
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