> home educated.  We've been reading a lot.. Aaron has
 > expressed an interest in
 > studying the sun, mice and the Titanic... and we are
The Titanic? One of the cable channels - A&E, Discovery, or TLC - has been 
showing a series about the Titanic. That comes right under both History and 
Science! There are also some good videos about the Titanic, which might be a 
little over his head in places but otherwise would be interesting to see.
 > discovered that our school district has a social
 > studies requirement, I've
That's a good way to start, with a family tree, because it's pertinent. If it 
were me, I wouldn't be hesitant to let him do it til he becomes bored, then 
pick it up another time. It probably *will* be boring for him once he gets 
past the folks he knows/knew, because then it's just names.
The public schools use a "widening circles" plan to study social studies. 
It's one of the better things that have come about in curriculum development 
over the years. In Kindergarten and early first grade, social studies comes 
under "family" and "neighborhood". Later in first grade, they expand from 
"neighborhood" into "community", which is a focus until 2nd grade. Community 
of course gets expanded from the area you live in to the surrounding area, as 
time goes on. By third grade they may be studying the Indians that used to 
live in your area of the US, and the pioneers that might have once populated 
your state. History/US is started in the early grades with brief studies 
about Pilgrims, Washington and Lincoln, Martin Luther King (these days), and 
any other reason we have a holiday. (grin) Also, "the old days" is a good 
focus in both 2nd and 3rd grades. Also 3rd graders may be discovering other 
history of the area - my daughters' 3rd grade teachers suggested we take them 
to the Poway Pioneer History Museum, which I did. In 4th grade, the circle 
has widened from community to STATE: California geography and history is 
studied. In my daughter's class last year, they didn't get much past the 
Civil War, tho. :( In 5th grade, they are introduced to the United States as 
they study briefly its history and geography. States and their capitals are 
required memorization!
So, as you are planning Aaron's social studies, you can probably focus more 
on community and the surrounding area. Perhaps an interesting project would 
be for him to make a community from either scrap materials or something like 
that. I gave this project to a class one time, and one child built a 
community out of Legos! It was *wonderful*! It could also be done from clay, 
salt dough, just drawing, or cardboard.
I saw an interesting project this year in my daughter's 5th grade - the 
teacher asked each child to find our where his/her ancestors came from. 
Between us, Jennifer brought in 8 European countries. The teacher didn't want 
to list but one, so Jennifer had to choose one. She chose "Germany". I asked 
her why. She said, "because it's on both yours and Daddy's lists." Wise 
choice! The teacher had really hoped that it would show how widely diverse 
the class is, but for some reason, every child had largely European roots. 
There was one that put their South American roots in there. She said that she 
was going to have the kids visit each classroom, as the other classrooms 
seemed to come out with a few Mexican, Asian, and African roots. All in all, 
the fifth grade overall shows that America was settled by folks from ALL 
other places - and that was one of the main goals of the assignment. (The 
other was to get kids to ask their parents for something besides food or 
money. Grin.)
                                 -donna
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