The Story of Canada by Janet Lunn – Is Grade 1 too young to use?

Your question is “would this work?”

The bad news is no, this will not work for Gr1.   It’s a wonderful,  middle-school-level overview of Canadian History (I have a four-year degree in History and Canadian Political Science), but it really can’t be considered (or tweaked, that I can see) for the primary level.    IMO there is far too much detail in this book for a 1st grader.  My fourth child is an advanced 1st grader (reads at a sixth grade level, spells at a 4th grade level), but I would never consider this book for her as it would do nothing but bog her down in details.  I would constantly be having to remind her of what happened last reading.  The CM way is to encourage our children to discover for themselves “the connections” in history and in living books.  If the book is too advanced, I end up having to lead my child TO the connections.  In my mind, this defeats the purpose.

The good news is that you don’t need to worry about this, because you do not need to teach Canadian History at this level in Gr1!    I see Gr. 1, 2, and 3 as the years where we present history in the form of story books from the library.  The two books mentioned above are good choices; I used Greenwood’s The Pioneer Sampler in gr2-3; your librarian can likely direct you further.

To make you feel better about NOT doing a formal study of Cdn history at this time:  Think of the goal during the early years as one where we encourage our children to gain positive thinking and positive attitude about the study of history.  An increase in history facts learned is a nice bonus, but not the real goal.

I’ll offer one more suggestion:  The early years are a good time for YOU to sharpen up your knowledge of Canadian History, and to gather and organize the big picture of Cdn History in your own mind.  If you take the time to do this now, teaching a more formal study of history in gr4-7 (and beyond!) will be much easier.  It will also allow you (in the future) to plot the main events of Cdn History on your timeline alongside whatever World or US history resources you use.  This is VERY important because many of the really good resources out there on World and US history provide only a few mentions of Cdn History.   I love using many of the resources/living books listed on homeschooling websites for World and US history – but the reality is that there is very minimal Canadian coverage in such books.  Frustrating – unless you have your own bank of Canadian History main events/people/dates in your mind – in which case, it’s pretty simple (and kinda fun!) to cover Cdn history as you go.

Hope this helps!

Angie