Children of the Pioneers - Musical Education
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Children of the Pioneers
Are you interested in using the power of music and song to learn and teach about the California Emigrant experience of the mid-1800's?
This book, “Children of the Pioneers” provides examples of children, in the 1840’s, travelling west by wagon trains. The children were depended up upon to do essential family chores such as collecting water, gathering firewood, driving stock animals and looking after younger siblings. Some of these children faced dire situations and responded by displaying mature attitudes and sometimes heroic actions.
This book is designed to be a study guide to help teachers and homeschool parents as they present the wagon train western migration of the 1840 – 1860’s to their students or children. There are five stories of children along with a song about each of the five. Note, the songs are stored digitally on the internet. See the section of “Accessing the songs of the Children of the Pioneers.”
Along with each story and song is a section entitled “Digging Deeper” which poses questions that the students will need to do some research to present plausible answers to the Digging Deeper questions. Of course, any school or family that is fortunate enough to live near one of the landmarks of the Oregon or California Trails (Sutter’s Fort State Park, Donner Memorial State Park, to name a few) will generate a lot of interest with a field trip or visit.
Over twenty organizations and individuals donated their time and resources to make this book available to teachers and homeschool parents at no charge. If you are a teacher, homeschool parent, or youth group leader, and would like to get a hard copy of Children of the Pioneers, please contact Donner Memorial State Park (530-523-3501).