Kindergarten students are encouraged to gain an increased awareness of themselves and the world around them in our entry level text in the series.

The Kindergarten text is meant to be explored visually by students like a traditional “big book”. Some teachers may also want their students to have a copy of the book as a digital text on an iPad, Chromebook, or other digital device. Either way, the way students interact with this book is different from other MI Open Book materials.

This chapter is all about history. In future grades students begin to learn about the history of our state, our country, and our world. In the early grades however, students learn about history through a much smaller lens. In first grade it’s about families.

This chapter on Geography is meant to introduce students to the world around them and begin building foundational geographic skills which will serve them well in later social studies courses. This chapter may look different than many geography units you’ve seen.This chapter was designed with close help from Dr. Phil Gersmehl and his wife Carol, both of whom have extensive geographic pedagogical knowledge and experience. In this chapter we invite students to the world of spatial thinking rather than simply nailing down and exploring the five themes of geography.

This chapter introduces students to history by exploring the ideas of past, present, and future. Students learn about timelines and eventually construct their own timeline of important events in their lives. Through it all they learn about how people learn about the past.

In Kindergarten, students are introduced to the basic concepts of economics. People of all ages experience two important economic terms introduced here: needs and wants. The differences between a need and a want is where we spend our first chunk of time in this chapter.

You may be tempted to skip this short section. It is brief in comparison to previous chapters but it is ultimately one of the most important. Students have spent their entire class period up to this point exploring and learning more about foundational social studies concepts. This is the chapter that puts it all together.

Fifth grade students in Michigan begin their study of American history with American Indian peoples before the arrival of European explorers and conclude with the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1791.

The High School United States History MI Open Book takes students on a journey through the final chunk of U.S. History first started in fifth and continued in eighth grades respectively.

The first shots of the Civil War rang out at 4:30AM on April 12, 1861 in Charleston Harbor. Fort Sumter is located in South Carolina - the first state to secede from the Union. The interesting part about where the first shots were fired is that Fort Sumter was actually a Federal installation (owned by the United States government) and therefore, it was staffed by Union soldiers. In advance, the Confederates had tried to get the Union fort to surrender and leave but Union Commander Robert Anderson refused.

In 1960, as President Eisenhower’s second term was drawing to a close, the mood of American voters reflected one of restlessness. Between the U.S. economy experiencing a recession and recent Cold War achievements by the Soviets including the successful launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957 and the development of long range missiles, Americans were feeling vulnerable. Along with U.S. foreign powers setbacks in 1960 (the U-2 incident and the alignment of Cuba with the Soviet Union) many Americans were beginning to question whether the U.S. might be losing the Cold War. Therefore, as two very different personalities campaigned for the Presidency, the role of the media took center

After the Civil War ended in 1865, the challenge that lay ahead before the U.S. government was how to readmit the former Confederate states that had been devastated by the war. This period that lasted from 1865 to 1877 was known as Reconstruction. During this time, although the goal under President Lincoln was to reunite the nation as quickly and painlessly as possible, it wouldn’t be as easy as a declaration of unification.

Segregation in the South in the 1950s might not have existed if, in 1883, the Supreme Court hadn’t declared The Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. A federal law enacted during Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act of 1857 was to guarantee African Americans equal treatment in public accommodations like hotels, restrooms, and other public spaces, and public transportation, and prohibited exclusion from serving on a jury. Additionally, the 14th Amendment declared that all races were to be granted equal treatment under the law. However, an 1883 Supreme Court decision clarified that the law did not apply to private persons or corporations. In the decade that followed, a number of other federal court decisions and state laws severely restricted the rights of African Americans. For example, in 1890, the State of Louisiana passed a law that required railroads to provide “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races.”

In 1870, the United States was primarily an agricultural nation. Most Americans made a living from farming. Flash forward fifty years and the United States underwent a major transformation as more Americans left farming in search of industrial jobs in cities.With the discovery and usage of raw materials, creation of new inventions, and expansion of big business; the Industrial Revolution transformed the American economy and the lives of millions of Americans.

The last core strand of social studies is the one we will be focusing on mostly this year...history! Your studies will be focusing mainly on American history. It is often said that history is written by the victors. Historians must look at everything they can to come to conclusions about what happened in the past. Historians become writers, teachers, public speakers, and public servants in many ways. The following section explains the work of historians and details about their studies.

During the American Revolution, the colonists formally Interactive 1.2 Too Late To Apologize declared themselves free from the British with the Declaration of Independence. You learned about the Revolutionary War in fifth grade, and are free to download the fifth grade version of this resource for further review. The Revolutionary War was winding down when the colonists began work on a new government for the nation. The Continental Congress created the Articles of Confederation and sent them to the states to ratify on November 15, 1777. The Articles of Confederation served as the foundation document of the nation’s first form of government from March 1, 1781 to 1789.

During the end of the 1800s, society had changed dramatically as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Cities had grown and the demographics of the American population had become increasingly diverse. Although the economic gains were substantial, this came at a significant social cost. The nation began to struggle with issues of unemployment, dangerous working conditions, and political corruption. Although private citizens had long been making attempts to reform these issues, many began to feel that an increased role of government would be necessary to effectively address the nation’s problems.

Have you ever wondered about the first people who lived on our continent? How did they get here? It is believed by many historians that thousands of years ago, hunters following herds of animals like woolly mammoths and bison migrated (or moved) to the Americas on foot from Asia. This belief assumes that they crossed over a frozen land bridge caused by the Ice Age.

You, your classmates, and your community are diverse whether you realize it or not. You probably come from different heritages, have differing religious beliefs, and have different family backgrounds. This is no different than both the American Indians already living in America, as well as the first colonists who came here. How did so many nationalities, cultural backgrounds, ethnic origins, and religious beliefs all end up in one country? This unit will guide you to understand how European, American Indian, Asian, and African people all came to live together in the Western Hemisphere.

As progressives worked for domestic reform in political, economic, and social matters, others focused on and pushed for U.S. expansion overseas. American Imperialism was partly rooted in 'American exceptionalism,' the idea that the United States was different from other countries due to its specific world mission to spread liberty and democracy. While many Americans favored imperialistic endeavors, others wondered if the contradiction to democratic ideals was too large of a gamble in the area of foreign affairs