About the end of October we started a unit on 1492. A lot of people associate this with the year that Christopher Columbus made the first of four trips to Caribbean. But what a lot of people don't realize is that this year was a significant turning point for the medieval world. It was during this year that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella united the largest kingdoms of Spain Castille and Argon creating a military force strong enough to push back the Moorish Empires stronghold all the way to Southern Spain and back into Africa. The Moors conquered Spain back in 711 A.D all the way to 1492. So this is why 1492 was such a significant year. This made way for Spain to start funding off shore navigation expedition such as the one Columbus took. With the help of Moorish Navigator Pedro Alonso Nino Columbus made his way to the island of Hispaniola( Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Columbus learned about gold and riches in the West while trading in the Senagambia Coast of Africa. This is evidence that Africans had traveled to the Americas prior to the voyage of Columbus in 1492.
Instead of reading propaganda filed fairy tale stories about Christopher Columbus and his 1492 voyage we decided to go with the 1st source resources. Columbus' ship logs have been published. Of course they were originally published in his language so we had to read a translation. There are several good ones out too.
Here are the ones we found helpful.
Another helpful resource we used is the work of the late great historian Dr. Ivan Van Sertima.
He wrote the book "They Came Before Columbus".
We also did notebooking pages for Pedro Alonso Nino, Christopher Columbus, The Moors in Spain, and King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella for our notebooks. I also printed out a map of all four of Columbus Voyages. I used a blank template notebooking page and printed down pictures of them from Google images.
Christopher Columbus Voyages Encyclopedia Britannica Kids
In all the children really enjoyed this unit. Learning the backdrop to the voyages really helped to get a greater understanding of how connected world events are.
No comments:
Post a Comment