What is history?

History is the study of events that happened in the past.

Learning about and understanding the past helps us understand why life is the way it is today.

We can learn about history by looking at objects like clothes and tools, reading documents, books, diaries, as well as looking at photographs and paintings. We can also listen to oral histories.

It is important to use multiple sources when learning about history because sometimes sources make mistakes or do not tell the whole story of an event in history. Using multiple sources helps us to understand history from more than one perspective or source.

Oral histories are stories shared and passed down through communities or families, sometimes over hundreds of years. These stories can help communities and families learn about how history has changed over time.

History helps us understand different cultures, ideas, and traditions from around the world today.

Answers will vary, but may include:

• Newspapers could tell you what was happening on a given day in a specific place.
• Music, movies, or plays could tell you about the types of things people thought were beautiful, entertaining, or funny.
• Tools that people used could tell you about the jobs and work they spent time doing.
• Clothes could tell you about the climate and what people thought looked good.
• Old buildings could tell you how people used space, what their surroundings looked like, and what types of materials they used.

Answers will vary depending on how the question is asked. Possible responses include:

• Families: How long has my family lived here? Why do we live in this community? Did we live anywhere else before we lived here? What jobs did people in my family have in the past?
• School: When was this building built? Has this building always been a school? Who was the first principal? What subjects were taught in this school? What was a typical school day like here for kids a long time ago?
• Community: Who were the first people who lived here? What were their lives like? When did our community get its name? What does its name mean? Who were the leaders in this community when it was first created? Were there ever big fights or disagreements in the community and what were they about? Why did people want to live here?
• State: Who lived in our state before it became a state? What natural resources or features of our state were important to early people? How did the people living in our state change over time?

Answers will vary, but may include:

• The diary might include information about what kids’ lives were like 50 years ago. I could use it to understand how kids in the past spent their time and what they were thinking about.
• The diary might tell me what the kid thought about their family, friends, town, and life.
• Using multiple sources, like newspaper articles from the same time period, might help me understand the bigger picture of what was going on around the kid who wrote the diary.
• Using multiple sources might help me tell whether the things that the kid wrote were true or not. For example, I could compare what the kid said about an event to what other people said about it.

Answers will vary, possible responses include:

• how the country was started
• what different people in the past did to help make the world a better place
• different wars, battles, or conflicts
• how things were invented
• what my parents’ lives were like when they were kids