Videos About Christopher Columbus ...that are actually accurate!

Several years back I did a post about Christopher Columbus fact checking a lot of the errors floating around.    Now, I'd like to share some short videos you CAN use to teach this history to children, without exposing kids to things they aren't ready for or sugar coating this history.   Further down on this page are some good videos related to Spanish exploration, conquest and colonization.

Recommended Columbus Videos

BrainPop:  Columbus  
(Recommended for All Ages)
This was free when I first accessed it, but sadly it isn't now.  But, because this was the best video for elementary age kids on Columbus I've found, I couldn't leave it off the list.  It was kid friendly, animated, accurate, and didn't try to demonize Columbus or make him into a hero.  It also dealt to some extent with both the positive and negative ramifications of Columbus' journey, both for the people of Europe and the people of the Americas. (NOTE:  I didn't have a chance to look into the "extras" about Columbus they have...just the video, so can't comment on those). 





Crash Course World History:  15th Century Mariners:  Columbus, de Gama, and Zheng He
(Recommended for Upper Elementary through High School)
This video talks briefly about Columbus, along with two other sailors from this time.  This doesn't at all deal  with the results of Columbus' journeys, but later videos in this series do (see below), so combined with those this covers this well.   My middle-schoolers loved the humor in John Green's crash course videos.

CONTENT CONCERNS:  Contains one joke related to a Chinese explorer being a Eunuch that some may find inappropriate (minute 1:40-2:05, easy to skip if you want to). You could also just watch the part about Columbus (6:30-9:27), though I really think the it's worth adding the part about the Portuguese explorer De Gama, which really sets up why the Spanish were looking for a passage to Asia and would fund Columbus' journeys. (That starts at minute 4:24).



Crash Course World History:  The Colombian Exchange
(Recommended for Upper Elementary through High School)
This video shows the impact of Columbus' journeys and what followed on both sides the Atlantic, for good and bad, so it's a really important follow up to the last video.

CONTENT CONCERNS:   Smaller children might be scared by depictions of war and people dying of smallpox.  It uses OMG, spelled out, once (in an easily skippable side-segment in minutes 1:22-1:33).   There is, in talk about syphilis, some indirect reference to sex (in talking about how it was spread by sailors they mention a quote "sailors...are men without women and therefor men of many women.")

Bartolomé de las Casas: Conscious of an Empire
(Recommended for Middle School through High School)
I highly suggest this for high schoolers and middle schoolers who prefer un-animated documentaries.  This video is mainly about Bartolomé de las Casas, a priest who came to the new world shortly after Columbus had been removed of his governorship there, and later spent his life trying to end the enslavement and oppression of the native people in the Spanish colonies.   After briefly introducing De las Casas and Nicolás de Ovando (the 3rd governor of the new world), it backtracks to Columbus's previous journeys, including the establishment of colonies and subjugation of the native peoples, which continues until minute 12:04  (though I suggest watching the whole thing to learn more about what happened after Columbus in the Spanish colonies).    It is accurate overall, apart from one small error  mentioned below which is easy to discuss.  

CONTENT CONCERNS:  Contains one brief instance of cultural nudity.   Around minute 4:15 it briefly shows native people being shown to queen Isabela, including a woman with bare breasts (only slightly blurred).  It also contains more depictions of violence.  

Related to accuracy, it said that Bobadilla was sent back specifically to replace Columbus, but actually he was sent back mainly to investigate a colonist rebellion, though he had the power to replace Columbus based on his investigation.   Another important detail that is left out is how Bobadilla also mishandled the governing of the colonies, and that things actually got worse for the indigenous people under his government.  While Columbus and his brothers had tried to maintain discipline of the colonists through arguably cruel means, Bobadilla went in the other direction and let the colonists basically do what they wanted, including rape and abuse the native peoples without any censure (which I wrote about more in this article, in the section, "After Columbus".)


Biography.Com - Several Videos
(Recommended for Upper Elementary through High School)
There are three videos embedded in this article (and unfortunately when you load the article they all begin playing at once...so you will want to scroll down and turn off the other two before showing to your kids).   All are are in the more typical older documentary style (not animated).     The first video covers the basics of the Columbus journeys and the first Spanish colonies started under Columbus.  My only slight criticism is they could have said something to clarify the differences at the time between subjugation under a feudal system (which we might recognize as a form of slavery today, but which they would not have been thought of that way then), and chattel slavery (Columbus subjugated many Taino on his 2nd journey and later enslaved some of these after the Taino fought back over their treatment).   But overall this is accurate. 

The 2nd video listed is more about the ships used on the journey, and the 3rd is a short footnote with a few more details.

The text article is also well done, but contains one error (it says on his 4th journey he was shipwrecked in Cuba when he was actually shipwrecked in Jamaica).

CONTENT CONCERNS:   The videos contain some artistic nudity (middle age drawings of the natives without clothing). 

Recommended Videos on

Civilizations of Central and South America 

 and Spanish Conquest/Colonization

The following aren't directly about Columbus, but can make a good follow up to show what happened in the new world after the voyages of Columbus.

Crash Course US History:  The Black Legend, Native Americans, and Spaniards
(Recommended for Middle School and High School)

This video covers, very briefly, the Native American peoples who lived in what is now the US before European contact, and covers what happened to them during Spanish colonization/exploration (which was after Columbus, but still related). My one minor quibble is that it sort of suggests that Bartolomé de las Casas was the only Spaniard fighting against the oppression of the natives, while in fact, he was convinced that the enslavement of the native peoples were wrong by other priests who were preaching this before him.   But none were as vocal or steadfast in their fight, so I don't think that oversimplification is worth skipping this video, which overall sets up well what happened to the native people during colonization.  

CONTENT CONCERNS:  It has pictures/depictions of massacres and torture which are not suitable for younger kids, and which also contain nudity (medieval artistic nudity).  

Extra Credits History:  Bartolomé de las Casas - Changing Your Mind
(Recommended for All Ages)
This one deals a little bit more with Bartolomé de las Casas, who is mentioned briefly in the last video. I was so excited when this came out because this is probably my favorite historical character and the person who got me studying this time period. He was a Spanish priest who came to the colonies just after Columbus had his governorship stripped. While he originally participated in the oppression of the indigenous people he soon realized what was happening to them was wrong and spent the rest of his life trying to end their oppression.  The video did an excellent job and even managed to be completely kid friendly.

NOTE TO CHRISTIAN READERS:  Though this is a secular resource, they did very well at portraying de las Casas' faith.   They did however offer a brief  critical note about proselytizing (presenting as a negative that las Casas supported it).  Las Casas believed in proselytizing through love and logic, not force or coercion, and preached that this was the only Biblical way to share the gospel. 


Crash Course US History:   The Spanish Empire, Silver, and Runaway Inflation
(Suggested for Middle School and High School ...may work for late elementary also.)
This covers, briefly, the empires that existed before Spanish Conquest and what followed in the next several hundred years, and the results in America, Spain, and even China. 

Extra Credits - The Inca Empire
(Suggested for Mid-elementary through High School)
This series, about an hour long in all, tells what life was like in the Inca Empire and than chronicles it's conquest by the Spanish.  

CONTENT CONCERNS:   There is violence but it is animated and somewhat abstract.   I let my child watch other videos by Extra Credits with similar levels of violence around age 8. 

TedEd - The Rise and Fall of the Inca Empire
(Suggested for All Ages)
This video also has some history of the Inca, and tells of their conquest.  It has less detail than the longer video by Extra Credits.   I feel like this video is more appropriate for younger kids because of the way it's told, in a way that reminds me of how a fable is told and with paper cut-out people that I think make the violence even more abstract than the stick people drawings of Extra Credits.  

Thanks to Pixabay for the images used to make the intro graphic.

 

Story of the World - Review

This post contains some links through which I can earn affiliate commission. All opinions are my own.
It used to also contain Amazon pictures, but alas, they stopped letting us do that, so now you get a picture of my years old, used when I bought it, dog-eared volume.

Our second year of homeschool, we finally started studying History in earnest.  As I wrote about earlier, choosing a history curriculum was a struggle for us.  I finally decided on Story of the World, and am really happy with that choice.

I love how the book is written, interweaving traditional stories and moving from one place to another (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Lower Africa, India, China and back to Egypt), showing the relationships and interactions between different civilizations.  And I also love how the writing style draws my son in.

There are question built into many of the passages, and when I'm reading the text these are great for engaging my son as we read (giving us pause places to stop and discuss things we're learning about).   Some of these questions are "Do you remember..." questions referring to previous chapters, which helps us review.  

But while overall I love this curriculum, there are a few things that could be better.  When we first began the passages were rather long for my son.  I had to break up the sections into smaller bits, since he has a short attention span for listening to long texts without many pictures.  Oh, yes, the lack of pictures was a problem for us...but one which we have been able to remedy with illustrations from library books or pictures found online.

And, unfortunately I learned after we started that the book had a few historical errors.  Most of them are small things, simplifications which are understandable in a Children's history text, or matters of interpretation which aren't really errors, just choices some disagree with...but there's some which I felt the need to "edit" in our lessons (that's harder to do if you're listening to the CDS, not reading to your child out of the book like I was).  Still, in spite of these problems I'm happy with our choice.  My son has enjoyed these lessons and it's made a great spine for teaching history.

I will be posting about our Story of the World lessons soon, and will link those on my other Story of the World post here to make them easy to find.  We only got through the first six chapters last years (for various reasons...a late start, intentionally slow progress, illness, etc.).  But this year our local Co-op is covering this same volume of Story of the World, and we are excited to be doing this with a group,  so I will be sharing what we do there as well.   In co-op we will be doing two chapters a week...a very different pace than I originally took with my son!  But his attention span has grown a lot this year so I think he'll do ok with it.  I look forward to sharing our journey with you all!


Where to Find It/What You Need
The Story of the World textbook can be used alone, but I find that the activities, comprehension questions, consumables, and resource suggestions in the activity book are worthwhile.  There is an audio version of the text which I've heard good things about, but don't use personally, and  also a test booklet available which some may find helpful.   I've seen the best prices for these new at ChristianBook.com and Amazon,  unless you want to buy it in digital form (go to Well Trained Mind for that).   But, because Story of the World has been around for a while its easy to find used materials for even less on homeschool forums or places like Thriftbooks and Ebay.


Old vs Revised Addition

If you go with used materials,  you should note that there is an older and a newer revised version of the materials (the newer version is shown up at the top of this post, and the older version is shown to the left here).  The changes to the textbook in the newer version are mostly minor spelling and formatting changes, though there are a few substantive changes (additional paragraphs added, changes to reflect new information gleaned from archeology, etc....though sadly there were not corrections on some of the historical errors I mentioned earlier).  There is also improved pictures, an improved index, and the addition of a very helpful "Chronology of Ancient Times" in the appendix .    In the Activity Book the consumables in the revised version are much, much better.  If you pick up an older activity book used I suggest also buying the pdf of the newer consumables  for $7.95 at Well Trained Mind.

Free samples of Story of the World can be found here.

See My Story of the World Lessons & Resources

Kindergarten Curriculum Review

This post contains affiliate links through which I can earn commission.

Below are the curriculum and materials we used for our first year of homeschooling, both ones we purchased and free resources we found.  I didn't get all my curriculum at once...I gradually added curriculum as the year progressed and I got a feeling for how my child learned.

We are still using all of these this year, though some of course at different levels.

READING AND LANGUAGE ARTS

I looked at a lot of reading programs...and I finally decided on none.  My son had already started blending simple words, and before we had even decided for sure we were homeschooling, we had started working through some simple readers, and that was working well so we stuck with it.  So, while we didn't use an "all in one" reading program, here's what we did use for reading, writing, and spelling....

Bob Books

I like the Bob Books Beginning Readers because, while simple,  the stories incorporate humor (my son laughs at a lot of the pictures, and laughter is great homeschooling medicine).  Compared to "real books" of course the stories are pared down, but that's the nature of readers.  They are meant to give a child an easy way to practice reading that gradually ads new reading concepts, and doesn't include "tricky words" (unless that's what they are introducting).    I also like the "Hooked On Phonics" readers, which we supplemented with as we had an incomplete set of those as well.  (NOTE that Bob Books do not explicitly teach the phonics, so you will need something else, like Progressive Phonics Below or another phonics program, to cover phonics more specifically.   In retrospect, I wish I had started with that earlier in stead of relying too heavily on Bob Books at first).



Progressive Phonics

Progressive Phonics is a site with free printable phonics readers and other tools.  I discovered this mid-year when we were struggling with our ch,sh and, th sounds...and someone on a forum suggested this.  It's a great program. Each section starts with an explanation of the new sound you will be learning.   The printable books are full of rhyming poems you read WITH your child.  The words your child should read are in one color, and you read the rest.  This is easier for kids who struggle with reading longer sentences.  I started switching back and forth with this and the Bob Books once I discovered this program.

They also have a free handwriting program which I might have used if I had learned about it earlier.    I did use parts of it to help with b/d reversals.


All About Spelling


 
All About Spelling is SO EASY TO USE.  It's one of those programs that you can open up, skim, take out the materials and start...with no prep.  It's been wonderful for helping my child to learn the rules of spelling.  They also have a reading program too, called All About Reading, which sounds wonderful, but was a little outside our price range.  Their spelling program costs a little less, and much of that is one time cost for materials that are used at every level, like the letter tiles.  It's also easy to find used materials online as most of the materials are non-consumable (not used up--reusable).


Print Path:  Lowercase at Last

 Lowercase at Last Set by Print Path

(Free Sampler Here)

Before I was teaching my own child, I had no idea what the big deal was about different letter styles.  I saw no issue with ball and stick letters (or others).  Once I started teaching my son at home immediately I saw how the "ball and stick" style was causing problems with how he formed his a, g, d and several other letters.    I realized I wanted to teach him another way.

At a local Mardel's bookstore I found a copy of Handwriting Without Tears and loved how the letters were formed and the instructions on how to form them.  But since my son only needed help with a few letters, I thought I might be able to find something cheaper on Teachers Pay Teachers to practice with (and of course started by looking for something free).  I found the A Free Sampler from Lowercase at Last by Print Path that had all the letters I was most concerned about.  But as I worked with him I learned he was iffy on some other lowercase letters too so I bought the whole Lowercase at Last Set for less than $5 and it was worth every penny.  I really wish that he was taught with this style from the beginning because it's so much harder to re-teach something a new way, but I feel like this is helping him in the long run.

MATH

Math U See

Math U See helped my son understand place value, which he really struggled with.  The way they teach it is very visual and hands on, and even incorporates a story (a bonus for an imaginative learner like my son).  And once he learned place value it helped him with counting larger numbers too.

We got the program later in the year after winging math for a while, so we are still working through this book.  Actually, when we got to addition, we took another direction because my son, who had struggles with memorization, had a "learning burst" where we were able to memorize addition facts by jumping them out, so I dropped this for a while to focus on that. 

I did find that the lessons, while excellent, did take a lot of prep.  Not "gather things up" prep, but watching and reading prep.  Math U See is designed to help teach you how to teach your children, which is what I wanted, but sometimes I had trouble taking the time to do the learning I needed to teach him this way.  Some people just show the videos directly to their children (which are designed to show how to teach the lessons).  While I see where that might make things easier, it didn't work for us.

So, I'm not sure whether I'm going to keep using this or try something else.  

UPDATE:   I did later decide to use something else, something more scripted (Addition Facts that Stick/Subtraction Facts that Stick, and Right Start Math), though I still continued to use their manipulatives even with the new program).

SCIENCE 

This year we focused on three main science topics:  Dinosaurs, Weather, and Caves (which touched on a lot of other subjects...food chains, geology, life cycles, etc.).  We didn't use a curriculum for these, just made our own with a combination of activities we found on the internet, library books, cheep dollar store workbooks, museum trips, etc.   I'll be sharing the Unit Study we did on caves here on the blog some time in the future (still writing everything down).

SPANISH

Foreign Languages For Kids By Kids

I picked up a Spanish membership to Foreign Language For Kids through Educents, and their videos are the BEST THING I've ever gotten for teaching Spanish!  They are full immersion (completely in Spanish...save for the intro), but presented in a way that makes it easy for the kids to figure out whats going on and what the words mean.  My son was picking up phrases from the first video on.

When I got my membership, it included online access to the videos,  workbooks, and a few online games.   We only really used the videos.  The workbooks and games all required reading, and my child wasn't reading yet. I got a really good deal on a year's membership, but if you buy it at regular price I think just buying the videos are a better deal.

Though the deal I got them with is gone, these products are still less on Educents right now than on their main site. 

This post contains affiliate links (links though which, if people purchased products, I receive commission) to Amazon.com, All About Learning Press, and Educents.  All oppinions are my own.



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