Words come and go and meanings change over time. Exploring the story behind a word can illustrate changes daily life, social behavior, and technology over time. Introduce a word that has fallen out of daily use and ask students to guess the meaning. For example, words related to food and cooking change as technology and … Continue reading Saleratus, Pudding and a Gill: How Old Words Reflect a Changing World
Cookies can illustrate the relationship between food and politics in the classroom. A good cookie must have fat – but should the cook use oleo/margarine or butter? Butter, the fat from milk, has been used in baking for centuries. On the other hand, margarine was just invented about 150 years ago and was one of … Continue reading Cookies and how government regulation affects daily life
How do historians recreate the daily lives of average people in the past? What primary sources exist to tell us how regular people worked, cooked, slept, or played? Historical estate or probate inventories provide many clues to answers these questions. Estate inventories are lists of the belongings of a person made after his or her … Continue reading Estate Inventories: Primary Sources for Daily Life in the Past
Nostalgia – a sentimental longing for the past. Many primary source texts and images suggest the past was a better place. But was it really? The word comes from Greek roots: nostos means to return home, aliga/alegein means pain, to care about, longing. Homesickness is a similar feeling – a longing for home. Historical sources are often nostalgic, … Continue reading Beware of nostalgia in primary sources
Your local library, historical society, or university archives is a treasure trove of primary sources from your community – letters, diaries, scrapbooks, photographs, local publications, and all sorts of other ephemera. In most cases, these local institutions are thrilled to work with teachers developing place-based lessons. The staff will know about local history and have … Continue reading Hotels in the Nineteenth Century: Place-based Primary Sources