History and Imagination
Reenactments for Elementary Social Studies

In History and Imagination, elementary school social studies teachers will learn how to help their students break down the walls of their schools, more personally engage with history, and define democratic citizenship. By collaborating together in meaningful investigations into the past and reenacting history, students will become experts who interpret their findings, teach their peers, and relate their experiences to those of older students, neighbors, parents, and grandparents. The byproduct of this collaborative, intergenerational learning is that schools become community learning centers, just like museums and libraries, where families can go together in order to find out more about the topics that interest them. There is an incredible value in the shared and lived experiences of reenacting the past, of meeting people from different places and times: an authority and reality that textbooks cannot rival. By engaging elementary social studies students in living history, whether in the classroom, after school, or in partnership with local historical institutions, teachers are guaranteed to impress upon the students a special, desired understanding of place and time.

Chapter 1. Historical Reenactment for Children Chapter 2. How Teachers Can Conduct Historical Reenactments in Their Own Schools Chapter 3. Contrasting the French with the British in North America: Establishing Community within a Fifth Grade Historical Reenactment Chapter 4. Pioneer Diversity and Dissenters Day Chapter 5. Community Celebrations and History Participation Chapter 6. Learning from a Community Festival or Reenactment Chapter 7. Historical Reenactment at a Living History Site Chapter 8. Extra-Curricular Social Studies at the Conner Prairie Interpretive Park
Chapter 9. Huddleston Farmhouse 1860 Victorian Life Day Camp Chapter 10. Integrating Music and Social Studies in an Extra-Curricular Activity: The Voyageur Ancient Fife and Drum Corps Chapter 11. Conclusions About the Author