California Out of the Box Curriculum

California Out-of-the-Box is an interdisciplinary history curriculum designed to meet 4th Grade California History standards and inspire learning. It is a literature-based unit study that truly immersed us in California history and will go down as a favorite for our whole family!

We feature this curriculum on our podcast, listen or watch now!

What is California Out-of-the-Box

Set up like a unit study, California Out-of-the box covers science, social studies,  history, and literature. It breaks content into 5 units beginning with Ancient - learning about how the geography of California was formed and what we know about the earliest inhabitants through the Great Depression.

4 Reasons Why California Out-of-the-Box is a Favorite

1. It is a thorough and well rounded curriculum

2. Offers excellent additional resources (some are “required” and used throughout the curriculum, some are just recommended):

   • Roughing It by Mark Twain

   • National Audubon Society Field Guide to California

   • IEW Student Resource Notebook

   • ALL the Literature: Island of the Blue Dolphins, Valley of the Moon (a Dear America series book), By the Great Horn Spoon, The Earth Dragon Awakes, Esperanza Rising

3. Leaves room to expand - check out how I used it to build a complete California Unit Study

4. Inspired adventures beyond what was purely historical

How I Used It

Rather than using it for the whole school year, I used it just for the spring semester since it was our primary focus for those months. I paired it with California History for Kids and added a couple of other resources to round out the discussion on Angel Island like Li on Angel Island.

I planned field trips for our Coop Group related to the topics we studied:

• Tide pools & Cabrillo National Monument

• 3 local missions

• Mining Living History Day

• California Presentations

I also used our learning to plan some memorable experiences for my family:

• Queen Califia’s Magic Circle - an art installation by Niki de Saint Phalle based on the myth of California

• Native American Interpretive Center and hike

• Channel Islands Trip

• Local History Museums

All in all, we really enjoyed our California Out-of-the-Box experience and highly recommend to anyone looking for a California history curriculum.

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