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
It is a thorough and well rounded curriculum
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
Leaves room to expand - check out how I used it to build a complete California Unit Study
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.