Social Studies Grade Four

Module 3: Activity Guide

Some pertinent information that may be incorporated in this module includes:

• Immigration has changed Saskatchewan in the past, is changing it today, and will continue to change it in the future.
• While early immigration was largely from Europe, recent immigrants have come to Saskatchewan from all over the world.
• Immigrants came/come/will come to Saskatchewan for a variety of reasons that may be identified as "push- pull" factors.
• Immigrants who come from different parts of the world may have different belief, languages, traditions, values, and lifestyles .    
• Understanding and sharing traditions, languages, beliefs, values, and lifestyles of various peoples generally enhances the lives of all concerned.
• Communities in Saskatchewan have celebrations to recognize diversity in the cultural heritage of the residents of the community.
• The experiences of immigrant women can be different from those of the rest of the family.

The teacher may choose to focus on some of the following:

• history of the immigrants:
  • life in the country of origin,
  • language,
  • major occupations when in their new land;
• travel to Saskatchewan:
  • routes,
  • method of travel;
• the influence of the railway on patterns of settlement;
• immigrants often experienced and overcame many hardships;
• many tried to use technologies (e.g. housing design and materials, farm implements, seeds) from another environment that were unsuitable for the Saskatchewan environment;
• Indian and Mètis peoples often helped the immigrants adjust to life in Saskatchewan;
• interaction with other groups of people caused changes in the culture of immigrant people;
• the identity of a region or group of peoples evolves over time in response to environmental factors, historical experiences, a social context, and the needs and wants of the people who live there:
  • housing,
  • primary foods,
  • major occupations,
  • work,
  • leisure activities,
  • communities,
  • hardships, successes;
• life of the immigrant children:
  • work/play,
  • size of families,
  • school;
• stories of the immigrants:
  • values and beliefs,
  • celebrations and traditions;
• interactions with other Saskatchewan people and change in their lives:
  • Indian and Mètis people,
  • other immigrants;
• descendants of the immigrants now live in:
  • urban/rural communities,
  • culture specific communities,
  • multicultural communities;
• settlers often did not have much money, but relied on trading goods and services;
• immigrants came from:
  • United States (including African people),
  • Russia (Mennonites or Doukhobors),
  • The Ukraine,
  • British Isles,
  • France,
  • Netherlands,
  • Scandinavian countries;
  • China.

Experiences of immigrant women

Using interviews and/or other first hand accounts, learn about the experiences of immigrant women. In some immigrant families, the men and children have contact with the community through work and school while the women tend to remain in the home. These experiences force the men and children to learn about their new homeland faster than the women. This often leads to isolation for the women. In some cases women rely on their children when they need to interact with the community. For example they take their children with them when they shop or see the doctor and come to rely on their families for communication with the community rather than developing their own skills. Many immigrants learn English by watching television.

Homesteading

Using various resources, explore homesteading on the prairies.

• Life was difficult and people had to be very resourceful.
• Many lived in tents and shacks, or "soddies" - sod houses.
• Many had to depend on Indian and Mètis people for assistance.
• Many of the settlers in the 1880s and 1890s were from Ontario.

A typical sod house was about four metres wide by five and a half metres long. The sod house could have one room or two. Use chalk or masking tape to mark the outline of a sod house on the floor of the classroom or school gym. Draw in the outlines of the furniture that might have been used. Five or six students (representing a family) should try "living" in the house. Discuss the space available in the sod house and the amount of privacy available to family members.

Make a chart comparing sod houses to the houses of today. Include the following points:

• Water supply
• Heating system
• Size of home
• Electricity(or lack of)
• Type of lights
• Bathrooms
• Type of furniture
• Stoves for cooking

Imagine that you are living in a sod house. Use drama in context to explore the following situations. Dramatize how problems would be solved.

• You receive a letter from your relatives in Europe saying that your grandmother is very sick and is not expected to live more than a few weeks.
• In the fall your father goes to work on the railroad leaving you, your mother, brother, and sisters on the farm. You will not see your father until spring. (In your play show how the farm chores and other work is done over the winter.)
• Your sister cuts her foot badly while chopping wood.
• Your family needs to buy cloth to make winter clothes but has no money. (When planning your play determine whether the family has anything it might trade for clothes such as eggs, butter or vegetables.) Determine also whether any old clothes can be patched or remodelled.
• The nearest school is 10 kilometres away. Your parents think that it is important for you and your brother and sisters to learn to read, write and do arithmetic.

You are a member of a family living in a sod house. Plan your family's Christmas celebration. Focus on the following aspects of the celebration:

• gifts for the family members;
• your Christmas tree (remember that very few trees grow in the southern prairies);
• decorations for your Christmas tree;
• wrapping paper for gifts;
• Christmas celebrations such as concerts, dances;
• Christmas church service;
• Christmas dinner - what would you eat? - how would it be prepared?

Pioneer life

In small groups compare household chores in pioneer times to household chores today. Tell how each of the chores below would have been done. Compare the amount of time and energy required then, to the time and energy required to do the following chores today:

• churning butter;
• cleaning the floor (many sod houses had packed earth floors that could be swept but not scrubbed);
• washing clothes (washboards);
• heating the stove for baking;
• ironing clothes (flat irons heated on the stove);
• having a bath (water hauled from well);
• preserving food for the winter months;
• obtaining milk for the family to drink; and
• mending clothes.

Create a pioneer picture dictionary. Draw pictures of the different household and farm items used by Saskatchewan's immigrants. Label each picture and tell what it was used for. Put the items in alphabetical order.

Research the types of homes built in the northern part of the province by settlers. Draw or paint pictures of these homes. How are they different from homes on the plains?

Drama in context

Use drama in context to explore the experiences and feelings of a family that is trying to decide whether or not to immigrate to western Canada. The family lives in the Ukraine. They do not own land. They live in a rented house and the father works as a carpenter. The have very little money. The family has five children. Only two of them are old enough to take part in this conversation. Discuss your hopes and dreams for the new land. Also discuss what you might miss the most about your homeland. What are your fears?

In small groups compare the reasons why early settlers came to Saskatchewan with the reasons why people immigrate today. Which reasons are the same? Which are different?

Schooling

Look at the poster Education included in the Saskatchewan Past and Present kit. Choose one of the historical photos and compare it with your classroom today. Make a list of things that are different and another list of things that are the same.

If possible, visit a museum that has a one-room school (e.g., the Western Development Museum, the Alex Youk Museum in Regina) .

Have a pioneer day in your classroom. Try to make the school day similar to that experienced by a child in a one- room school earlier in the century. Don't use any type of electrical equipment, or audiovisual materials. Use fountain pens or straight pens. In order to make your pioneer day as realistic as possible interview some senior citizens to find out what their school experiences were like.

Cross-cultural contact

Identify obstacles or challenges early immigrants may have encountered when first arriving in Saskatchewan. Organize the ideas in a list, chart, or web. Explore technologies they may have had to help them overcome challenges. Consider ways Indian and Mètis peoples may have helped them. Technology can include tools, materials, and knowledge.

Learn that technologies evolve differently in different cultures. Technologies evolve as a result of needs and wants and available resources.

• European technology was different from the technology of the Indian peoples, even though much of it served the same purposes.
• Develop the understanding that people use what they need to in order to survive.

Example: Map making. Europeans had writing utensils, paper, compasses, and some knowledge of the stars. Indian Peoples had knowledge of the local land and water routes, knowledge of local weather patterns, and advanced knowledge of astronomy.

Activities may include:

• Create scenarios depicting groups helping one another.
• Role play the exchange of technologies/ideas.
• Depict the ideas in the above web in a bulletin board display using pictures.
• Make journal entries that tell of helping one another. The entries could be from two perspectives - Europeans' and Indian Peoples'. You may want the Indian perspective presented as an oral history.
• Have partners prepare questions to ask each other, as if interviewing "experts".
• Have groups prepare models of communities - European and Indian. The communities could show similarities and differences, with interdependence being emphasized through use of the same materials for different purposes (travois and wagons both made of wood).

• Create a message to be communicated to the other group. The message is very important - buffalo in the other valley; a grass fire only a few miles away; a sick child who must have medicine). They must use mime, hand gestures, body language, objects, anything but talking to get their message across accurately.
• The other group will interpret the message and return an answer in their own way.

Is assistance as necessary today as it was in the past? Have students volunteer to form a panel to discuss this topic. Each student could focus on a concept, for example, rural people, urban people, children, increased crime, developing countries, victims of war, and victims of disasters.

Identify a difficult situation in the last century, for example, a drought. Describe the problem and how people might have dealt with it. Look at the same situation today and describe how people might handle it differently. How might it be handled in the future?

Explore situations where past activities, such as pow-wows, continue today. How have they changed? Are there any activities that occurred in the past that continue today unchanged?

How have Saskatchewan people turned difficulties into benefits and differences into similarities? Write a paragraph, chant, or rap or make a pattern book for younger children telling how Saskatchewan people have a tradition of taking differences and making them work to help the community. This is part of our heritage.

Present the following simile:

Saskatchewan's multicultural heritage is like a stew. All the different ingredients make a delicious and wholesome meal.

The first rail line was built across Saskatchewan in 1882. Five thousand workers and 1700 teams of horses were able to lay track across the flat open prairie at great speed.

Explore the effects of the railway on people.

• How did the railway serve the large numbers of settlers coming to Saskatchewan?
• In what ways could the railway help the fur traders?
• How did the railway lines limit the movement of buffalo herds?
• How did the railways effect the buffalo?
• Were the railways a good thing for the farmers who were already working on their homesteads?
• Were the railways a good thing for the Indian and Mètis peoples who made their living by following the buffalo?

Work in small groups to plan a trip between two points in the province. Each groups plans their trip using a method of transportation used before 1900, for example, by foot, canoe, bicycle, ox cart, steamboat, dog sled, Red River cart, horse and sleigh, train, or horse and wagon. Each group determines the route, the preparation needed, the supplies they would take, the number of days the trip would last, and the cost. Chart the results and compare them.

Make a chart showing how activities changed as new modes of transportation developed in Saskatchewan from 1700 to the present day. Include on the chart:

• form of travel;
• source of power;
• type of fuel needed; and
• routes/waterways.

Explore future transportation, considering factors such as new fuels, cost, speed, and safety. Advertise the new transportation.

Aviation

Learn about the explorers who opened up Saskatchewan's north in the 20th century. Much of the exploration and surveying was done with planes. Learn about the planes of the different eras. Use the book Wings Beyond Road's End to identify factual information and then use this information to make a focused imagining lesson or to tell a story. Learn about early commercial operations. Learn about the use of planes to bring service to the north such as:

Explore the impact of aviation on the development of communities. Learn about scheduled flights. Record information on a timeline.

Multicultural traditions

Have students compile a list of family traditions, rites, and rituals. Discuss ways these contribute to an individual's identity. Interview elderly family members to discover traditions, rites, and rituals that were common when they were a child, but are no longer observed.

Do future forecasting. Using the list of family traditions, rites, and rituals identify those that may not be observed when they are parents. Give reasons to support speculations. Reflect in their journal about family traditions, rites, and rituals when they are adults. What would they like to maintain? change?

Interview members of the community who represent various ethnic groups. The subjects of your interview could include parents, grandparents, neighbours, or other community members. Interview elderly citizens. Make a comprehensive profile of the peoples represented in the province including Indian and Mètis peoples and recent immigrants. Guide students in preparing interview questions. Questions will have to be adapted. Topics include:

• country of origin;
• date of immigration to Saskatchewan;
• reasons for coming to Saskatchewan;
• mother tongue and how they learned English;
• clothing styles, for everyday and for special occasions;
• ways of celebrating special events such as birthdays, weddings, New Years;
• music and art;
• homes and furniture; and
• foods and menus.

 Cabbage rolls Ä Ukrainian
 Sauerkraut Ä German
 Shish-Kebab Ä Greek
 Egg rolls Ä Chinese