For my community project, I have decided to become involved with the local elementary school and develop a curriculum that focuses on the local history the Arkansas Valley has to offer. For every grade, there will be a different site where teachers will give lessons such as vocabulary and research projects for the students to work on to learn more about their hometown and the area the surrounds it. For example, the fifth grade will be focusing on Boggsville, the first non-fortified settlement in Southeastern Colorado. For this project, the students will be learning words such as diversity, commerce, and Hereford cattle, There will also be a traveling trunk, where several different items are placed in a bag or trunk to help students understand and get a better idea of what they are learning about. Included in the fifth grade Boggsville trunk will be Cheyenne beadwork, matates, gold, and animal pelts. Because this settlement was so involved in several different cultures and influenced the development of Bent County, several different items from different areas of origin will be put into use.
Going into the community project, I had the idea that building a curriculum for younger elementary school children would be rather easy, and I was quite afraid that this project wouldn’t add up to the 200 hours needed. After starting, however, I found that just finding vocabulary words for the grades was extremely time consuming, and required a lot of thinking. However, I am definitely looking forward to the final product and seeing the change it can bring to Las Animas Elementary School!
