Richmond Chapt. 5 “Bleeding Kansas” The Territorial Period

I found a lot of this information to be maybe too much for a fourth grade level. We do touch on John Brown, but not to a large extent. I do think though that the diary type information in this chapter would be the most interesting in use in my fourth grade class. We actually have been to the Douglass County Museum in the past in which the volunteer for the museum read a diary entry of a woman from Kansas in which it described her new Kansas home. He had the students then measure out the home and tape it down to show exactly how people lived in such close quarters. Our children today have much different challenges growing up. I believe that it is very important to them to understand how people before them lived and the hardships that they faced.