What Your Child Is Learning in Unit 6 "A Time of Transformation"

In this unit, your child will learn about the economic, political, and cultural developments that took place in the United States after the Civil War.

Activities You Can Do at Home to Support Your Child's Learning

Chapter 14 Reshaping the Great Plains

• Discuss with your child the importance of the transcontinental railroad, especially the impact it had on the lives of Americans. Have your child make a list of the different ways we travel today. Is the railroad as important as it once was? What, if anything, has taken its place?

Chapter 15 Industry and Workers

• With your child, find books at the library that describe how mass production works. Find out about new uses of robots in assembly lines and talk about how robots might change factories and the economy. What are the pluses and minuses of using robots?

• Have your child follow a political scandal in newspapers, magazines, and television news for a period of several weeks. Discuss the problems associated with it.

Chapter 17 The Reform Era

• Encourage your child to find and follow a problem that a group is working to solve by reforming new rules, regulations or laws. (For example: campaign finance reform, environmental issues, work-place safety) Compare this issue to other problems reformers worked to change earlier in this century.

Chapter 18 America Emerges As a World Power

• Arrange to watch a movie with your child about World War I or II. Have your son or daughter point out some of the ways Americans -- both those who went abroad and those who stayed home -- contributed to the war effort.