Oliver Mansion

Today my social studies class at the university took a field trip and visited the Northern Indiana Center for History here in town.  Seeing that there are some awesome historical resources so close to home really allowed my classmates and I to have an idea of how we can implement authentic historical activities into our future classrooms.  The tour I decided to take led us through the Oliver Mansion.  It is located near downtown South Bend.  The mansion was beautiful (and enormous of course)!  Almost every item in the house was left by the last Oliver's who lived there.  Our tour guide took us through each room and gave us its history. 

Decades Project

My Group: The 80's

Okay, this by far is my favorite project of the semester.  In my social studies class at the University, we had to pick a group and study a decade in history.  The group I was a part of chose the 1980's. Together we researched the popular movies, music, TV shows, and fashion of that time period.   We also found historical events that were significant throughout those years.  Each group got to dress up and present their findings to our classmates and passerby's in the school lobby.  It was a blast! This would be an awesome idea to get upper elementary students engaged in learning history while having fun!