California 4th Grade Mission Project
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Fourth grade students enrolled in California public schools are taught about the role the California missions founded in the late 1700s and early 1800s played. Many California school districts have the students create a multiple medium project, such as writing a paper and building a model of a mission.
Every year parents strive to find plans and materials for their children's mission projects. There are companies that provide easy-to-assemble kits for this purpose. Some parents like to have their kids take a more hands-on approach and not use a prefabricated kit.
This topic is controversial in that it is often taught in a way that shows the missions as great cultural centers for the California Indians without mentioning that they were used to convert local Indians to Catholicism, sometimes coercively. Discussion of revolts where Indians attacked missions are generally missing from the 4th-grade curriculum.
External links
- California 4th grade history standards--see 4.2 (http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/hstgrade4.asp)