Celebrating Everyday Life in Wisconsin History

Issue your students an invitation to visit the past by introducing them to those who inhabited familiar spaces and places in your community. Celebrating Everyday Life in Wisconsin History is a 60-page resource and planning guide designed to help upper elementary and middle school teachers and their students research, plan, and build classroom exhibits (actual or virtual) that explore state history by focusing on and celebrating the history that occurs closest to home.

Celebrating Everyday Life in Wisconsin History includes five themes as areas of daily living to create a focal point for student exploration and design: seasons, changes in work, changes in foodways, childhood, and the built environment. These thematic areas relate directly to resources available at the local level, including students’ family members and adult acquaintances, local historical societies, libraries, and historic preservation organizations. The idea is to choose one theme as the conceptual center that will give students the opportunity to do an in-depth historic investigation. Each theme contains three specific topics to give teachers suggestions for fruitful research possibilities.

Celebrating Everyday Life in Wisconsin History uses oral history as one of the major thrusts of conducting local research, and includes sample interview questions for students that stimulate them to compare and contrast the past and present.