California Missions
Did you know….GED Academy students say social studies is the second hardest GED topic after math? I guess I was sort of surprised, cuz the way I see it, social studies is all about people.
I know, I know, someone says “history” and you just turn it off. I hated social studies in school. All that memorizing stuff and dates and names. But it really is about people, how they act, and what they do. And the GED social studies isn’t really about memorizing things, that’s what’s good about it.
One of the things I like most in life is meeting people, talking to people. It’s all learning about people! So, I thought I’d work on social studies in my blog… learning about people.
Here’s a great idea for social studies. Find a local place near you with some history about where you are, and go visit it. Take your kids. Maybe you’ll learn something new about where you live.
I’ve been all over the U.S. driving my truck, and I like to find out about different places. When I’m in California, one thing I always look for is missions. I’ve been to a few of them.
California missions go all the way back to 1769, and they were started by Catholic priests from Spain. Did you know Spain used to own California? It’s true. And it explains all those Spanish names, right? “Los Angeles” means “the angels,” and “San Francisco” means “Saint Francis.” Of course, back then, the Spanish didn’t care that there were already Indians on the land. King Charles of Spain wanted the land for Spain. So, he had missions put on the coast to create towns and to convert Indians to be Roman Catholics. Each mission was a day’s walk from the next one, so it covered the whole coast. Each mission has a central square, a church, and a bell tower–tall enough so you could see it from all around back then.
The important thing is to think about what information about missions means, to ask questions. So, I’m going to ask some questions, and I’ll go back and give my best answers to them in my next post. You can let me know what you think by adding comments.
- How do you think local Indians felt about the California missions?
- Why was it important for Spain to build missions on the coast?
The best way to find out more about a California mission is to visit one, if you ask me! But, not everyone is in California. Here’s some more information about California missions on the web.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cbhtml/cbmissio.html
http://www.calgold.com/missions/
http://www.ca-missions.org/links.html
So, what interesting places are near you? What can you find out about where you live? Let me know what you find out by posting a comment, and maybe I’ll write some about the interesting places where you live.
