Social Studies

The storyGrandpa Tells It Again — Four generations sit at one table. Grandpa has a story. Everyone has heard it before.

The storyThree Rules for Room Twelve — It is the first day of school. The class has no rules yet. So they make their own.

The storyThe Day We Fixed the Swing — One swing hangs by a single chain. A whole block shows up to fix it.

The storyLeo's Lemonade Stand — Leo wants a bike. He has one jar, a pitcher of lemonade and a hot Saturday.

The storyThe Treasure Map — The class hid a treasure. Now they must draw a map so a friend can find it.

The storyOut the Car Window — Grandpa's farm is far from Chicago. Watch what changes on the long drive south.

The storyGrandma's Shoebox — A box under the bed holds a phone with a dial, an old ticket and a photo of a girl.

The storyThe Class Pet Gets a Name — A new hamster needs a name. Twenty-two kids have ideas. How will they choose?

The storyGrass Taller Than You — Step into a restored prairie in June. The grass closes over your head, and the sky goes away.

The storyThe Night the Wind Changed — Chicago, October 1871. From a rooftop, a girl watches a red glow in the southwest grow bigger, and the wind turns toward her.

The storyMarket Day Under the Great Mound — Around the year 1100, the biggest city north of Mexico stood beside the Mississippi River, a short walk from where St. Louis is today.

The storyFurs and Kettles on the River — In the winter of 1680, a French trader and an Illinois family met on the Illinois River, and each of them wanted something the other had.

The storyTwo Mornings in 1740 — Same sunrise, same king, same year. Two children wake up to very different days.

The storyWindows Shut in the Heat — Philadelphia, summer 1787. Inside a locked room, fifty-five men argue about the future.

The storyEverything We Own, Floating — A family, a cow, a plow and a rooster on a raft, drifting down the Ohio River toward Illinois in 1830.

The storyThe Stop Sign on Maple Street — A busy corner, a worried mom, and a village board that has to make a choice.

The storyRoom 12 Gets a Crosswalk — Four fourth graders, one dangerous street, and the eight steps it took to paint two white lines.

The storyThe Day the Pencils Ran Out — A fifth-grade store sells out in one morning, and the class discovers what a price is for.

The storyA Truck Full of Corn — One load of Illinois corn rolls from a farm field to a river, then a thousand miles to the sea.

The storyThe Autumn Some of Them Stayed — For a thousand generations a band followed the herds. Then, in one river valley, a few families put down their packs and did not pick them up again.

The storyThe First Day in the Tablet House — About four thousand years ago, a boy in a Sumerian city walked to school with a lump of wet clay and a very sore future.

The storyThe Question in the Cracked Bone — More than three thousand years ago a Chinese king wanted to know if the harvest would be good. He asked a turtle shell, and the shell still holds his question.

The storyThe Rope and the Hill — On a morning in Athens around 430 BCE, a potter drops his work and hurries uphill, because today the city will decide about war.

The storyThe Morning the Mountain Woke — In the year 79, a Roman seaside town went about an ordinary August day, with no idea that the green mountain nearby was a volcano.

The storySilk Out, Glass Home — Around the year 100, a caravan leaves the Han capital for the west, carrying cloth that the Romans will pay for in gold.

The storyThe King Who Broke the Price of Gold — In the summer of 1324 a ruler from West Africa rode into Cairo with so much gold that the city talked about him for years.

The storyThe Cart from the Coast — In the late summer of 1348 a wool cart rolls into an English village, and within weeks half the churchyard is fresh earth.

The storyThree Maps, Three Africas — Hang three world maps side by side and the same continent grows and shrinks before your eyes.

The storyThe Long Walk of a Pair of Sneakers — The shoes by your door have already traveled farther than most people ever will.

The storyA Bill Starts at 7:15 in the Morning — Follow an idea about school start times from a tired eighth grader's notebook to the governor's desk in Springfield.

The storyTwo Inches of Black Cloth — In December 1965, a thirteen-year-old in Des Moines pinned a strip of black cloth to her sleeve and started a case that still protects students today.

The storyThe Man Who Could Not Stop Traveling — In 1325 a twenty-one-year-old law student left Morocco to pray in Mecca. He did not come home for almost thirty years.

The storyA Coin Crosses Two Oceans — In 1580 a silver coin dug from a mountain in the Andes could buy Chinese silk in Manila. Follow it and you follow the first truly global economy.

The storyThe Emperor Who Wanted to Hear Everyone — In the 1570s the most powerful ruler in India built a hall where Muslims, Hindus, Jains, Zoroastrians and Christians argued about God while he listened.

The storyThe Night the Nobles Gave It Away — On a hot August night in 1789, the men who owned France stood up one by one and handed over the privileges their families had held for centuries.

The storyTwelve Hours in the Spinning Room — In Manchester in 1833, a ten-year-old girl walks to work in the dark, and a government official is waiting to ask her how long she stays.

The storyThe Mountains at Adwa — On the first day of March in 1896, an Italian army marched into the hills of northern Ethiopia expecting an easy victory over an African king. It met a hundred thousand soldiers instead.

The storyThe Night the Guns Went Quiet — On Christmas Eve 1914, along a muddy line in Belgium, enemies who had been shooting at each other for months climbed out of their holes and shook hands.

The storyThe Note That Opened a Wall — On the evening of November 9, 1989, an East German official read a piece of paper he had not studied, and by midnight the most famous wall in the world was open.

The storyThree Journeys Around One World — A ship the length of four football fields, a phone in your pocket and the shirt on your back each tell the same story: nothing you own comes from one place anymore.

The storyTwo Pyramids, Side by Side — A demographer lays two charts on a desk. One looks like a pine tree. The other looks like a kite with a wide top. Each is a country's future drawn in bars.

The storyThe View from the Top — From the 103rd floor of the Willis Tower, on a clear day, you can read a century and a half of human geography in the lines below.

The storyThe Man Who Wrote It All Down — In the summer of 1787 the delegates in Philadelphia swore to keep their debates secret, and one of them quietly kept the only full record.

The storyA Letter in Pencil — In 1962 a poor man in a Florida prison wrote to the highest court in the country, and the court listened.