Lesson 2 - Cabrillo

Today we get to learn about Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo.  Again, I used the book  “Exploration of the California Coast” by Clarissa Aykroyd.  There is a whole chapter on him and his exploration up the coast of California.  It is a nice easy read.  You can decide what information you want your student to find as you read and then make a note sheet to fill out.  My son and I did this little task together.  It helped him to know what information he was looking for.  We included - Birth: when/where, Death: when/where/how, Where explored, Interaction with which native tribes, How did he treat them, etc.  You get the idea.  What ever information that you deem important. 

ACTIVITIES:
Take notes of your reading.  Use the note sheet that you created in Lesson 1 of this unit.

Time line - 1542 Cabrillo explores California
                 1543 Cabrillo dies (optional)

Dust off that topographical map that your student made at the beginning of the year.

Make a couple of Spanish flags and put them in San Diego and Monterey - where Cabrillo landed.  

This is a good chance to do map making. Have your child make a map of their neighborhood. They can explore, make notes and map it out. Is there a park where you live? Maybe after they make their map they can chart their walk to the park just like the early explorers. Is it confusing? Now do you understand how the Spanish could have thought that maybe California was an island? Or why they would have thought that there might be a water way through North America? You don't know until you look. Have fun with this. It doesn't have to be perfect, or even right. The Spanish weren't right either. This is about learning and understanding.

Another thing that we did was to write a poem or rhyme covering Cabrillo's explorations and where he went.  This would be great to incorporate into your poem unit for composition.  By putting dates into the poem it will help cement it into their minds.  We have already done the poem section for composition so I let him just make up a rhyme or lymric.  We worked on it together to make it fun.