Currier & Ives. Home Sweet Home. , None. [New york: published by Currier & Ives, between 1856 and 1907] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2002695888/.
Currier & Ives was a well-known firm, and many of their prints still survive today as Christmas cards. They are a testament to how American society evolved from horse transportation to automobile transportation, and while their subject-matter does feature Anglo characters, it remains a depiction of one aspect of early American life.
This is a hand-painted lithograph from the Currier & Ives collection at the Library of Congress. Currier & Ives was a prolific printing firm at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. For more than seventy-five years, they “provided for the American people a pictorial history of their country's growth from an agricultural society to an industrialized one.” (The Philadelphia Print Shop, 2024)
- William McKinley was president of the United States.
- Most people did not have electricity in their homes until 1925.
- Many small children (ages 10–12) worked outside the home in factories making clothes and glass.
- The automobile was not yet invented.
- What does the front of your home look like?
- What color is your home?
- What does this painting have that your house does not?
- What does this painting share with your house?
- What title would you give this painting?
- Does it look like this house is near or far from our school?
Texas ELAR TEKS and Texas Social Studies TEKS
|
ELAR |
Social Studies |
|
K.5B - generate questions about text before, during, and after reading to deepen understanding and gain information with adult assistance.
K.6B - provide an oral, pictorial, or written response to a text.
K.6D - retell texts in ways that maintain meaning.
|
K.3A - use spatial terms, including over, under, near, far, left, and right, to describe relative location.
K.4B - identify how geographic location influences human characteristics of place such as shelter, clothing, food, and activities.
K.13C - gather information about a topic using a variety of valid oral and visual sources such as interviews, music, pictures, symbols, and artifacts with adult assistance.
|
- This painting can serve as the initial lesson on comparison and contrast for young readers and learners, as well as a cross-curricular lesson to teach spatial terms. Many times, teachers rely on what is in the classroom and can miss an opportunity to use a primary source and expose students to multiple historical perspectives. This is a good read-aloud or carpet activity with a picture to show students they can read pictures as well as words.
- Start by asking students what they see in the picture. Ask them one or more of the focus questions. Make a list of questions that students have about the picture. Cross into math, and ask students how many cows, sheep, trees, or windows there are in the picture?
- Move into a discussion about learning spatial terms: over, under, near, far, left, and right. Ask a student to get up and point to the cow that is most near to the class. Then ask another to point to the sheep that is the farthest from the class. (For certain classes, you may be able to talk about how things that are closer appear bigger, and things that are farther away appear smaller. Even looking out the classroom window will teach students this artistic reality.) They can then move into spatial terms in the classroom, and they can ask those questions of each other: Is Nicholas near or far from Kaia? Is my backpack to the left of my desk or to the right of my desk?
- This painting can also move into an interactive read-aloud of the book This House, Once by Deborah Freedman. Students can compare the house in the painting to the house in the book. They can also compare and contrast both with where they live and can draw their homes. You can also ask students to put something to the left and right of their house to see how they have learned those terms, too. Teachers can work on retellings and ask students what they saw in the image to see what elements they can recall. Teachers can do with the book as well. (What was the door made of? What color was the handle? Why was the tree important to the story?)
While I do not see a potential for challenge here, as this is a house with a farm setting, some may want their children to see more urban settings. Some may object to presenting the one Anglo-sided version (although no Anglos are present in the picture). In the complementary section of Primary Sources, there are multiple races and nationalities listed for comparison.
- This is another Currier & Ives print, more urban than rural.
- This is a F. Gilman print with a family.
- This is a native Arab
- This is a Native American
- Negro homes in Thomasville, GA (Library of Congress title)
- Philadelphia Print Shop’s description of Currier & Ives’ work
- There is a strategy called OPTIC that teachers can use for any work with visual literacy.
- Deborah Freedman’s book This House, Once
- Flood by Alfaro Villa is a wordless picture book about what happens to a family home. It has many comparisons to the primary source.
- Freedom in Congo Square by Carole Boston Weatherford (author) and R. Gregory Christie (illustrator) is a picture book written in poetry about slaves and their houses. It is mainly about how they were free for one half day a week.