Grade 1 - Life Long Ago
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Take Your 1st Graders on a Journey Through Time! ⏳🏕️🚂
What was life like before cars, electricity, or even grocery stores? Who were the first Americans, and how did they live? Why did people come to America searching for freedom? These are big questions for little learners—but now, there’s an engaging way to bring history to life!
📽️ “Life Long Ago” is an immersive, easy-to-follow educational video that takes young students on a fascinating journey through early American history. With captivating storytelling, vivid visuals, and real-world connections, this video helps 1st graders see, hear, and experience history like never before!
💡 What Your Students Will Learn:
✅ How Native Americans lived, built homes, and found food before settlers arrived
✅ The story of Christopher Columbus, the Pilgrims, and the first Thanksgiving
✅ How early settlers built communities and worked for survival
✅ Why people fought for freedom and independence in America
✅ The roles of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in shaping our country
✅ What Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, and immigrants mean to America’s story
🌟 Why Teachers Love This Video:
🕒 No-Prep, Standards-Aligned Content – Just press play and start teaching!
🎥 Engaging & Visual Learning – Helps students connect with history in a way they’ll remember.
🎯 Perfect for Social Studies Lessons – Supports discussions on freedom, immigration, and early American life.
📚 Reinforces Key Concepts – Helps kids understand how life has changed over time.
💡 Make History Feel Real, Exciting, and Easy to Teach! Transport your students back in time and help them experience history firsthand—without any extra prep work. Subscribe today and start exploring the past! 🚀
Video length: 6:21 minutes.
Learning Resources with this Video*
Quizzes – PDF & Online
Freedom Fighting Figures
A Timeline: Looking for Freedom in America
Life Long Ago
Draw a Scene
Universal Resources
National Standards
*Links are active on Full Video page.
Classroom Ideas
Life Long Ago
Discussion Topics
Have students offer ideas about everyday items that didn’t exist long ago.
Have students discuss the daily life of the early settlers or their great-grandparents.
Create a list of all the items that people would have to make for their daily lives.
What did the daily diet of the early settlers look like?
Discuss the very first Thanksgiving.
Art and Social Studies
Use various materials to create a small-scale home for a group of Native Americans, e.g. a wigwam. Can be done in groups.
Cloze Practice
A cloze piece has full sentences used in the virtual field trip with blanks where students can write in the information that is missing. This task requires close listening to the trip in order to complete it.
Coral reefs are the _______ type of ecosystem in the world. They’ve been around for over _____ million years.
Answers: oldest; 240
Alternatively, you could have students create 5-10 cloze statements and they could share those with the class.
A third alternative is to distribute the cloze worksheets before watching the video. Students can fill them in as they watch.
Native American Groups
Create a lesson (or lessons) that introduce students to the major tribes of Native Americans. This could be nearby tribes, or tribes across the country.
Transportation
Compare/contrast various modes of transportation that the early settlers used.
Explore Vocabulary
Identify key vocabulary terms while previewing each video. Prompt students to find the meaning of each word as they watch the video. Example: What do the words bartering and artifact mean? Think about the meaning of this word as you watch this video.
Visual Learning
Offer videos to struggling learners as another form of accessing information and creating knowledge.
Art
Draw a scene from the video you just watched.
Classroom Ideas for ALL Videos
Here are dozens and dozens of ideas that you can use in your classroom along with our videos!
Topics Covered In This Video
Life was harder long ago
Food had to be grown and everything was done by hand
Native American way of life
Native American housing & clothing
Arrival of Christopher Columbus
Arrival of Pilgrims & settlers
Tradition of Thanksgiving
Conflict with England
Lincoln & freedom from slavery
Immigrants & freedom
Videos in this Series
Grade 1 - The Earth Around Us
Grade 1 - Let's Learn About The Government
Grade 1 - All About Work
Grade 1 - Families & Neighbors
Related Videos
Grade 2 - Early Americans
Grade 3 - The First Americans
