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Course Sample for Our Modern History for Elementary Homeschool Course

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Modern History for Elementary
Melissa Bontadelli

WEEK ONE: French and Indian War (1754-1763)

Objective: to learn the causes, events and effects of the French and Indian War

Day 1: Causes of French and Indian War

Prior to the French and Indian War, English colonies extended in a thin fifteen-hundred-milelong line along the eastern coast of North America. The colonies often did not extend much more than 100 miles inland from the coast. As settlers pushed out beyond the coastal region, conflicts with other nations and tribes occurred.

Both France and England were expanding their empires into the Ohio River Valley. In 1753, a chain of forts was built by the French on the eastern end of the Ohio region to keep the British out.

Also, in 1753, Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie dispatched an expedition against Fort Duquesne in Western Pennsylvania. Led by twenty-one-year-old George Washington, the expedition demanded that the French abandon their new forts and return to Canada. The French refused.

Washington reached the Ohio Valley, where he built Fort Necessity. In 1754, the French counterattack at Fort Necessity took it from the British.

During this time, the leaders from the colonies met with the support of the English government to negotiate a treaty with the Iroquois. They determined that they needed to unify to confront the threat of the French and the Indians. Out of this meeting, they developed the Albany Plan.