History & Geography: Places, People and the Family Tree of Jesus

Level: Year 1 / Grade 1, age 7

Length: 10 weekly lessons, approximately 45 minutes each

Curriculum alignment: Australian Curriculum v9.0 HASS, Year 1 History and Geography, as implemented in Queensland. The lessons develop understanding of familiar places, natural and built features, maps and representations, change and continuity, family histories, and the use of sources. Bible stories are included as a faith-based family-history connection and are not an ACARA requirement.

Materials for the Unit

• Paper, pencils, coloured pencils, crayons and glue
• A simple map of the local area and a map of Australia
• A globe or world map, if available
• Photographs of the child’s family, local places and familiar Australian places
• Small objects or drawings representing a zoo, city, farm, beach, river, mountain and forest
• Large sheets of paper or a notebook for a geography and history journal
• String or wool, sticky notes and cardboard for a family tree
• A Bible or child-friendly Bible

Suggested Picture Books

• Window by Jeannie Baker — how a place can change over time
• A Walk in the Rainforest by Kristin Pratt — natural features and rainforest environments
• Possum Magic by Mem Fox — places across Australia
• Where the Forest Meets the Sea by Jeannie Baker — caring for natural places
• My Place by Nadia Wheatley and Donna Rawlins — people and place across time
• The Rainbow Serpent by Dick Roughsey and Percy Trezona — an Indigenous Australian creation story; present respectfully as a story from a particular cultural tradition
• We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen — describing routes, landscapes and natural features
• The Peasant Prince by Li Cunxin and Anne Spudvilas — family, place and movement between countries

Weekly Lessons

Week 1: What Is a Place?

Focus: Recognising familiar places and describing what makes each place special.

Hook: Ask, “If we had to describe our home or favourite place to someone who had never seen it, what would we say?” Read selected pages from Window and discuss what can be seen, heard and done in the places shown.

Teach and practise: Explain that a place may include natural features, such as trees, rivers and beaches, and built features, such as houses, roads and buildings. Together, sort these words into “natural” and “built”: river, school, mountain, road, beach, bridge, forest, house. The child then draws a familiar place and labels at least three features.

Check: Ask the child to explain one natural feature and one built feature in the drawing.

Week 2: Natural Features

Focus: Identifying and describing natural features such as beaches, rivers, farms, forests and mountains.

Hook: Place drawings or objects representing a beach, farm, river, forest and mountain in a row. Ask, “How are these places alike? How are they different?” Read selected pages from A Walk in the Rainforest.

Teach and practise: Make a table together with the headings Place, What I can see and What people might do there. Complete examples such as: “Beach — sand and waves — swim or build sandcastles” and “Farm — crops or animals — grow food or care for animals.” The child chooses two more features and completes the table.

Check: Ask, “Which feature would you expect at a beach but not usually at a mountain? Why?”

Week 3: Built Places and Cities

Focus: Understanding that people build places for living, working, travelling and recreation.

Hook: Show a photograph of a city and ask the child to spot roads, buildings, parks and transport. Discuss how a city is different from a farm or beach.

Teach and practise: Read selected pages from Possum Magic and identify the Australian places visited in the story. Together, design a simple town using paper shapes for a house, school, shop, park, road and bridge. Ask the child to explain why each feature is useful.

Check: The child points to one place for learning, one for shopping and one for playing, and explains each choice.

Week 4: Maps and Symbols

Focus: Using a simple map, a bird’s-eye view, symbols and a legend.

Hook: Hide a small object in the room and give a simple verbal direction such as, “Walk to the table, turn left and look beside the chair.” Ask, “How could we draw a map to help someone find it?”

Teach and practise: Explain that maps show where places are. Create a map of the child’s town or imaginary town using symbols: a blue line for a river, a green square for a park, a star for home and a black line for a road. Add a legend explaining each symbol. The child follows and gives directions using words such as near, far, beside, left, right, north, south, east and west where appropriate.

Check: Ask the child to use the map to give a two-step direction from the school to the park.

Week 5: Places in Australia

Focus: Locating familiar Australian places and comparing different environments.

Hook: Read selected pages from Possum Magic. Find the places mentioned in the story on a map of Australia, using adult help as needed.

Teach and practise: Locate Queensland, the child’s local area, one city, one beach, one farm area and one natural feature. Discuss how weather, landforms and people’s activities may differ between places. The child completes the sentence frames: “At the beach, I might see ___.” “In a city, I might see ___.” “On a farm, people might ___.”

Check: Ask the child to name one place in Queensland and one way it is similar to or different from the local area.

Week 6: Caring for Places

Focus: Understanding how people care for natural and built places.

Hook: Read selected pages from Where the Forest Meets the Sea. Ask, “What might happen if people do not care for a forest, beach or river?”

Teach and practise: Sort actions into “helps a place” and “harms a place”: put rubbish in a bin, plant trees, break signs, waste water, stay on a path, disturb animals, recycle. Choose a local place and create a three-part care plan: “We can ___; we should not ___; this helps because ___.”

Check: The child explains one action that protects a natural feature and why it matters.

Week 7: Families and the Past

Focus: Using family stories, photographs and objects as sources about the past.

Hook: Show an old photograph or object from the family, if available. Ask, “What can this tell us about the person, place or time?” Read selected pages from My Place.

Teach and practise: Explain that a source is something that gives us information about the past. Compare a family photograph, a written story and an object. Complete the questions: “What do I notice?” “What might this tell me?” “What can’t I know yet?” The child interviews an adult using three questions: “Where did you live as a child?” “What was school or work like?” and “What family story do you remember?”

Check: The child identifies one family source and tells one fact learned from it.

Week 8: A Family Tree of Jesus

Focus: Connecting Bible stories about Jesus’ family with the idea of ancestry and the ancient past.

Hook: Ask, “How can we show that people in a family are connected?” Read Matthew 1:1–17 from a child-friendly Bible, or summarise the genealogy if the list is too long for the child.

Teach and practise: Explain that a genealogy is a record showing family connections. Make a simplified family tree using these names and relationships from the Bible: Abraham → Isaac → Jacob → Judah → David → Solomon → Joseph → Jesus. Explain that Matthew’s genealogy highlights Jesus’ connection with important people in Israel’s history. Add Mary and Joseph to show Jesus’ immediate family, while clarifying that Matthew’s list follows Joseph’s family line.

Check: Ask, “Who was Jesus’ earthly father?” “Who was Joseph’s ancestor in this simplified tree?” and “What does a family tree show?” Expected answers: “Joseph,” “David,” and “family connections or ancestry.”

Week 9: Bible Stories and Ancient History

Focus: Ordering events and understanding that people lived in different times in the past.

Hook: Place the cards Abraham, David, Joseph and Jesus in a mixed-up order. Ask the child to work out which person came first and how they could show the order.

Teach and practise: Make a simple timeline: Abraham — David — Joseph — Jesus — today. Explain that the timeline is not drawn to scale and that these people lived long ago in the ancient past. Read or retell one short story about each person: Abraham’s journey, David and Goliath, Joseph caring for Mary and Jesus, and Jesus’ birth.

Check: The child places the four people in order and uses the words before, after, long ago and today in a sentence.

Week 10: Our Place and Our History Exhibition

Focus: Bringing together mapping, place, family history and the family tree of Jesus.

Hook: Ask, “What would you put in a small museum about our family and our local place?” Look back through the geography and history journal.

Teach and practise: The child creates a display with four parts: a map of a familiar place, a labelled drawing of a natural or built feature, a short family-history source with one fact, and the family tree of Jesus. The child presents the display to an adult, explaining how maps show places, how sources tell us about the past, and how a family tree shows connections.

Check: Ask the child to complete these sentences:

• “A map helps us to ___.”
• “A natural feature is ___.”
• “A source about the past can be ___.”
• “A family tree shows ___.”

End-of-Unit Review

Invite the child to choose one place and one person from the unit. Ask them to explain where the place is, what features it has, how people use or care for it, who the person was, and how that person fits into the timeline or family tree. Keep the completed maps, timeline and family tree as evidence of learning.

Making the Unit Easier

Use photographs and objects rather than requiring extensive writing. Let the child answer orally, trace labels, use sentence starters and complete only one or two examples at a time.

Making the Unit More Challenging

Ask the child to add a compass rose and a scale-free legend to maps, compare two places using “same” and “different,” interview another family member, or research one additional person from the genealogy using a child-friendly Bible.