So I have been thinking alot about Teaching and learning about
Difficult subjects. The 2 that seem to be taking up much of my brain
space are Slavery and War. Our history starts to cover these more in
the next few years. In regards to War, I am specifically thinking of
WW2 and the Holocaust. Big important topics that can be difficult to
understand and explain.

I found 2 great resources on DVD that I have aquired because I know I
wish to use them to help me Broach and teach these subjects.

One is the documentary Paperclips. It is about a small Tennessee town
and their Paperclip Project to learn about the Holocaust. I first saw
it on Netflix. I have since aquired a copy of it at of all placed Big
Lots. I originally saw it with the 2nd DVD of special features. ( the
one I was able to purchase for $3 was only the Single DVD) I highly
reccommend watching the "special" edition(2dvd set). However the
regular version is still highly educational and touching.

The Second Movie is Amazing Grace. This is a new release. It is the
story of the song Amazing grace and Wilberforce, the British
Parlimentarian that fought for and won Abolition in Britian. It is a
period Movie and absolutely Brillant. A great and helpful Feature on
this one is the DVDRom features. They are a study guide and Discusion
Questions. It was just Fantastic.

Does any one else have any ideas, curricullum, or supplemental items
they might be willing to share? Have you covered this, will you? What
worked, what didn't? Any thoughts are always appreciated.

having Deep thoughts on important concepts and ideas from our past.
LAdystyx

We have not covered these subjects yet but my husband And I have "a thing" for WWII an I would highly recomend a documentury called "The War" by Ken burns. I know you can get it throught blockbuster.com but I don't know about net flix. It is a long (6 disk) but but very well put together doc.

What grades are you teaching?  There is a lot of information about WWII and the Holocaust that's appropriate for most ages.

A good resource for Holocaust information is the Yad Vashem in Israel.  They have educational materials , and their online exhibits are also good teaching tools.

For slavery, I would recommend "The Last Safe House" by Barbara Greenwood.  We read this in our co-op to 2nd to 5th grade.  It is an exciting story of a family escaping from slavery, interspersed with much factual information about the time period.  We read it over several weeks and it really held their attention.  You can read about it on Amazon.

Nancy

Paperclips is an amazing documentary - great choice!

I think something important to discuss which was not taught to me when I was in public school and learned about the Holocaust was that even today that type of genocide is happening. I was somehow misled to think that once WW2 was over that element of humanity was wiped off this earth. I don't know how much you want to get into that but I think it is important to mention that in our country we are against genocide yet in other countries today it is still happening and is 'okay' with some people.

I was touched deeply by The Diary of Anne Frank. I don't know the ages of your kids and if that is yet appropriate.

I watched PaperClips and it was fantastic. That they killed homosexuals was something I learned in that documentary. Before you show it to your kids be ready for that discussion should it be picked up. Again I don't know the ages of your kids or if they have yet been taught about homosexuality. One moving thing about PaperClips was I was surprised when the teacher said in their area that topic was not taught. It has been taught in my area for years and years, maybe due to our higher percentage of Jewish people who live up here? I don't know. Anyway my point is I can't believe that the Holocaust was not being taught all over America.

I was going to post about Ken Burns' series, too, but someone beat me to it. :-)  We watched it when it was on PBS a few months ago.  It gave my son (10) a great understanding of what happened in the entire war.  He asked to skip ahead in history (we were in the reformation at the time) so he could study it.

Thanks for the tip on PaperClips.  Amazingly, our library has it.  There's also a juvenile book.

The Island on Bird Street is a great historical fiction about a boy who survives the cleaning out of the warsaw  ghettos, and then goes into hiding.

http://www.paperbackswap.com/book/details/9780395616239-The+Island+on+Bird+Street 

In 1981, there was an After-School Special on television called "The Wave."  The fictional program was based on an experiment done at a high school to help the students understand how the Holocaust could have happened.

You can watch the whole episode online at www.xenutv.com/cults/wave.htm.  (This site says the movie was released in 1991, but it's a typo.)

I had forgotten all about the program, but a mom at my homeschool co-op remembered it.  There is some great historical fiction about both slavery and the Holocaust written for almost every grade level.  Fiction can be a non-threatening window into a scary part of history.

I just watched from the library I'm Still Here it's rated TV-14  The diary entries originally told in the book Salvaged Pages: Young Writers' Diaries of the Holocaust were read by different celebrities, photos to music in both color and black-n-white (some of the photos showed death and malnurished unclothed bodies). One of the diary entries read used a-hole to describe Hitler, other than that there wasn't any bad language. There is a lesson plan for the movie at facinghistory.org

Research Irene Sendler, A Polish woman who helped save 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis. (more than Schindler). For every child she rescued, she put their name in a jar and buried in her garden. She just passed away this year.

Here's a couple of links http://www.irenasendler.org/facts.asp  http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6e0_1210820630