Home Geography for Primary Grades · Lesson XLIV · Unit 10: How people live and work
44. More about what people are doing: factories and trade
Goal: Your child knows what manufacturing and trade (commerce) are, and explains why the work people do depends on where they live.
You'll need
- A few manufactured things from home: a shoe, a fork, a toy, a cotton shirt
- A geography notebook (any notebook kept just for these lessons) and a pencil
What's in the book
In cities, people work in mills and factories that turn wheat into flour, cotton into cloth, leather into shoes, iron into stoves and lumber into furniture. Exchanging goods is trade or commerce; goods travel by boat, wagon and pack animals. Make a list of occupations. The work people do depends on where they live: farms on rich level land, mines in the mountains, fishing and trade by the sea, factories and stores in the city.
The lesson, step by step
Mills and factories
Read the opening.
These are mills or factories, full of machines in motion doing their work almost like human beings.
Ask: What did the factories in the book make? (flour, thread and cloth, shoes, plows, stoves, cutlery, furniture, toys)
Made from what?
Hold up each thing from home. Ask: What was this made from? (a shoe from leather, a fork from steel, a shirt from cotton) Where did that come from?
Trade
Read about exchanging goods.
SayNobody makes everything they need. We buy and sell, or trade. That is called trade, or commerce.
Ask: How are goods carried from place to place? (boats, trains, trucks, airplanes today; wagons and animals in the book)
A list of jobs
The book says:
Make a list of all the occupations you can think of.
Your child lists as many jobs as possible. Ask: Is dressmaking a job? Teaching? Which job would you like? Why?
Why different work?
Read the part about why people do different work. Ask: What work do people do where the land is rich and level? In the mountains? By the sea? In the city?
Afterwards
Visit a local maker if you can: a bakery, a mill, a workshop, a factory tour.
Tip
The last paragraph says some people have no churches, schools, books or factories, and asks how they live. You can talk about it as a question of how people in other places live differently, with respect for their ways.
Answers to the book's problems
Mills and factories turn wheat into flour, cotton into thread and cloth, leather into boots and shoes, iron and steel into plows, stoves and cutlery, and lumber into wagons and furniture. Cutlery means knives, forks, scissors and other cutting tools. Trade or commerce is exchanging goods, or buying and selling them for money. Goods are carried on boats along rivers and lakes, and where there are no rivers by railroads, wagons and pack animals (today also trucks and airplanes). Dressmaking and teaching are occupations. Where the land is rich and level, people farm; in the mountains they mine or keep cows and sheep on the hillside pastures; by the sea they fish or trade on the water; in cities they work in factories and stores.
Worked out for this site from the scan. If a number in your copy differs, trust the book.