Tuesday Tea at the Library: Darwin’s Letters

It’s Tuesday Tea at the Library! This week: teaching science and history with Charles Darwin’s letters.

Tuesday is Books & Libraries Day at the River Houses. Since yesterday was Charles Darwin’s birthday, why not spend a few homeschool minutes exploring some related teaching resources about Darwin, science, and history from Cambridge University.

As a life-long naturalist and scientist, Charles Darwin had a wide range of professional colleagues and associates with whom he corresponded. Cambridge University in England has for many years been collecting and publishing scholarly editions of Darwin’s correspondence (darwinproject.ac.uk), and they have also put together a collection of teaching resources for younger students based on that material. Yesterday was Darwin’s birthday (he was born 12 February 1809, the same day as Abraham Lincoln), so if you’re studying evolution or the history of science in your homeschool this week, why not take a look at some of these excellent resources:

⬩ DARWIN CORRESPONDENCE PROJECT, Learning Resources: Ages 7–11 (darwinproject.ac.uk/learning/7-11)

⬩ DARWIN CORRESPONDENCE PROJECT, Learning Resources: Ages 11–14 (www.darwinproject.ac.uk/learning/11-14).

The ages 7–11 section includes teaching materials on “Darwin the Collector,” “Detecting Darwin,” “Darwin and Evolution,” and “Darwin’s Fantastical Voyage,” as well as a timeline of Darwin’s life and work.

The ages 11–14 section includes “Darwin and Religion,” “Doing Darwin’s Experiments.” “How Dangerous was Darwin?,” “Offer of a Lifetime,” “Darwin and Slavery,” “Beagle Voyage,” “Darwin’s Scientific Women,” and “Using Darwin’s Letters in the Classroom.”

Spend some time with these excellent primary-source materials this week and give your homeschool students a real sense of Darwin’s life, his work, and his times.

What have you discovered at your library lately?

¶ Explore more: For a quick illustrated review of Darwin, science, and religion in the nineteenth century—just the background you need to prepare a homeschool lesson—turn to pages 340–343 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books).