Stories of America — Season 1, Episode 18: The Oregon Trail
Kids • 15 min • 1 season, 32 episodes
Episode synopsis
This episode introduces children to the long and challenging journey pioneers faced as they traveled west along the Oregon Trail. Through simple narration and reenactments, the program shows why families chose to leave their homes, what supplies they carried, and how they worked together to overcome dangers such as rough terrain, weather, and illness. Designed for classroom learning, the episode highlights the courage, determination, and hope that drove thousands of Americans to seek new opportunities in the West.
About Stories of America
The interconnectedness of all things is a fundamental part of reading motivation projects. Although GPN's Reading Rainbow claims to have invented that idea, Stories of America with host Ann McGregor got there first. It was 1976, America's bicentennial year, and WVIZ-TV of Cleveland wanted something more out of a series aimed at delivering American history, They decided to combine history with reading. The result was Stories of America. Hosting was the familiar face of Ann McGregor, who had enlivened Picture Book Park and Tilson's Bookshop some two years earlier. Stories of America resembled more of a story reading than a history lesson, but it also introduced other elements that became standard Reading Rainbow procedure. There were occasional film sequences, dramatizations, and even an animation. All told, the 32-part Stories of America series ran some 14 years on WVIZ-TV. The station brought the shows back in 1998, and it would be the only WVIZ instructional telev