Grade 3 · Social Studies · Unit 3 of 9
Challenges & Solutions
Hardships, teamwork and history detective skills
What your child practises
Isolation, long winters, few doctors and loss of land, and how neighbours and communities responded. Also builds history detective skills: primary and secondary sources, good questions, maps, timelines and key words like settler, treaty and refugee.
Ontario Curriculum expectation: A2.1–A2.6, A3.4 · challenges faced by communities from 1780 to 1850 and how people met them, with inquiry skills and vocabulary
Sample questions
A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.
Question 1
A barn raising was a time when…
🏚️- traders swapped furs
- people sailed across the ocean
- neighbours gathered to build a barn together
- children took a test
Show answer
neighbours gathered to build a barn together
Hint: Working together made big jobs possible.
Question 2
An oral history is…
🗣️- a kind of tool
- the memories and stories told by people, passed on by speaking
- a map
- a legal agreement
Show answer
the memories and stories told by people, passed on by speaking
Hint: Many Indigenous communities share history through oral stories.
Question 3
Is it a challenge or a way people met a challenge? Tap an item, then tap its basket.
Sort into: ⚠️ a challenge · 🤝 a way to meet it
- 🛣️building roads and canals
- 🏡neighbours living far away
- 🏚️neighbours holding a barn raising
- 🏪trading for goods at a trading post
- 🌲forests to clear before farming
- 🩺no doctor nearby
Show answer
⚠️ a challenge: neighbours living far away, forests to clear before farming, no doctor nearby · 🤝 a way to meet it: building roads and canals, neighbours holding a barn raising, trading for goods at a trading post
Hint: A challenge is a problem. Working together, building roads and storing food are ways people met them.
Question 4
What is a land grant?
📜- a kind of map
- a loan of money
- a house
- land given to a person or a group
Show answer
land given to a person or a group
Hint: The government gave land grants to some settlers.
Question 5
Which tools help you see how a community changed over time?
🗓️- only music
- timelines and maps
- only photographs of food
- only weather reports
Show answer
timelines and maps
Hint: Timelines show order and maps show where things happened.
Question 6
Why did many settlers' towns grow near rivers and lakes even though winters were hard?
🌊- rivers kept snow away
- water gave them transportation, power for mills and fresh water
- the water was warm all year
- the land was flat everywhere
Show answer
water gave them transportation, power for mills and fresh water
Hint: Rivers were roads and also powered mills.