| I love history. It can be such an exciting topic! It has always seemed such a shame to take something so exciting and stuff it into a dry and boring textbook. As you can tell I am not a real fan of textbooks. I have used them and may use them in the future if it seems the most appropriate thing to do for the time, but it is not my first choice. I think the idea of teaching history as a unit study is the best, but I am a busy homeschooling mom and teaching unit studies is a real challenge for me. So what is the solution? Books! REAL Books! We study history using fiction books. I have just loved this approach and all my children have a love for history as a result. If you want have some sort of guide to follow that will tell you what books and time periods to study, than I highly recommend Beautiful Feet Books. I have used them to teach Medieval History, Early American History and U.S. and World History. I mostly use these guides to teach my older children in grades 7 or 8 on up to high school. The questions in these guides can really make a student think about many issues and how the subject may relate to Scripture. This has generated many great discussions between my children and I. For the younger grades I pick and choose books for us to read about a certain time period (you can go to the Beautiful Feet website and see the titles for a time period and check out the book you want to read at the library). I then read the book to them. I don’t worry too much about any other type of assignments to go along with this for the younger ones. Although I am not opposed to doing other activities along with the reading, it is usually a matter of my time or lack of it! I also like to check out my library for any supplemental materials that would help the study. For instance there was a video series about the Revolutionary War at the Library that we watched and enjoyed while studying the Revolutionary War. One thing that I have planned to do but have not done yet is setting up a time line and put in people and events so we can now start to pull together all the different time periods. Another idea is to pick a topic relevant to the time period and have the children make a poster giving me as much information on say “The Printing Press” or “President Lincoln” or a specific topic of interest. They can write reports, draw pictures, copy or print off drawings or any information that would be helpful. But I believe just reading lots of good books will open up great conversations, leave lasting impressions about certain time periods and children will retain so much more knowledge than they would with a history text book (my high school history textbook memories are making me yawn as I write this!! :) |
