lets talk history

[kathymuggle]

Where-ever you lie on the HS spectrum....how do you and your family approach history? any philosophy of history?

Do you work from overview to specific, or specific to overview?

Ex: Do you believe we should start with gweneral knowledge and over time focus on specific interests? OR Do you start with a narrow focus (like your town or house) and move outward?

If you use textbooks, which ones?

What other resources do you use?

Favourite websites?

[lisarussell]

We follow the Well Trained Mind history model.

Basically, history is studied in chronological order in three 4 year cycles. (3x4=12th grade)

So for example, Ancient History is studied in 1st grade, 5th grade and 9th grade. I Kindergarten a study of ancient history would mean coloring a map page to reflect the location of the place, reading picture books that show the clothing and environment and tell memorable stories, sometimes mythological, of the setting and coloring pictures of ancient greek togas, the first olympics, etc.

In 5th grade, a study of Ancient history would be more in-depth, reading some historical fiction novels, like The Golden Goblet, drawing more detailed maps that show the results of wars and conquests and more in depth discussions about economies and politics.

In 9th grade, Ancient history would be studied by reading translations of ancient texts (or translating them oneself if greek & latin were studied) and writing essays comparing different time periods, political figures, the works of great artists & philosophers, etc.

This will be our 9th year using this approach and we absolutely love it. One of The Well Trained Mind authors wrote the Story of The World history program with 4 books, written in story form, to spark further study. I used their study guides last time we cycled through and really hated them. Too much war-focused activities. Maybe because the author has boys & I have girls. We just weren't interested in re-creating so many army uniforms and re-enacting so many battles.

History Odyssey makes a study guide that we like better, but after using the same approach for so many years, I am comfortable now just having my older kids do activities with the younger ones. We read the stories together from the SOTW book one day and from picture books, Kingfisher encyclopedia, and other books every day.


My soon-to-be 6th grader's favorite activity is authoring coloring books for her siblings. So her assignment is to write and illustrate a coloring book and present it to them.

My older daughter and I debate a lot. Presenting logical arguments to absolutely everything I say is her latest pastime. She used to be required to write essays about everything but She's really quite a good writer and she likes to write all the time so I no longer require it of her, but we need to at least discuss her studies each day so that I know she's read it!

In addition to the coloring books, my going into 2nd grader, my kindergartner and I do little arts and crafts projects from the History Odyssey program.

The beauty of the 4 yr cycle in a big family is that no matter where they start, they're going to get at least 4 years of everything. I like that our whole HOUSE is on Ancient History at once. I can't imagine having kids in different grades studying different time periods, much of our dinner conversation is about History.

[3momkmb]

We cover history chronologically. I tend to start with a general overview and stop and go into depth when the kids show interest. So, for instance we might read chapters from US History for Dummies along with some historical fiction along with it. Then we might stop at the American Revolution or the Salem Witch Trials and read a lot more about it, do a few project or whatever. I have to pay attention to what my 9yo seems to enjoy but my 14yo will usually ask for more books on whatever interests her.

I did not do the self centric approach (IE-me, then my neighborhood, then my town).

Some of my fav resources are Learning Through History magazine, Cartoon Histories, Horrible Histories and the *dummies* books.

[frogguruami]

We approach history chronologically. We start with an over view and then follow rabbit trails and expand on those topics that interest them.

We also tend to focus more on the cultural aspects of history instead of the political aspects, mostly because those are the things that interest us.

[kathymuggle]

Thanks!

I think I will go overview, chronological, and in depth when their interest is peaked.

I wonder if SOTW is appropriate for a grade 7? Anyone have the Kingfisher History encyclopedia? Do you like it?

A slight tangent: I was curious about other peoples approaches because I was looking at the Ontario curriculum (I was doing this because my grade 7 is homeswchooling for the first time in years, and is alittle unsure. I can see him asking to go back to PS. So...I wanted to know what the schools did. It seems quite messed up:

Grade 1-2: all about me
Grade 3: pioneers in local area
Grade 4: medieval
Grade 5: ancients (yup, after medeival)
grade 6: explorers
Grade 7&8: Canada

The jumping around drove me insane. The idea of devoting grades 7 and 8 exclusively to Canadian history seems like a waste of time (and do not get me wrong - I love Canadian history - but two years???? Where is the time for the rest of the world????)

At any rate, dang what the schools do - I am going to start with prehistoric, keep it intersting, and move forward.

Kathy

[MyCalling]

We are only starting History this coming year, but here's what I plan. We'll be going through it chronologically, basically following TWTM plan and using a huge wall timeline. I figure the timeline will be our biggest activity and plan for pictures, short sentences, dates and adding everything and everyone to it. I figure the kids might get interested in other historical events and add those out of order as they come up.

I have a lot of encyclopedias on world history and ancient history to read from and plan on get specifics from the library. Maps and our globe will be used a lot. I was planning on buying activity books on the main civilizations of ancient times so the kids and do them on their own, but I wonder if they would get much use out of them.

[Lisalucy]

My child is 13 and SOTW is much too simplistic for him (especially if you were planning to start with ancient). But the same author, Susan Wise Bauer, has written for adults The History of the Ancient World. The amazon reviews all agreed that it was very readable, very SOTWish if you will (also that it was fairly strictly a political history, not much art and science history).

At any rate, this is what my son wanted -- political history, meaty. I tried the Cartoon History of the Universe from the library for him first, but though he enjoyed parts of it, he was looking for something else as a text I guess. He is more than a hundred pages into THOTAW and is enjoying it. But it is over 700 pages long; this may be a consideration for you.

--LL

edited to add: We are unschoolish. I like to have resources on hand that come at things from different ways. My oldest is a voracious reader. My middle isn't (yet?). He really gets more from hearing, seeing, and pretending; so we have SOTW cds, I record PBS shows for him (The War That Made America gets a lot of viewing -- any sword action gets a lot of playtime), and have historical dress-up props available. (It is harder than you may think to find props for boys that aren't weapons.) I read aloud. But none of this is preplanned or scheduled, except that my oldest now has a plan for himself.

[spruce]

Originally Posted by kathymuggle

Where-ever you lie on the HS spectrum....how do you and your family approach history? any philosophy of history?

Do you work from overview to specific, or specific to overview?

Ex: Do you believe we should start with gweneral knowledge and over time focus on specific interests? OR Do you start with a narrow focus (like your town or house) and move outward?

If you use textbooks, which ones?

What other resources do you use?

Favourite websites?

Books, books, and more books.



I guess that's our philosophy of history learning...we really just read and think our way through it.

The little ones are doing stuff on a timeline (Story of the World with modifications as I see fit...I think they're unnecessarily Christian and European in their thinking), and the older ones are just following their interests. My 12yo is a history NUT, she loves anything historical.

This year for the 12 yo we've decided to go w/ eTAP online history. She's skipped a grade so she's doing 8th grade (but we have access to all the levels) so it's American history, the Constitution, etc. Basically, a Civics and Gov't course for American kids.

My 7 and 4 and even 2 yo's love SOTW as a jumping-off point. We find and use a ton of other supplies, books, etc as we study each period and person in the SOTW history.

Our approach to history is the same as our approach to reading: It's part of everything.

love, penelope

[VisionaryMom]

My graduate school work is in history, so here's my philosophy (which is unapologetically influenced by my academic interests). I am a huge believer in histories of people. One of the mistakes I came to believe teaching college students history was that our public and private schools (for the most part) focus on "fact-based history." They teach kids the 3 people present at this event, the exact date of Ben Franklin's death, Abe Lincoln's favorite food. History becomes tables of facts, but the essence of history - the story of the lives of people who came before us - is lost.

For my preschooler, we talk a lot about what people did when X or why we do certain things. DH and I were active in our state's campaign for Hillary, and DS got really interested. He asked a lot of questions about why we vote, who votes, etc. I was excited because he thought of these things on his own. So we got to talk about the story of voting. I intend for that to be my approach from here on out.

History in schools is one of the main reasons I'd consider homeschooling permanently. I know the basics of other subjects, but I know how terrible social studies/history learning tends to be in schools. I know that I would be a basketcase correcting mistakes in my children's school work.

I also am a big believer in hands-on history. Teach about how people lived in a certain time and then go to a living history exhibit.

[Britishmum]

We read our way through Story of the World week by week - at the moment we have two volumes going, one for my 7 yo and the other for the 5 & 3 yo. It is very superficial, though, so once we've read a part that spikes interest, we expand on it.

For this, we use the internet a lot. Dd (7) is pretty good at internet surfing now with me. We find good websites, read snippets, and often make up our own paper on the subject by precising what we've read. While we do this we talk a lot about how each website is offering one viewpoint of the facts.

We also have a lot of good history books lying out in our living room. We refer to them often. So, if something arises from a TV programme or a novel we're reading, we'll go look up that era in the history books and read what they have to say.

In the car, we love Horrible History CDs, although my 3 yo doesn't like them, so we have to limit them to when he's asleep. We also love books with historical backgrounds, so we often end up looking up information after reading fiction. For example, recently dd read Nightbirds on Nantucket, and then we researched the Hanovarians.

Whenever a holiday comes around, or a news item, we research the background. So, last week we read from lots of sources about the Declaration of Independence. In November we'll probably read more about Guy Fawkes and the parliamentary system. So much of our history just comes from everyday events that we then discuss and start researching.

My parents are great travellers, so we learn a lot from their experiences. They just went to India to research their family tree, so we did a lot of reading about India. Then, we had a visitor from Australia, so the girls are now really interested in learning more about Aboriginal history.

It's a big subject in our house, and there are so many opportunities for learning that we end up reading something just about every day. I don't worry that we jump all around, as I think that as time goes on, the kids put it all in place in their mind. What is important now is that they think about history and learn to consider different perspectives. The facts and dates will fall into place in the future.

[MyCalling]

My dc love our Usborne Internet-Linked encyclopedia and will occasionally spend hours online checking out sites together. That and cable shows are how they learned 90% of their history last year. We did nothing formal.