History

History is one of my favorite subjects. It was so boring when I was in school - memorizing all those dates and people. Now, as I research and teach it to my children, I am learning so much along with them that I didn't get while in school.

Here at home, we use The Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer. It tells history like a story. I read aloud to all 4 of my students from the chapter book. We read one chapter per week. Then, we look in our activity guide. There are recipes, games, crafts, and other projects in the companion activity guides. There are also maps and coloring pages. I do copy these off for my younger two boys. They color while I read to them and it keeps them quiet! The pages and mapwork then go into a history folder for each student. My older two do take notes as I read, as well. I pause and spell things out for them, as needed. The notes go into their history folders.

When we do come into a time period or subject that is especially interesting, we do take a break from plugging along with The Story of the World and do a unit study. For example, when we get to the American colonization and the Revolution in a couple of months, we are going to spend a month studying this more in depth. We plan to do several projects, cook recipes from that time period, and study the people in places more fully.

We do get together with another family or two once per week to do the activities and hands-on projects. This makes our studies all the more fun to do these things with friends.

We also have the:

Kingfisher Encyclopedia of World History
Usborne Book of World History

The Kingfisher version is much better, I think. It is fully illustrated in drawings and photos and great to use as a guide to gain extra tidbits about the time period and cultures we study. The Usborne version we have is all illustrated in comic book style. While interesting, it isn't as visually striking. The more recent edition may be better.

Occasionally my older two students look up some aspect of what we are studying and do a project or write a paper about it.

We are in Volume 3 of The Story of the World. This week we are on Chapter 4, which is about Samuel Champlain and Henry Hudson.

History has become a subject that my students really look forward to. For a couple of them, it is their most favorite time of the week.