The teaching of history in the little yellow house is one of those subjects that has evolved quite a bit over the years.
A good deal of the why behind its constant-morphing is that I love history and I love finding new ways to keep it fresh, both for the kids and for me. I realized about my 3rd year into homeschooling that if I had to cover early American history every year with every K or 1st grade student, I would probably go crazy.
The other reason why our study of history has changed a good deal is that I keep adding students (we're up to 4 and hurdling toward 5!) and I couldn't bear the thought of trying to do 4 different history lessons every single day.
(Let me be even more honest: I couldn't bear the thought of trying to do 2 different history lessons every single day!)
There's not really any way around 4 different math lessons-- although even with that I've delegated quite a bit of the hands-on-teaching by purchasing Teaching Textbooks math for my 3 oldest children and letting them operate fairly independently-- but I am a firm believer in my need to find a way to make most every other subject something we work jointly through.
A little over a year ago as I was writing out IHIPs, I simply and without much fanfare decided I wasn't going to buy a history curriculum, but that I would develop one as we went. I'm not sure why the planner in me wasn't a bit alarmed: I just knew it was what we needed to do.
The thing is, there isn't a prepackaged curriculum (at least that I've found) that allows me to teach the same basic substance to both a 10-year-old avid reader/articulate writer and a 6-year-old struggling reader who still needs to work on her fine motor skills, but I just knew that-- at least for now-- I wanted us all learning together anyway. And I believed it's possible!
Here's how I approach history:
For the past 3 semesters, my kids have been fortunate enough to be part of a collaborative literature study group with a handful of other families. We read through books together and meet once a week on Thursday afternoons for an hour or two to discuss the book(s), hand in and read aloud writing assignments, listen to music and look at geography and take note of historical events that are referenced in the book(s), etc.
This literature study has been my springboard.
Once I know the book(s) we'll be reading in literature group for the next 6-week segment, I look online for lists of books for children set in whatever time period our literature study will be taking place in. I look up significant events (that may or may not be mentioned in the book) and make timelines so that we can study each one a bit. I check pinterest and often find project inspiration, already-planned book studies, maps, coloring pages, and more. It is amazing how much easy information is available through the internet!
I request lots of books through our library loan system. Our librarian is very gracious with me and lets me borrow books for as many weeks as I would like them.
We read. We read and read and read, and listen and watch and read. I borrow a good bit of historical fiction for the older kids to read independently that will reinforce what we're studying together, I borrow children's story books about different events (like the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and Amelia Earhart's fateful flight and Teddy Roosevelt's childhood and Dorothea Lange's life and what sunk the Titanic-- do you know how many books have been written for children on how many subjects???) that we read aloud together, I borrow art and photography books that link to our time period, I borrow music and movies.
our "history" basket-- 99% of which came from the library
I assign research topics to each child each week, expecting results appropriate for their age and ability, and make sure we have plenty of grade-level-appropriate books for them to use in their study. "Gabriel, I want a report on Thomas Edison. Bronwyn, I want a report on fashion in 1912..."
We share our findings with one another. The older children read to the younger ones (even 4-year-old Claire must sit through The Gardener and Camille and the Sunflowers). I read aloud to them all. We make dioramas, we paint and sketch and color, we build models and we draw maps, we cook and bake, we watch Ken Burns' documentaries and period-appropriate movies, we cut out period-appropriate paper dolls, and we have a blast doing it all.
I love that we learn history together. I love that from Gabriel down to Claire, we can sit around the dinner table and discuss our studies together. I love that I am not trying to change gears from kid to kid, switching hats four different times every single day, because we are together.
Can I say what I also love?
Because I don't use a curriculum, I am not tempted to let the curriculum be my task-master. I tell it what we will study, what we will cover, and what we will research. Certainly, at the beginning of the school quarter when I make my timeline and request books and catalog events, I always think we'll get to more than we actually do-- there is so much to study about every time period in history!-- but there is no guilt, no condemnation, and no discouragement when we don't, because nobody but me said we should.
This approach surely won't work for everyone and in every season, but it has been an amazingly good fit for us. I'm thankful for a mom who led the way in such approaches (not every year, but increasingly often as the years went by), I'm thankful for a community around me that neither laughs at or scorns the idea that such an approach would work, I'm thankful for the Holy Spirit helping me be free and relaxed enough to do what my children need me to do, and I'm thankful for the opportunity to discover and explore and learn from generations past with my children!
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