How to make elementary history fun?

[Misha]

Is it possible? 

At this point, I'm considering using a spine (barely), a timeline, and a lot of living books. I always have a difficult time finding enough living books (we're voracious readers). 

 

 

Have you gone through this with your family? What solutions did you happen upon that worked best for your children? 

 

 

Thank you!

[HS Mom in NC]

We use Story of the World Vols. 1-4 with the Activity Books (sold separately) which include related fiction and non-fiction reading lists, coloring pages, geography, narration questions, review flash cards and hands on activities. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_18?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=story+of+the+world&sprefix=story+of+the+world%2Caps%2C200

We also use the test booklets for SOTW 1-4 as a review.

[UnlikelyHomeschoolingMama]

We are doing MFW Adventures.  My kids love all the books.  We just read read read.  We talk about what it would have been like to be there.  We do notebooking pages.  We make mini-books.  If they aren't into a particular topic, we move on....at this point who cares (ie, Samuel Morse...they didn't give two hoots).  :)  But the California Gold Rush??  They were enthralled, so we read more books and did more stuff.  :)  

 

Anyway...if they like books, just read.  They'll be interested.  Enjoy!!

[Chris in VA]

We used SOTW with the Activity Guide and some of the recommended books. Have you seen it? The AG has numerous books listed for each chapter, as well as activities and other helps. We also used the timeline cards from hanna's homeschool helps on yahoo--they are free for downloading and you print them out yourself.

 

Not only was it fun, it was the best thing we did in homeschooling, and it made history our favorite subject. Years later, dd is now taking AP World, and she still has some of the basics in her head from 1st and 2nd grade history, although that was not our goal (our goal was that it simply lead to a love of history).

[Guest]

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Edited June 22, 2016 by Guest

[Misha]

We've actually used SOTW since the beginning and they loved it at first, they've just grown really bored with it recently. 


 

[SilverMoon]

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Edited August 31, 2023 by SilverMoon

[Holly]

What about something like Truthquest or All Through the Ages?  I have a friend who just uses Truthquest as a booklist and adds lots of notebooking to the readings.  

 

Sometimes I just look on other lit-based homeschool program websites to see what they have scheduled for our current time period (Sonlight, Vertas Press, HOD, SCM, MFW, Winterpromise, etc. all have tons of books assigned).  We currently use SCM, but I often look on the other sites when I need to make a book substitution.  Sonlight is heavy on books, so maybe that would be a good place for you to look.  

[Arcadia]

For younger age, legos and playmobil help elevate the boredom.

By the time my boys were 9 & 10, it was Crash Course videos and Horrible Histories videos on YouTube. My boys enjoy ancient history and world history but has no interest in US history. We "did" US history by watching Liberty Kids DVDs.

[mschickie]

Mystery of History is a great history pprogram. It includes a lot of great activities to choose from. We do that along with a timeline and historical fiction. Sonlight is a great source for the fiction.

[Guest]

I signed them up for K12. Best money spent ever!

 

 

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[happypamama]

Any chance you live in an area with living history stuff? My area is jam packed with museums, historic farms, festivals with demonstrations, you name it. (Also, DH is an historic restoration expert.). So my children have grown up seeing how maple sugar is made, watching colonial farms work, listening to DH show them all about historic sawmills and the architecture of all the buildings. The "wow" factor is pretty high. DD went through a period where she was crazy obsessed with all of it. Costumes help too! My older two children dressed in colonial gowns and drop front breeches for daily wear for a couple of years. Making the history come alive helps build an interest in the backstory that books provide.

 

Also, knights and castles are great fun for sparking interest. But if your kids like books, there's nothing wrong with sticking with that and not bothering with more. Maybe a little mapwork?

[Ellie]

It didn't occur to me to be so organized when my dc were little. I was very influenced by John Holt and his unschooling philosophy. :-) So mostly I read historical fiction aloud to the dc when I found it in the library, sometimes going on rabbit trails looking for titles by the same author, or following a specific time period.  We did lots of field trips (including the family vacation when we went to all 21 California missions...in a week...). Older dd earned beads for Camp Fire, so sometimes our history was following requirements in her handbook. Eventually, we did Vol. 2 of KONOS, which is a chronological American history. Older dd finished history at the community college; younger dd did world history, American History, and U.S. government using BJUP texts.

[wintermom]

It didn't occur to me to be so organized when my dc were little. I was very influenced by John Holt and his unschooling philosophy. :-) So mostly I read historical fiction aloud to the dc when I found it in the library, sometimes going on rabbit trails looking for titles by the same author, or following a specific time period.  We did lots of field trips (including the family vacation when we went to all 21 California missions...in a week...). Older dd earned beads for Camp Fire, so sometimes our history was following requirements in her handbook. Eventually, we did Vol. 2 of KONOS, which is a chronological American history. Older dd finished history at the community college; younger dd did world history, American History, and U.S. government using BJUP texts.

 

We've done a lot of field trips on family vacations, which have been really fun. Only one of them backfired and turned oldest ds off Fort Henry, Ontario, because the teacher in the mock classroom was very "realistic for the time" with the group's oral spelling test and kept giving the boys extremely hard words while the girls only got super easy ones. It was funny, but he is still annoyed to this day. ;)