Friday, July 29, 2011

How we learn HISTORY

This post is linked to No Ordinary Blog Hop! Hop on over for more great posts!





I'm linking up with Learning All the Time's "Favorite Resource this Week!"

Favorite Resource This Week


It's hard to narrow my favorite history resources down to just one, because we pull our lessons from so many different sources!

The Horrible Histories series by Terry Deary is lots of fun. So are Bentley Boyd's Chester comic books. Dude loves DK books; we own a few, but most of them are available at the library. Super likes E. H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World. We use it as a basic outline for our chronological history studies.



We love hands-on projects, so sometimes we use History Pockets as a supplement. We also like the Spend a Day in... series by Linda Honan because they are full of fun crafts and activities. I believe there are only three in the series; I wish there were more!

This is one project we made from Spend a Day in Ancient Greece. We still use the caduceus as a symbol for medicine today.



Notebooking is a great way to summarize what we've learned. It's also fun to go back and look over their past work as a review. The kids recently asked to study Vikings, so I got these great pages from The Notebooking Nook.



As you can see, the kids also made paper shields. We cut out cardboard swords and covered them with foil, but they didn't stand up to "battle" as well as the shields!

We also used the Brandenburg Vikings unit, downloaded from CurrClick. You probably can't read the Viking sayings above, so here they are:

A man who wants to kill his foe
Must get up fast and never slow.

A wolf who wants a snack

Never sleeps on his back!

Beer and mead are not that good.

They make your brain as thick as mud.


And my personal favorite:



Didn't realize those Vikings were so well-spoken! :)

These are all great resources, but I would have to say that our absolute favorite resource for history is...

Dad!

When you're a homeschooling mom, it's extemely handy to have a history loving-husband! (Dad's idea of a fun evening is reading a biography of Thomas Jefferson, or watching a Ken Burns documentary.)



Dad is in charge of helping the kids with their timelines. He also likes to read Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe books with them. And if the kids ever have a question about some arcane bit of historical trivia...well, they don't come to me!

My public school history education was based on boring textbooks and memorizing dates, so it's not surprising that I forgot nearly all of it. I'm grateful to have an opportunity to get a great history education along with my kids.

Who knew that history could be interesting and fun?



11 comments:

Susan said...

There are definitely some GREAT resources in this post! Thanks so much for linking :)
And, I have ordered some of the Horrible Histories through our library.

Sparklee said...

I really hope you like them! The subtitle is "History with All the Nasty Bits Left In!" So...there are some gross and irreverent parts...perfect for us! :)

Susan said...

Sounds like fun to me!!

Unknown said...

We love notebooking and history! We've even done those SAME Medusa pictures with the snake hairdo! LOL Thanks for stopping by my blog! LOVE our desk with hutch for organizing! Matching the table since they're both in the diningroom! LOL

Sara said...

It's always nice when Dad gets to be a resource. :)

Sparklee said...

Aren't those Medusa portraits fun? We made those more than a year ago, and I don't save every project, but I couldn't bear to toss them! They've been on our wall for a long time...but it's time to make room for this year's stuff!

Dad is an awesome resource, and it's great to have help with something as complex as history!

Karen said...

I am so glad I found this today! I have a 6th grade daughter and I will be back to visit! Love these ideas and am going to add your blog to my favorites. The "Spend the Day With" series sounds so great. Am about to go see if I can find them! Yay for history.

Michelle said...

I never thought I would love history so much!!! Our dvr is filled with history documentaries. I haven't seen the Horrible History books before, but they look fantastic! Our library doesn't have them, but I'm working on maybe getting some through scholastic. Maybe.

I love seeing all your plans in the sidebar! :)

The Adventurer said...

I think I have most of the horrible history books:) My kids won't watch the TV series for some reason:) I am trying Note booking for the first time this year with resistance ( I have very reluctant writers)

What would we home schooling MOM do if the Dads weren't around. My hubby is full of little interesting history tidbits:)

Kara Chupp said...

Love that last quote...and love that you are including "dad" :)
So important.
~Kara @ The Chuppies/NOBH

Unknown said...

Our daddy (husband) is a great resource too! Funny I used to tease him that he is just full of useless information- now it comes in quite handy! :) new follower!