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History Made Easy (& Fun!) {Episode 219}
492 Plays2 years ago
Struggling to teach or learn history? In Episode 219 Bonnie & Audrey share how & why to teach history as well as how to make it meaningful for the 7 different learning styles. And if you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself enjoying it too!!!
Mentioned in this episode:
Episode 117: Keeping Toddlers Busy
7 learning styles information
Historical fashion coloring books
About Outnumbered the Podcast:
Two moms, parenting a combined total of 19 kids and finding joy in the chaos.
Join Audrey and Bonnie as they share real parenting tips for real people through humor, advice and compassion.
Whether it's tackling how to teach kids to work or discussing where to turn when you're all out of patience,
these two experienced moms are here to offer authentic tips for raising children joyfully.
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Transcript
Introduction to Seven Learning Styles in History
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey guys, we're back with episode 219. It's another one in our school education series and today the focus is on history. We're gonna go through the different ways of teaching history and the seven different learning styles so you can teach your child or help your child with history in the most effective way for them. Plus at the end we share the specific things that we use for teaching our kids history. Let's get started.
Meet the Hosts: Audrey and Bonnie
00:00:31
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumbered the Podcast. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. We are experienced moms to a combined total of 19 children. In our weekly episodes, we explore relatable topics using our perspectives of humor and chaos. Tune in for advice and encouragement to gain more joy in your parenting journey.
Homeschooling vs. Public Schooling: Finding Solutions
00:00:56
Speaker
Okay guys, it's time for another one in our school episodes where we have talked about all the different subjects and how to teach your kids, help your kids in each subject. If you home school or if they go to public school, it doesn't matter how to help them best learn and study and love each subject. We're almost to the end of the list that we made about different subjects. So if anybody has a topic that we haven't talked about for school related things and helping kids, send us an email.
00:01:24
Speaker
We want to know what else you want us to talk about relating to school and educating your kids. Yeah. And we've kind of taken it like a topic by topic as far as school subjects go, but there's so much more that we could help specifically with homeschooling. If you're wondering, in fact, didn't we do an episode about homeschooling with a bunch of littles around? So like logistical type stuff, we'd be happy to cover, but we'd love to hear what you guys want to know.
Challenges in Teaching Children: Humorous Insights
00:01:48
Speaker
So, I wanted to share something funny that relates to having a lot of kids spread out in that you have to teach things over and over and over. And sometimes you forget to do that or there's like some gaps because you're thinking, oh, we've already done that before, but your brain doesn't connect the dots that that was actually 15 years ago and this new set of kids actually needs to learn the same thing. So, the other day we were talking about something.
00:02:15
Speaker
something church related, like scriptural. And we said something about Adam and Eve, and one of my little ones goes, what's Adam and Eve? And I'm like, oh boy.
00:02:25
Speaker
Wow, we are really failing there. I think we were doing the Old Testament last year and yeah, we just started. I'm like, oh, back to the basics for these little ones. So that's just how school goes too. Even if you don't have a huge gap, sometimes you just, you know, our minds are a lot fresher than our little kids. I'm like, oh yeah, I guess you weren't around the last time we did the Old Testament. So I got to reteach you too. Let's go back and begin at the beginning.
00:02:48
Speaker
Yeah, in the beginning. That's right. Oh, so fun. So cute. Yes, re-teaching it again. But it's fun. Like sometimes I'm really glad that I kept notes. Like last time I taught something and made notes. And other times I'm like, yeah, that really didn't work. So let's go ahead and try something new this time around.
Methods of Teaching History: Time, Place, Topic
00:03:07
Speaker
okay so there's tons of different ways to study history and okay time out here okay Bonnie and I are mostly going to be talking about working on the subject of history with homeschool kids because that's our area of expertise we homeschool kids we've been teaching him history and kind of a side note here
00:03:25
Speaker
I don't even know if the study of history happens very much, at least at the elementary and middle school ages in public school. I think they kind of lump it all into social studies or in my school they did. And so, I don't know, I've seen since homeschooling my kids, I've seen it as a really cool opportunity to do some fun learning with my kids at younger ages than high school.
00:03:50
Speaker
So there's different ways to study and teach history. There's time-based, there is location-based, and there's topic-based. So we're gonna talk about what each of those are to start out with.
Family History Activities: Storytelling and Essays
00:04:01
Speaker
Yeah, and the cool thing about teaching lots of kids history is that history is one of those subjects that's very, very easy to do with the whole family, right? Math, can't really do that. Language arts, can't really do that. It's very simple to just sit down and tell history stories.
00:04:18
Speaker
Now, your young ones might be good with a five-minute story and then they run off. The next age might do some sort of hands-on lesson along with it. The older age might write an essay about it, so you can add elements in as their maturity and understanding goes up. But it's a really fun way to connect and do things together because if you've homeschooled or tried to help your kids with homework at the same time and they're all at different levels, you know how challenging that can be.
00:04:41
Speaker
Yeah. At the end, we're going to share resources that we use, but I do have to say here right at the beginning that the resource that we use, we chose it because our whole family could study the same time period in history at the same time. That was like a large family and homeschooling thing for us.
00:04:57
Speaker
Yeah, same here. Okay, so first off, let's talk about time-based.
Chronological and Localized History Teaching
00:05:01
Speaker
So this is a pretty common way to look at history and that is just study history as it happened. So one segment in time at a time or throughout the ages. So ancient history and then medieval and Renaissance and modern and those sorts of things. You can do it backwards. You can start with modern and go backwards. You can kind of pick and choose, although it does make sense very often to go oldest to most modern.
00:05:23
Speaker
But that's a pretty common way of teaching it, especially in the public schools. Yes. The second way of teaching history is location-based. Start with the history of right where you are, like your family history, and then move on to the history in your county, and then the history in your state, state history, and then the history of your country, and then move out to world history. That is another way to study history is from
00:05:47
Speaker
like you're the epicenter and it goes out from you studying history because that like that is for some kids that's the most interesting. What is the history of me right here where I live?
00:05:57
Speaker
Yeah, I will say that location-based and topic-based, which I'll tell you about in a second, are probably the easiest for kids that are a little bit resistant to setting history. I was not a fan of history as a child. And I think it was because it was all time-based and it bored me to tears. And we started with people and culture and times that I had no interest in. So starting around where you're living, like that location, or starting with a topic. So the history of things that you're interested in.
00:06:24
Speaker
Let's study the history of computers. I have a kid who's into computers and loves to build his own. Let's look at what computers looked like 20, 30 years ago. Wow, that's amazing. Let's look at the history of music is so fun. Black History Month, it's a great time to do that. Art history, Egyptian history was my favorite. I did like, even though they were far away and very ancient times, it was just super fascinating to me. The history of clocks, the history of scooters, I don't know, anything your kid is interested in,
00:06:50
Speaker
teach them that it existed before they did, right? That the current state of affairs is not how it always was. Let's look back at how it was invented and why people needed it and how it has progressed. So fascinating. Yes, this is a really fun way to get kids into history who aren't resistant to the
00:07:06
Speaker
idea of history so you know well why was this you know why was this that you're studying say automobiles so the history of automobiles well why was it done like this well that's because there was a war on at that time and so oh then you have to study that war a little bit and learn more about that and those kind of things that help you you know it can lead to more study of history by studying a certain topic that they're interested in.
00:07:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it just kind of gets their toes wet for a minute and they're like, oh, this is kind of fun. Yeah.
Tailoring History to Seven Learning Styles
00:07:38
Speaker
OK, so we're going to go through the seven different learning styles and how each one best learns history and how we incorporate these learning styles into our teaching history and working with history with our kids. We have done this for almost every single other subjects that we've studied, math and reading and all the learning, the seven different learning styles and how to
00:08:01
Speaker
You notice that one kid is way more, learns a certain way than you can use it. And so we're going to dive in and tell you exactly how to teach to these different, seven different kinds of learners. And just to remind you that each kid probably has more than one learning style. And so a lot of these things that we're going to talk about kind of hit several of those as well. But if you have, sometimes you get a kid that's just like super strong in one learning style, and this is just great information to have.
00:08:30
Speaker
Yeah, and it's also a great reminder that you are probably going to default to teaching the same way you learn. So if you have an auditory learner and you are a visual learner, then you might do everything visual and your auditory learner is like banging his head against the desk in the corner because it doesn't matter to him and it just doesn't sink in, right? So just a good reminder to kind of flesh out the teaching and the learning and try different things if it's not working, right?
00:08:54
Speaker
Okay, so the first one is visual, and my favorite, and this is great for geographical history, right? Because you can start with maps, like, oh, we're going to talk about the history of Europe. Look, here's where Europe is, and this is where the people came from, and this is where they moved to, and this is where they got, this is the trade route, right? So I love looking at maps when it comes to history.
00:09:13
Speaker
pictures of places, so fun, or old paintings or drawings. They just help anchor those facts in a child's head that is a visual learner because history is largely abstract, right? It only exists in our minds and in our books. So to not be able to see it can be tricky for a visual learner.
00:09:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good point. Other resources that are great to use of visual learners are historical documentaries. Genealogy diagrams, those are very visual. You have to draw them out to understand them. Family trees, same. If you're starting with your own history, if you're doing a location base and you're starting with your own history, well, here's you, kid, on this family tree, and then here's mom and dad, and then here's our moms and dads, because
00:09:53
Speaker
You know, at the youngest ages, you notice that kids don't have a good concept of relationships. It's so cute. Photos from the time period, artifacts, if you can get your hands on them, you know, that kind of thing. Really, really cool. Depending on what you're studying, those are different ways to really light up a visual learner.
00:10:15
Speaker
Yeah, visiting a museum that might have artifacts from that time period is so powerful. They get to go look, probably not touch, but really brings it to life for them, right? It makes it real. I'm really glad you mentioned family history, too, because this is a great place to start with history.
00:10:31
Speaker
Um, we have two genealogical charts on, framed and on our wall that my kids love looking at. And it's just names, but they get to get this greater sense of who they are and of, it's really fun to place history within the history of your family. So for example, you can look back and say, oh, okay, so here's mom and dad. Here's grandma and grandpa. Here's their mom and dad.
00:10:52
Speaker
And here's their mom and dad. And you know what was happening when they were alive? This is when cars started becoming popular. Isn't that interesting? Can you imagine going from a horse and buggy to a car, right? And it just kind of pieces things together in a way that's really important to them because they care about where they came from, right? And that they belong to this family. I love that.
00:11:09
Speaker
Side note, familysearch.org is where we love to do family history and you can create your own genealogy chart. So if you haven't done that, that is a super fun activity to do with your kids. If you're not homes, you can do it during history time for homeschoolers. If you're not, you can just do it on a Saturday afternoon just for fun and just go look at all the cool names. We love looking at them when we're about to name a kid. Any good names in here? We've done that too. And then there's also other times where we're like, oh yeah, definitely not making the list. Not that one. That's a lot of weird ones, yeah, for sure.
00:11:39
Speaker
Okay, so the next one is auditory,
Engaging Auditory Learners with Audio Books
00:11:41
Speaker
right? Learning through hearing. We love audio books. My kid is funny. I pulled up Audible the other day, and it gave me this list of like 15 badges I had earned. I was like, Oh, I didn't realize I was listening that much. That was all my kids. They use my account, right? And so they're listening for hours and hours and hours as they drift off to sleep or
00:11:57
Speaker
doing chores or whatever. So audiobooks are so great if you can find some historical fiction to pull in the time period that you're learning from or non-fiction, so fun. We love read aloud, sit down and read a picture book or a non-fiction book or anything to make that
00:12:13
Speaker
that history a little bit more interesting. The Good and the Beautiful is the history we're using right now and has a really awesome running narrative. It's an audio, basically an audio story that just, there's a chunk of it for each lesson. So we turn that on. It's the same characters, right? It's like this fictionalized account of them learning about history. And it's just something to get those auditory learning, to get those auditory learners picturing it in their mind.
00:12:36
Speaker
Yeah, that is awesome. We use some audiobooks also. We use the story of the world audiobooks as we go through history and that goes from the beginning of time up through modern history and it's it's pretty
00:12:53
Speaker
She does a lot of history like around the whole world, things that you might not have encountered before. So it's really cool. Another one that we use for auditory learners is we sing around the world. It's like hearing the kids, little kids sing in another language. So when you're studying ancient history of Japan, you can go listen to little kids singing in Japanese. That's really attractive to little kids to hear kids singing in a different language.
00:13:18
Speaker
Another one we love when we're studying, this is more of a topic base, but we do study music as we go through history. And Beethoven's wig. My kids adore those songs. They're spoofs. I'm sure some of them are free on YouTube. Actually, I think you can go to their website.
00:13:36
Speaker
and listen to some of them for free before you buy the, you know, whatever. And my kids, so it was, as we're studying through history, we come across Beethoven again, he was a composer. Okay. Here's, let's listen to some of the music he composed. And then let's listen to this spoof and the, the, uh, you guys I'm laughing, but you just have to go listen to some of them. They're so fun. All right. And then we have a whole curriculum. That's just the history of classical music. And you listen to the music as you're studying the composers.
00:14:03
Speaker
through history. So depending on what you're studying, try auditory. Yeah. If you've ever tried to study the history of music without the music, it's pretty dry. It means nothing, right? I know. These composers and you're like, why do I care? And then you hear their music. You're like, oh, okay. Yeah. I want to learn about this guy, right?
00:14:21
Speaker
Okay, so moving on to kinesthetic, right? Touching things, feeling things. This is where all the fun projects come
Hands-On History Projects for Students
00:14:29
Speaker
in, right? Again, I was obsessed with Egyptian history when I was a kid and the sugar cube pyramid is like the funnest history lesson I ever had, right? Building all the pyramids and making it look like
00:14:40
Speaker
King Tut's tomb or whatever it's funny that you were talking about Beethoven's wig even though it wasn't a wig because that was one of my thoughts is creating wigs like George Washington's like something to make them look like an old-fashioned history character right could be kind of fun dress up putting on plays or some sort of
00:15:01
Speaker
Acting out a historical scene is really really fun for kids also Plato or Lego creation so you can say okay for the rest of this hour Here's Plato. Here's Legos. I want you guys to build a scene from Medieval England what would that look like and and they can you know bring in everything they've been learning and create it with their hands super fun
00:15:21
Speaker
Yes. This, we also use a lot of activity books as we go through history and we try to save one day of the week for our activity day, just so it has a designated day. Otherwise it doesn't, otherwise they're doing projects when I'm trying to teach other things. I never get time to fit the projects in or, you know, whatever. So I'll link some of them that we've used.
00:15:39
Speaker
in the show notes. Putting on plays, like you said, that's definitely a good one for kids. Anything art related. If you study art simultaneously to history as you're going through it and then you start trying to make some impressionist paintings or, you know, this clay, work with clay, field trips to local historical sites or museums,
00:16:00
Speaker
Coloring books is a huge one for my kids. I have some kids that must be kinesthetic and auditory learners combined because as they're listening to their audiobooks, they're coloring some of these historical coloring books. My girls love the historical fashion.
00:16:14
Speaker
coloring books, they just love those, yeah. We have a coloring book for president's wives and all the clothes that they wear, but like History of the Civil War, they've got a coloring book to color. It just kind of helps them process it. And then another fun, fun thing that we do is historical cookbooks or recipes. So you're studying ancient Greece, go make a Greek meal and try to make it as historically accurate as you can.
00:16:42
Speaker
really, really cements things into kids' minds as you're learning and gets them excited about learning history. Yeah. Who's not excited if there's food involved, right? No.
Understanding Historical Significance: Logical Learners
00:16:52
Speaker
Okay. The next type of learner is the logical learner. So these are the ones that need to know the why behind it. I think I've got some of this in me as well because we would just have to regurgitate facts and names
00:17:03
Speaker
in history and I was like, who cares? What does this have to do with anything? But as soon as I know a little bit about the why, well, this is the person who created the first movement to mechanize farmlands. Then all of a sudden they had wheat threshers and these other things that I'm learning how this guy, why this guy's life is important and the reasoning behind it all, that can be super powerful for a kid who just feels like this is boring rote memorization, right?
00:17:29
Speaker
And they get more of a big picture, they know how everything fits together. Yes, I am a logical, primary logical learner. Math, science, those are my big things, love math. But you guys, I hated, like I didn't, I can't say I hated it, but I did not get history until I started doing timelines with my kids.
00:17:50
Speaker
And I was like blown away. I was like, oh my goodness. So you mean this war was before this event? Well, that totally makes sense. Like I could see it all together and I had to be reminded not only of the time period or the subject or location of history that we were studying, but what had happened before that and what had happened after that. So I totally would have done so much better with history when I was a kid if I had had some timelines there.
00:18:19
Speaker
Um, to, it's kind of almost like a, like a hook, you know, like you see a big coat rack and it's got all these hooks on it. It worked for me. It was like history opened up later to me in life. And I just loved it to have that timeline to see.
00:18:35
Speaker
just the why and the where and be able to start connecting those events. It was pretty fascinating. And honestly, timelines are good for so many learners. First of all, visual. You're laying it out like if you can put it up on the wall or something. And then auditory learners, as you read it out, you read the facts aloud and maybe they can go up and read them themselves. Kinesthetic, they can come put the pictures on or the dates on or come point to things as it goes along.
00:18:56
Speaker
very, very beneficial for a lot of different kinds of kids. And I will say one of my other favorite tools for timelines is layering them. So let's say you're learning ancient history, just like secular history, you create a timeline for that, and then you go learn biblical history and you can kind of layer it on and go, oh, look at what was happening in Egypt when Joseph was there. And that really helps things click for kids as well, instead of it all being separate events, right, to understand what was going on in the world as a big picture.
00:19:24
Speaker
That is really fascinating. We have done that before with, we're getting off track here, but it's okay. History and geography are connected. Yeah. We've done that before with geography. So as we go through the history of a place, let's say, so you're starting with ancient history, you start in the ancient area around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
00:19:44
Speaker
And you start making a map and you do a layer and you do it on a transparency. So then you're next, you know, 100 years later, you make another map and this is what the region look like then. And you can see through the map down to the layer below and you can see and you get a thousand years of, you know, transparencies layered up on top of each other. It's pretty fascinating.
00:20:03
Speaker
Yeah. And what's cool to remember is that the world doesn't operate in isolated pockets, right? It's not like Europe was doing this one thing while the Middle East was doing this other thing. No, it's all related. And so when we give them that big picture and we allow them to understand things as they are interfering with each other, then it makes so much more sense instead of, why did this guy show up on the scene and start a war? Well, actually, he came from here. Yes.
00:20:26
Speaker
Okay, so final learning style is verbal. So the people, kids, adults, all of us who need to speak things aloud. I'm also one of these, right? So in order to learn, you have to ingest it and then repeat it, right? Repeat it aloud. Oral histories are a great way to do this. So they can come up with presentations
00:20:47
Speaker
They can create their own personal oral history, so have them keep a journal. And then every now and again, they get up and talk about what their life has been like and what they're excited about. They can narrate these histories to younger siblings or even just read a book aloud can help cement things in their head.
00:21:05
Speaker
Yes, one cool thing to use for these kids is historical vocabulary. There's a lot of words we don't use anymore, but teach them to these kids and it will be fun and funny to them and it will actually help them remember history. That this thing, this word was a thing back then and it helped them make connections. Poetry memorization, memorized poetry from the time period, singing, those kind of things.
00:21:29
Speaker
Just another rabbit hole here. Here's how much of a verbal learner I am not. So the other day Bonnie and I were talking about chocolate.
Verbal Learning Experiences: Reading Challenges
00:21:40
Speaker
Okay, we were talking about chocolate. And she told me that I was pronouncing the name of this high-end chocolate incorrectly. And so I went to YouTube and I got somebody to teach me how to say it on YouTube. I'm gonna play this video if I'm saying it. And every time they would say it, I would repeat it.
00:21:57
Speaker
The next that night I was laying in bed and I was trying to remember how to pronounce this word and I was like That's so funny I have a history of being a voracious reader like especially as a young child but not talking as much because I was a little bit shy when I was in school and so I would read all these words and then mispronounce them and still as an adult that happens to me and I hate it because I I
00:22:23
Speaker
I think that correctly pronouncing words is very important to me. And so if I do it incorrectly, I really embarrass myself, even though there's nothing to be embarrassed about, big deal, like looking up on YouTube, right? But that's so funny that sometimes it's a strength and sometimes it's just not.
00:22:38
Speaker
Okay. The next thing we want to talk about is being a social or interpersonal
Social and Solitary Learning Styles
00:22:42
Speaker
learner. So this isn't technically a learning style, but it is just a way of doing the work, right? Are you more social or more solitary, right? So social learners are group workers, right? The ones that want to do things with a partner or in a group.
00:22:55
Speaker
Those group projects can be really, really helpful, even if you're just sitting alongside of them. Maybe you don't have another kid or friend that can help out, but you're just sitting alongside and you're doing the work together. Just be aware that if you are allowing children, your own children to work together, that you're making sure that everybody has the equal, like equal amount of work, right? I hated group work because I always did more than everybody else and it made me... Sometimes kid can kind of...
00:23:19
Speaker
fly under the radar if there's a group project and they're not being required to do as much work. But reading to each other can be helpful in this way, even just doing flashcards together, like you mentioned, historical vocabulary work together, just anything with another person.
00:23:35
Speaker
Okay, I am also not an interpersonal learner. And I think most of my kids are pretty solitary learners themselves. But one thing that we have done, because this is good to try different things and get yourself out of your rut, we do unit celebrations. So these would be called like at the end of every quarter, we do a little celebration of everything that we've studied. So let's say we were studying ancient history, ancient Egypt.
00:24:03
Speaker
So then our unit celebration, we would eat an Egyptian meal. The kids would each give a presentation of something they'd learned or show a picture or art or something they'd built from the time. We would wear as close as we could Egyptian costumes. Everybody that we invite has to play along and wear the Egyptian costume or whatever the costume, the time period is too. And it has been so fun for my kids. We have done a Victorian tea party.
00:24:29
Speaker
We've done a medieval feast where one dad came dressed in a full suit of armor. Like my kids, my kids never have forgotten that one. Um, we did a Renaissance play. We put on one act of a Shakespeare play and everybody came and they were dressed up in the proper, you know, and we educated him first that, you know, this is what the audience did sharing Shakespeare plays. So it's okay for you to do these things.
00:24:55
Speaker
I can't even name them all or think of them all, but they've been so fun and we've incorporated little things that we've learned that I have really cemented it in. Like for example,
00:25:05
Speaker
In Viking times, there was one bowl of salt and it was set at the head of the table. The clan leader had the salt and you had to ask for the salt. And if you were in his favor, you could have the salt past you. But if not, I'd just eat that unsalted food. So it was precious and it was like their currency or anyway. I think we should practice that at our dinner table. You have not been in mother's favor. You get no salt. No napkins. No salt for you.
00:25:32
Speaker
Yeah, but no napkin makes it work for us. That's true. Never mind. You know what's so great too is when kids know they have a reason to celebrate or act it out in that way, they pay so much more attention, right? Do you really care how the Vikings used their salt back in the day? If you don't get to mimic it and play it out, how fun is that? And then they're paying attention, right? Like, oh, I can't wait to dress up like this guy because that will be really fun. So I love that. It's beautiful.
00:25:56
Speaker
The last one that we did, we had been studying like ancient Babylon. And so we had this meal that was in, we cleared out all the furniture out of the dining room and we brought in all the cushions from everywhere else in the house and everybody sat on the floor. And then we brought in every house plant because
00:26:13
Speaker
I have a few. Into the room and we made it look like we were eating in a garden and we sat on the floor and we ate food from the time. And these are the kinds of things that make history come alive to kids. They love it. They never forget. So fun. I love that. I think I need to come to your house for your unit celebrations. You're way funner mom than I am.
00:26:33
Speaker
Oh my goodness, I could talk about it for so long. At the Victorian Tea Party, we traced all the guest silhouettes. We had it set up so we could do everybody, and everybody took home a little party favor that was a silhouette of their own profile, because that was what they did at the time.
00:26:47
Speaker
It was just really, really fun. It's really fun. Cool. Too bad we live too far away, Audrey. Yeah. Okay. So finally, we're going to talk about solitary or intrapersonal learners. And those are just the ones that prefer to work alone, right? They enjoy doing essays alone, studying alone. But again, these ones, the downside is that you might want to double check these kids' work because sometimes they do like to be
00:27:10
Speaker
Well, they do like to be unsupervised and work on their own. However, I have noticed that my intrapersonal learners, the ones who prefer to work on their own, tend to be quite self-motivated. It's not like they want to work on their own and then do nothing. They usually work pretty hard and don't need to be supervised very well. But again, that's just a pro mom tip as if you want to make sure they're actually getting the work done.
00:27:33
Speaker
So true. Throw those promo. Oh, for my solitary or interpersonal learners, I just throw books at them. Books, books, books, living books. Like I make sure they're good books. They're not just out there reading graphic novels.
00:27:48
Speaker
I have a thing against graphic law. It's the same in learning. And primary resources of what my older kids use at the higher levels, they use primary documents. If we don't study about the Constitution, we read the Constitution, right?
00:28:08
Speaker
go back. Anytime we can find it, we use a primary document and just make sure that these guys that are off curled up with a book, that it's a good book. That's like my strategy for them. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And I will say here that I'm also going to give anyone listening permission to do things very simply. We have given you so many resources and that's kind of the
00:28:28
Speaker
the risk we run of fire hosing you with all the ideas we've ever had about history or any topic in homeschool or helping your kids at public school.
Simple Resources for History Teaching
00:28:39
Speaker
So please don't get overwhelmed and think, oh my gosh, I have to do all the things, but take one or two things and think, oh, that could really mix things up for me. In fact, every time I talk to Audrey, I get more ideas for my own homeschool and think, you know what? This one thing hasn't been working so well for us. Maybe we do need more of these living books. We need more
00:28:56
Speaker
kinesthetic learning, more hands-on, more acting things out, right? So please don't get overwhelmed. Just use these as kind of a springboard of, what do I want to try next? And if things haven't been going well, here's your permission to scrap it all and start over. Maybe you start over with one history of the world, sorry, story of the world book, and you read a couple of chapters and then have a play. And you call that good for history for a while and gradually add more things in. But don't let this overwhelm you.
00:29:23
Speaker
That is 100% true. Do you know that there is on the SAT test, which is what you get into college on? There's no history. You can just drop it all together. It's not going to get you into college or not get you into college.
00:29:41
Speaker
Enrich your life, oh yeah, but get you into college or not get you into college. Basically, like I mentioned before, we use Good and the Beautiful largely right now because I need a pretty hands-off approach and we have a tutor helping us who guides everyone through. And then we really, really, really love Story of the World as well. I haven't yet dived into the older version. What did you say it's called, Audrey, History of the World? History of the World, yeah.
00:30:05
Speaker
Um, but I love, love, love everything that she does really, really well done in depth and very entertaining as well for young kids. But largely I just try to keep history pretty basic because we have so many kids of different ages and I want to make sure that we can do most of it together.
Integrating Curriculums: History, Geography, Literature
00:30:19
Speaker
Yeah. Yep. Okay. So the crick in that I mentioned earlier that we chose because it works for our whole family is called tapestry of grace. I can get in the show notes, but what we love is it does a four year cycle through all of time history.
00:30:34
Speaker
And you study it at three different levels at a grammar level. So that would be your elementary kids at dialectic level. That'd be your middle school kids. And then at rhetoric, which is the high school level. And each time you go through history, they go deeper. And so if they missed something the first time through, no biggie, they're going to be going through two more times. Right. And they do different things and they have different resources at every level. Like, for example, at the grammar level, they use the story of the world.
00:31:02
Speaker
At the top level, we've added in those history of the world books for the high school level. Anyway, that has been a big success for our family. It also incorporates in geography and literature and language arts. So everything that you're reading, everything that you're writing, it's all related to the time period in history that you're studying. So it's a history-based curriculum.
00:31:29
Speaker
I do have my kids at the middle school level make a state book. And so they study all 50 states. They learn the states and capitals. They learn the state flower, the state bird, the state tree, and interesting and fun facts about each. And they make a little book as they go through. And each of my kids, I think, let's see.
00:31:47
Speaker
five, six of them now have made a little state book that they can throw away or take with them in life, whatever they want. It's kind of fun. That's a super cute idea. Yeah. And then at the high school level, as they go through history, they make their own history book and it has this kind of something I've incorporated into the curriculum for them, but they, it has a timeline space. So they put what they're studying. It has a space to focus in on a specific person.
00:32:12
Speaker
that week. It has space to add vocabulary that you've learned or interesting facts. It has an essay question.
00:32:18
Speaker
That kind of thing. So they're making their own history book as they go through. And then another one more resource that we really like to use. And I'm going to mention it. I'm sorry. I don't even know if you can get these books out there anymore because they're kind of old. It's the children just like me books. And so you every page it's by Dorling Kindersley. So it's the white background on the pages. And each page you go to a different country or different location. And it's a child in the middle. And it talks about where they live and what their family looks like and the kind of food that they eat and where they go to school and all
00:32:48
Speaker
all the different things, what their dad does, what their mom does, and what their town is like, and all the different things in their culture. And it's a really neat way to, again, take it back for kids. It's most meaningful for them to study about kids, like these boring stuffy old men that wrote songs and constitutions. Who cares, right? So those are the some of the things that we do as we go through history. And I have to admit that
00:33:16
Speaker
I've been having a lot of fun with history with my kids because I really didn't enjoy it very much as a kid. And so it's been one of those things that has really opened up to me in my adulthood. So I don't know, maybe my kids are suffering through it, but anyway, we're having fun. It doesn't sound like it. It sounds amazing. In fact, I think you need to come teach my kids too. Well, that's it for this week's episode, you guys. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. And we're Outnumbered.
00:33:45
Speaker
Thanks for listening, friends. Click the link in the show notes to subscribe to our email and never miss another episode.
00:34:05
Speaker
Why do I keep seeing history of the world? It's neither a curriculum nor anything. I just made it up. Okay. It is. It's Susan Weiss-Powers, history books for adults. She has stories of the world for kids and she has stories of the world. Okay. Well, that's probably where it's coming from because I've heard of them, but anyway.