Gentle Approach to History

History was my favorite subject in school and it is the one I am most excited to teach in our homeschool! My oldest will be seven years old this year so I knew I wanted to start incorporating history but I also knew I didn't want to dive too deep yet. 

I am a firm believer that history should be taught in a fun, hands-on way instead of just reading from a textbook. I have lots of ideas for how to do this in coming years but I wanted to keep it simple to begin with. 

So this year, we have taken a gentle approach by introducing famous people in history. We haven’t gone in chronological order or any other specific order. I have just let my kids pick who they want to learn about. Some have been people they have heard of and some have been people they just thought sounded interesting. 

After selecting the person, we do a few simple things. We read a picture book biography (sometimes several if our library has them) and a chapter book biography usually from the Who Was series. We haven’t always finished the chapter book but we have read a good chunk of most of them. 

After reading, we do our narration notebooks. My oldest tells me a few things that she learned about the person and I write it down for her. She then copies it into her notebook and we find pictures online of the person and what they were famous for to also put into the notebook. THIS is the notebook we use and THIS is my favorite tool to draw lines in it. 

To finish it off, we do an activity that goes along with that person. Below I have pictures and examples of some we have done!

For our Abraham Lincoln activity, we made log houses out of empty cartons, hazelnut spread, and pretzel sticks.

To go along with Benjamin Franklin, we learned about lightning because he invented the lightning rod. We also learned he was a printer and my girls were really interested in the Gutenberg printing press so we did a little "rabbit trailing" and learned about that. I ended up getting out some stamps and demonstrating how the press would've worked then they got to stamp their own papers. They loved it!

When we learned about Walt Disney, we read a lot of classic Disney stories and drew Mickey Mouse with Art for Kids Hub on YouTube (they are a favorite resource of ours!) We also watched some old Mickey Mouse cartoons.

For our Mister Rogers activity, we made paper bag puppets. We read Daniel Tiger stories too because it is an animated show based off Mister Rogers' show. My kids love the original show too so we watched an episode!

To go along with Beatrix Potter, we read many of her stories and did a watercolor painting that I forgot to take pictures of.

After learning about William Kamkwaba, we watched a video interview by him because he is still living. We also learned about the science of wind.

When we learned about Helen Keller, my girls were very interested in sign language. So we learned the alphabet in ASL and also looked at some Braille books from our library.

We did a whole two week study on Laura Ingalls Wilder and learned about American pioneers. We finished it off with a trip visiting two of the historic sites!

Some other historic people we have learned about:

• George Washington

• Marie Curie

• Squanto

• Mayflower Pilgrims

• Neil Armstrong

• Peter Tchaikovsky

Others we will be learning about this year:

• Mae Jemison

• Wright Brothers

• Christopher Colombus

• Thomas Jefferson

• E.B. White

• Albert Einstein

History can be such a joy to teach and such a joy to learn about! Remember that it doesn't have to be anything big or elaborate. We have taken this simple approach while our kids are young and will do deeper dives as they get older.

Thanks for reading!

Cassie