One fun way of studying history is to investigate – in a hands-on way – a culture. For example, if you’re studying the Middle Ages, it might be fun to research what people ate, and cook up some recipes. A Medieval feast makes a great culmination or final project. This is especially fun with more [...]

I remember geography in school; it was one of the dullest subjects, involving a lot of two-dimensional maps and rote memorization. We had to learn states and capitals, countries and capitals, population numbers, exports and imports, climate facts, topographical information, and all by rote. The names and numbers meant nothing but a grade on a [...]

Timelines help to put your studies and read-alouds into context chronologically. What about physical location? Near the beginning of our homeschool years, I bought a large, detailed globe at a used curriculum sale. We kept the globe handy. Every time a place was mentioned as we read aloud together, we’d stop and locate the place [...]

Previously, we talked about how timelines help to put historical people and events in context in your history studies, how to add interest to a timeline by personalizing it, and how to use color coding in your timeline. Okay, you’ve got your timeline set up, you’ve marked off your family’s important dates (births, weddings, significant [...]

As mentioned in earlier posts, timelines are highly useful tools to help your students (and you!) keep people and events in their proper context. Putting your own family’s significant dates on your timeline makes the exercise relevant. Color-coding your timeline entries enables you to follow specific trends, or see at a glance when wars took [...]

I don’t know about you, but I’m a highly visual person. Color coding does something in my brain, helps me organize information more quickly, helps me in remembering, too. Using color on a timeline can really help make the information jump out at you, so you can find what you’re looking for at a glance. [...]

One of the problems I’ve had with history is figuring out what happened when. In school, as I remember it, history consisted of reading a selection in the history textbook and then answering questions about the selection, with maybe a little mapwork thrown in. My most memorable history class from my K-12 years didn’t involve [...]

It was Wednesday, and Wednesday means dollar coffee at the coffee roasting outlet (plus a free refill!). It’s nice to stop in, get a large coffee, and sit down with the newspaper for a few moments before plunging into a busy day. On this particular Wednesday, I just happened to see a notice in the [...]

There are many roads to sparking an interest in history. Well-written historical fiction is one route, museums with hands-on exhibits another. But nothing, in our family’s experience, compares with the living history program we’ve been a part of for the last four years. Our girls participated in a “Dame School,” named after the original 19th-century [...]

History, the way I learned it (or didn’t) growing up, was one of the most boring subjects in school, so far as I was concerned. Oh, I was learning history outside of school without realizing it (more about that in a bit). But reading a passage in a textbook, answering the questions that followed the [...]