How I Teach History – Relaxed Homeschooling in the Early Elementary Years

So how do I teach history?

I don’t.

Honestly.

It’s rather ironic since my Elementary Education degree came with a Social Studies major and I love history. But so far I’ve done almost no history teaching because Caroline has been taking those classes at homeschool co-op.

We’re blessed with a really good Christian co-op. Caroline has been taking two classes there a semester since Kindergarten and she loves it. The vast majority of her classes have been history and geography related. She had a class about America, a World History class, Geography through Literature, and a couple of other literature classes that also incorporated history and geography.

So with co-op handling most of the teaching in this area, I’ve focused on providing other learning opportunities.

Caroline has U.S. and world map placemats and a globe. She has an excellent grasp of geography for her age. Like her daddy, she loves maps so that’s been pretty easy to “teach” her so far.

She enjoys playing learning games on the Kindle, especially Stack the States. (I see there is also Stack the Countries now which would be much more difficult!)

I have many informative flashcards that I’ve picked up here and there (especially at Target). Caroline likes to lay them all over the floor and study them. We have the U.S. Presidents, U.S. Landmarks, World Landmarks, etc.

We have geography-based puzzles and activities that she picks up and plays with at times.

We’ve read many books about historical figures. Some are books I have from teaching and many others are from the library.

When something comes up in conversation, we look up all kinds of things online. We’ve watched videos on YouTube about various topics including the Titanic.

Eventually we’ll move to a more structured approach of history, but for now we’re all learning and having fun!

This is part of my Relaxed Homeschooling in the Early Elementary Years series.
Read the Introduction to the series here.

This is also part of the iHN January Hopscotch. Check out all the fun series here!