One of my favorite older children’s activities that we had done when they were younger was to do a timeline. Back in the day, we used Osborne’s History of the World as our base and then read stories to go along with it. We made a simple timeline out of cardstock and drew pictures and added words to mark specific time events on our line. Those were the days of busy and I didn’t have time to document it. Now that I have a little bit of extra time, I should be able to document things better:)
This year my children wanted to do American History. I like to be able to do something as a group and this will work. We found that our library has Drive Thru History DVD’s that you can borrow —that will be most of our base along with some by Shlessinger Media. Then I added a few books that I found would be of interest to read. I chose a couple of read aloud books that I could do with everyone and I chose age appropriate ones for each child. We will cover a few topics per month and by the end of the year, we should get through all of American History. I will add other information as we are studying it and we spark upon some new idea, but at least I have a base for what we will do.
I didn’t add a bunch of questions to my lessons, I want the questions and curiosity to come from my children. As we discuss different parts of history, we should be able to talk about what it was like, how it differs from today, the emotions and feelings of people, what would life be like without specific inventions, etc.
Keep it simple and easy. Hope you are having a blessed week!
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