Homeschool History Curriculum

Make History Come Alive!

With the right homeschool history curriculum, you can make history come alive for your children. I know when I was in school, history was the worst subject.

We read a chapter in a textbook...

The teacher discussed it...

Boring...

It wasn't until I started teaching my children at home that I started loving history. Why? Because we didn't use boring textbooks.

Yes, we used books as our reference books, but we did "history unit studies" that involved much more. Be sure and read this article in the "unit study" section of Home Schooling Haven to learn how to do this - it is worth it!

Now, for the books we used.

Homeschool History Curriculum and History Lesson Plans for Elementary Grades

Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer

This is an excellent series for children grades 1-4. There are four books in this series and they each have an activity book to go along with them so they have a lot of hands-on experience - which is very important at this age. In addition, the author has history lesson plans outlined for you in the book and she keeps it simple. Simply read and follow the history lesson plan just like she has it listed.

Reading these books to your children is like reading storybooks about the world's history. No boring textbook here.

The four books each cover one full year of school. They are:

• Book One: Ancient Times
• Book Two: Middle Ages
• Book Three: Early Modern Times
• Book Four: Modern Age

Each chapter in each book has:

• Encyclopedia cross-references
• Review questions with answers
• Narration exercises
• Crafts to illustrate various concepts and bring the past to life
• Mini and full-page maps with rivers and seas are included
• Reproducible pages, games, cut-outs, and coloring pages
• Lists of literature readings
• Color-in review cards

By using the activity books that accompny The Story of the World, you won't need to put together your own unit studies from scratch - all the work has been done for you.

This is a comprehensive curriculum that will keep your children interested and doing fun activities for four years. I especially like series like this, because I know I'm not leaving anything out.

Homeschool History Curriculum for Middle Grades

My next favorite set of homeschool history curriculum books were the Genevieve Foster books. This is a series about what was going on in the entire world during the life of a famous person.

For example, in the book about George Washington, the names of the chapters are:

• When George Washington Was A Boy
• When George Washington Was A Soldier
• When George Washington Was A Farmer
• When George Washington Was The Commander
• When George Washington Was Just A Citizen
• When George Washington Was President

The names of the books are:

• Augustus Ceasar's World
• The World of Columbus and Sons
• Abraham Lincoln's World
• George Washington's World
• The World of Captain John Smith

This is a wonderful homeschool history curriculum that you could use for several years. I personally loved reading these to my children. It was a great time to snuggle up on the couch.

These books are easy to put history lesson plans together for also.

For extra fun and variety, when putting together your history lesson plans, include some history games.

Homeschool History Curriculum for High School

As my children reached high school, they became tired of the hands-on stuff and me reading to them.........sigh!

As sad as it is to not have those fun history times any more, when your children reach high school, you need to be training them to be independent learners. They need to be able to read a chapter in a textbook (yes...I said it), and answer the sentences at the end of the chapter in coherent, complete, and grammatically correct sentences.

How do you know they're learning anything?

How do you know they're in their room actually reading and not texting their friends on their cell phone?

Well...if you have to...take the phone away. Then, you know they are learning by checking their work and giving them tests that accompany the textbook. If they don't do very well....hmmmmmmm....they weren't studying.

Make them do it again until their work is acceptable for their grade level or their ability. What textbooks do we use at this stage?

A Beka You can find these books by going to their web site, but I would recommend trying to find them used at www.Amazon.com first.

A Beka has a textbook for grades 9-12 and also has one year of Economics and Government which your high schooler will need to graduate.

No, these books aren't fun, but learning to work from a textbook and to learn independently is part of growing up. For more insight into using textbooks, please read the article

Homeschool Textbooks - What Good Are They Anyway?

The homeschool history curriculum I listed above are all ones that we have used over the years. As you can probably tell, I'm pretty fond of each of these and will recommend them to anyone.