Thursday, May 31, 2018

Resources that Make History Fun and Easy


Inca Wall replica and Soapstone Llama from Peru (2003)
Learning about history when I was a kid was so disjointed and hard. It was all about memorizing random names of people, places and dates, or so it seemed to me at the time. Thanks to modern day resources like The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child, my children are learning a much more cohesive world history than I did and are quite entertained in the process.

We are currently working our way through Volume 2 of The Story of the World on The Middle Ages. Most recently, we learned about early American peoples - the Maya, Aztecs and Inca in particular. The biggest reasons I love “teaching” history is all the additional resources that are out there both in book and video form. In this instance, I had the added joy of sharing photos and trinkets from a pre-motherhood trip to Macchu Picchu.

Here are some great history resources that I have found invaluable:
  • The kids and I started watching the Horrible Histories series a couple of years ago browsing through online streaming options. We have watched all of the episodes available to us and still go back to it just for fun (some of the music is really great!). I recently discovered a wiki page for the series where I can search specific subjects to find out what episodes contain relevant material. For instance, Episodes 1, 4, 5, 9 & 12 from Series 2 and 1, 6, 9, 10 & 12 from Series 3 all have references to the Inca and Aztecs, respectively.  So we viewed those specific episodes as an accompaniment to our curriculum.


Thanks to all these resources as well as some good quality books, I have found, as an adult, a love and appreciation for history that I never knew as a child.  I thoroughly enjoy teaching history to my kids primarily because I am learning so much right along with them.



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Sunday, May 13, 2018

Mother’s Day 2018


For Mother's Day, Jonah (11) gave me the most beautiful little vase. How well I like it demonstrates the degree to which he knows me - kind of amazing. Elisabeth (9) made me a bouquet of paper flowers and a homemade card complete with a 3-D, steaming cup of coffee. The sentiment within is worth more than gold to this mom:
Dear Mommy, thank you for being the best Mother in the entire world. For making me lunch and getting ice cream for me and for convincing me into doing school (even though I don't really like it) because then I wouldn't have learned how to read which I really love. [She switched to cursive here; I presume for emphasis] thank you for being my mother. Love Elisabeth