History

History is a tricky subject to teach. It can be fascinating or it can be really dry. I prefer to go the fascinating route. I decided that for our first year of history, I wanted to go with living books, a la Charlotte Mason. After quite a bit of research, I found a wonderful history book, A Child's History of the World. The book is wonderfully written and teaches history by way of telling great stories. It reads like a child's chapter book, yet there is no twaddle. My children love listening to the stories, and can't wait for history every day.

I really like not having a specific history curriculum that I feel we must get through. If we find something particularly interesting, we can take a break from the book and delve more deeply into that topic.

To go along with our history book, I purchased a beautiful timeline book. Timelines are a great way to help make sense of history. When children can see events as they fit together, it cements everything for them.

Just a few chapters into our history book, we learned about Ancient Egypt. There's something about those pyramids and mummies that fascinates children. We took a break from the book and really concentrated on the study of Ancient Egypt. I found some great books and videos on the subject. (Thank you, public library and Netflix.)

I found this wonderful book, Ancient Egypt Drawing, and the kiddos did a few drawings in their art books. We also did sand paintings, like you might find on the wall of a tomb. (Notice their cave paintings in the background that we did during our study of the Stone Age.) These were fun and easy to do. I just cut fine grit sand paper into squares and the kids used regular crayons for their drawings.

I also have to share this totally lame "enrichment" project that came with the book, just because it makes me laugh. The children made pyramids out of paper and then had to write everything they could remember about our study of Egypt. (Please ignore the creative spelling of "pharaoh". Charlotte Mason would be so disappointed in me for not immediately correcting a misspelled word.) If you look closely, you'll see "Steve Martin" written on each pyramid.

What can I say? Their teacher is o-l-d.