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SPRING 2021
HOMESCHOOL IOWA 7
and further reading about specific topics..”
From Lissa: “
We are using Simply Charlotte Mason’s Bible History and
Geography combination in addition to studying Genesis through Deu-
teronomy and ancient history, focusing on different countries in Africa.”
From Nicole: “
We started using Easy Peasy History last year and had
so much fun with it! You can use the four courses in any order, but we
started with Ancient History and enjoyed the workload and projects we
did.”
From Dale: “
I really enjoyed Mystery of History. It’s adaptable to
many ages, has very good content and activities. Notgrass history,
government, and economics are excellent for high school.”
From Jenn: “
We are using Abeka PLUS Literature reading from the
booklist included in ‘Blessed Heritage: This Far by Faith’; reading ‘Story of
the World’; and a wide variety of other non-fiction books about historic
people and events. Additionally, we visit museums as often as possible.”
Teresa, one of our Regional Representatives recommends the re-
sources available from 7 Sisters Homeschool and Sonlight, stating
that, “
Sonlight’s Eastern Hemisphere may well be my favorite year
of study because it is like nothing ever taught in school. I learned so
much!”
From Jessica:
“We like Notgrass. All 3 of the sets for high school
have been great. It has a biblical worldview; incorporates the Bible.
They have literature selected to read along with it and assignments
that can go towards an English credit.”
For geography, Mary said,
“We added ‘Trick Geography’, and really
love how fast we are learningwhere everything in the world actually is!”
Literature Based History Approaches:
Many of our veteran homeschool moms use a literature-based
approach to teaching history. Teresa said that she had used both
Beautiful Feet and Sonlight as a base for teaching history to her
kids. She noted, “
All history has bias, which is why it is so important
to read original sources, but that’s not ideal when teaching young chil-
dren. So I read aloud almost all of the books we used for history so that
we could discuss the biases. By high school, my kids were able to start
looking at original sources.”
Alicia uses
TruthQuest
as the spine for teaching history to her
kids, and said,
”Some of the books are difficult to find, but I’ve really
enjoyed what we’ve gone through so far. The guides have both fiction
and nonfiction books, and I’ve used both for history and for reading.
It’s great when I can tie things together!”
Audrey uses
Beautiful Feet
and
Story of the World
for history in her
home. She said this about
Beautiful Feet:
”We love it. They recently
updated their teacher guides and book lists to include more diverse
voices, which I love.”
About
Story of the World
, Audrey says: “
Susan
Wise Bauer’s
Story of theWorld
is fabulous. It’s not American or white-
centric, it tells history frommany points of view, and the activity guides
have HUGE book lists for more literature for each area and time period.”
Minorities, Women, and other Peoples:
Every time the topic of history comes up or when we celebrate
“Black History” or “Women’s History” month, we have some great
discussions in our group about specific resources for those topics
and making sure that we are presenting a balanced view of his-
tory. The members of our discussion group have been able to have
respectful and informative conversations about these topics
(and
we appreciate that!).
I wish I had room here to share all of the ex-
cellent resources that have been recommended over the past 18
months - websites, YouTube channels, books, and more! Because
I don’t, I’ll encourage you instead to head over to our Facebook
Discussion Group to ask a question about something in history
that you are studying just see how much information our group
can share with you!
Teresa, one of our Regional Representatives, summed up the dif-
ficulty we have in choosing resources to recommend for anything
related to history when she said,
“I’ve always had to tweak things,
but what is important tomemay not be important to anyone else. The
best way to study almost anything is to look for conflicting viewpoints
and then do the old compare-and-contrast thing. It will model to your
children how to think and form an opinion on their own.”
We wholeheartedly agree with Meghan’s perspective:
“I appre-
ciate the opportunity we have in homeschooling to talk about how
perspective might affect one’s opinions of certain events and to offer
diverse biographies and other resources for our kids to study.”
Hannah’s approach to history echo’s what Teresa said:
“I always
try to present a ‘two sides to every story’ approach. I think you can
read a standard history book and ask intuitive questions to help you
and your children see both sides of a story, whether it’s the ‘settling
of the west,’ slavery, immigration, etc... I also teach that history is just
that, history; and we need to learn from it, but also realize that man-
kind has been making right and wrong decisions for all of time. I like
to go through Proverbs as we study history and apply biblical wisdom
to everything we learn.”
Wrap-Up:
When studying history, it’s important to look at people and
events in context of the times we are studying. Time, social dif-
ferences, and what happened after the event will change our
perspective of situations and events in the past. It’s essential that
we seek out truth, look for both sides of every event, teach our
kids to think for themselves, and go to the original source as often
as possible. I have found that, in addition to using books, visiting
museums is a great way to do this. The pictures, the artifacts, the
stories told in the museum are more powerful than just reading
about an event. We make it a point to visit museums as often as
possible and really dive deep into understanding the experiences
of those we are studying. Museums have also been great conver-
sation starters as my kids develop a sense of empathy for those we
are studying. It’s easier to relate to the pain and the joy of those
peoples when we can visualize what they experienced.
I recently heard a Ted Talk from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a
Nigerian author, about “The Danger of a Single Story” that high-
lighted the value of keeping our
lives and bookshelves filled with
diversity. She shares how the “sin-
gle story” influenced her perspec-
tive of the world and how she has
grown as a person because she
learned to seek out more stories.
Scan the QR code on the right to
check out the video for yourself.
Check out page 9 of the magazine for a list of
games that you can play to help your kids learn
more about history and keep that learning fun!
A student of history will develop these skills:
•The ability to assess evidence
• The ablity to assess conflicting interpretations
• Experience in assessing past examples of change.
~ Dr. Peter N. Stearns, Professor of History at George Mason University.