Top Five Tips for Teaching History To Elementary-Aged Students

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How do you approach teaching history to your young children? From living history to playing games, there are so many wonderful options when we want to incorporate history into our daily homeschool lessons. 

Top five tips for teaching history to elementary-aged students

Books, Books, and More Books 

There are so many wonderful resources for teaching history. We enjoy both fiction and non-fiction history books in our homeschool. Books can help bring history to life for your children and there are many that I could recommend to homeschooling families. You can read books together as read-alouds, ask your children to read them as part of their curriculum, or just shelf good history-related books on your bookshelves. If you and your children enjoy reading, books are a great way to learn more about history. 

Some favorites include: 

• The Little House on the Prairie Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder 
• If You Were Me and Lived In... Series by Carole P. Roman 
• The Secret of the Hidden Scrolls by M. J. Thomas 
• Benjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin by Marguerite Henry 
• Toliver's Secret by Esther Wood Brady 
• The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh
• YWAM Publishing Heroes of History Series 

Historical Sites 

Getting out and actually seeing history provides so many wonderful opportunities. Some children learn better by seeing and doing and visiting historical sites can allow our elementary-aged children the opportunity to do both! 

Many historic sites give children the opportunity to try their hand at different crafts and skills. Or perhaps they have period clothing for your children to try on while visiting. And there may even be guides dressed in period clothing themselves who will give tours in character. 

Games 

I am amazed by the number of games available for families who wish to include a new way to learn in their homeschool day. We have several that are perfect for reinforcing history facts and practicing geography in our homeschool. From board games to video games, there are options for every age! 

Some of our favorites: 

• Professor Noggin's History of the United States Card game
• Professor Noggin's American Revolution Card game 
• Continent Race by Byron's Games 
• Egyptians 

Movies, Documentaries, and Videos 

If you cannot visit a historic site in person, watching about it in a movie, documentary, or video is another good way to make that time period or location come to life. There are a great number of movies available so you will want to preview them before sharing them with your children. When pre-watching them, consider the following things: 

• Is this movie appropriate for the age of my child? 
• Is this movie historically accurate? How important is accuracy? Do I want my child to learn historical facts or get an idea of what life was like during that time period? 
• Will I share the entire movie? 
• Do we want to watch a fictional adaptation or a documentary? 
• Who produced the movie? What were their motives?

Some favorite resources include: 

• Drive Thru History (there are multiple series ranging from Bible history to American history) 
• Gettysburg (1993) 
• Robin Hood (1973 cartoon)
• Cross Seven History Videos for Kids

Favorite Curriculum and Resources 

Sometimes you might just want a well-written full-year course, unit study, lap-book, or other curriculum resource to teach history to your elementary-aged student. Fortunately, there are a great number of options available to homeschoolers. From individual history classes that are available with a membership to SchoolhouseTeachers.com to the textbook-based Our Star-Spangled Story from Notgrass History, you can pick and choose what works for your family. 

If you would prefer to not focus on a specific class but let your children's interest guide you, Home School in the Woods offers many different options. There are smaller lap-books that you can complete to larger unit studies focusing upon different time periods like the American Civil War or the Renaissance in Europe. 

Other favorites include: 

• Drive Thru History 
• YWAM Publishing Unit Studies
• Memoria Press 

Final Thoughts 

As a former high school history teacher, I love all these ideas! We incorporate a variety of them into our homeschool day. While using Adventures in U.S. History from My Father's World, we also add in Drive Thru History America: Columbus to the Constitution during lunchtime on some days. When we want to take a break from formal studies, we have been learning about the Wonders of the World with Home School in the Woods. And the literature books from Our Star-Spangled Story by Notgrass History are very welcome additions to our read-aloud time. How do your elementary-aged students enjoy studying history?