Learning Lifestyles

 "A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia." ~David McCullough

"People tend to forget that the word "history" contains the word 'story'." ~Ken Burns

Are you a history lover or hater? If you are one of those people who thinks learning history is a waste of time - then I would guess your only exposure to the subject was in a school classroom, with a dull textbook and a harried teacher trying to teach you what names and dates would be on the next test.

Give it another chance!

One of the best things about home schooling is the opportunity to teach yourself all the fascinating things you never knew you didn't know! In fact, if you find history deathly boring I would suggest you not try to teach your kids anything about it. Just read aloud great historical fiction and biographies to them and don't call it history until you're excited about it.

You will find good suggestions for books to read in home schooling manuals or libraries. It's sometimes tricky to tell if a home schooling curriculum provider is suggesting hiqh quality books or just promoting a certain message/idealogy, but I do think the Sonlight Curriculum company chooses great books (there are other good companies too, but I can't think of them at the moment).  And of course the internet is a gold mine of various booklists.  Here's a nifty web site I found: http://www.abookintime.com/americanhistoryreadinglist.html

If you and your older child/teen are ready to learn about America in the last century, check out the new unit study I added to my site:  20th Century American History for Teens.  This study isn't just about past events and people, it's about critical thinking.  History is very different depending on who is telling it, and kids (grown-ups too) need to know the difference between primary sources and secondary sources.  They can also see how the intrepretation of past events changes with new information, and how the past affects them today.