How to Homeschool History Simply

hi guys it's Sarah Fagan I am the author of minimalist homeschooling and creator of the simplest in a smart membership and I'm here today to talk to you about how to plan history simply so this is one of those subjects that a lot of people can get overwhelmed because there are so many resources available there are definitely these amazing all-in-one resources and you are welcome to use those these are for the people who have not come an all-in-one that they like or maybe it's just too much and they really want to simplify so first of all you can absolutely teach history in a way that is child blood especially in the younger years there's a topic you want to study go ahead and study it the best way to do this is to brain dump a list of options onto a piece of paper and choose one that you want to study so you can say pilgrims you can say American Revolution you can say world history you can say modern history ancient history whatever it is and then you sort of pick and choose what you want to teach your children as your kids get older though you may want to have something more formal and there are a few ways to do this so the first question I would ask you is for your sort of core history do you want to use a spine book or do you want like a spine like a book or a memory work list or do you want to use a book list right so there are two different ways to do this we can just get a book list this is sort of this Charlotte Mason sort of way right where you choose a time period in history and you'd read great historical fiction or primary sources from that time period and you would use basically a source book list as your core history or you can use a single textbook so if you choose a single textbook then you're going to want to either choose memory work so that comes in a few different classical models and some obviously classical conversations there's Catholic schoolhouse there are a few other classical models where they will lay out memory work for you in the grammar stages and walk you through history then through middle school and high school as well the rhetoric and dialectic stages as well so you can either use memory work or you can use a spine a lot of we'll use this story of the world this comes in a four-part book series so you will have to buy four if you want to cover all of history this is considered secular / Protestant as in it doesn't cover prehistory it's gonna start with ancient history okay and I'm showing you both the benefit of this is it comes on audiobook right so you can get the audiobooks it's not cheap but you can get them and that takes a lot of pressure off the mom or the teacher right whoever the educator is it also comes with a hefty activity book I'm showing you this as an example it has maps it has activities it had like coloring it has all the things okay so you can get this I would suggest that you pick and choose and don't do all the things if you're going to keep it simple okay but it exists okay I don't actually use this I have this to show you it doesn't work for me it's way too overwhelming okay the other option is is there is a secular slash Catholic option the world story by Elisabeth O'Neill this is what I use this is all of history in one textbook so I take three years to read this 366 page textbook with my children that comes to about four pages a day or not a day I'm sorry four pages a week to get through this and this starts with prehistory so this starts with Old Earth theory for example it mentions evolution and it it's going to start with Lake dwellers and and those sorts of things which is why I say it's Pradas or it's Catholic or secular okay because it will touch on those things that I know are contradictory to some of the Protestant world view the world the story of the world however is more definitely more Protestant when it gets to the Reformation and how it discusses the Reformation so I'm just throwing that out there in case you have a preference one way or another so once you have your spine a book list a core text or memory work you have to choose one of those three right to keep it simple choose one of those three then decide what treats you're gonna add to it so there are a lot of options for how we then expand on our history so the idea here is you have a very foundational approach and then you add in all the extras and so I already mentioned it's great to have a list of things that you could possibly do with your history right so brain dump all those great ideas you have about field trips activities projects and those sorts of things in advance and do them as you're able of course you can get that beautiful activities book that I showed you that goes with the story of the world if you want more structure you can also start a Pinterest board for your history and just go pull from that when you have the inspiration to sort of add something to your history however if you're focusing on giving them a foundation and keeping that simple then that's great then your kids are getting a foundation the other thing I love to add on especially for my older children is historical fiction so you can do this as read Aloud's for any of your children but you can also as they get older assign them historical fiction that goes along with the time period that you're studying right so a lot of times for the sort of classical model were in a three-year cycle ancient history Renaissance and Middle Ages approximately - modern history okay so um so then you add on to it I also have a geography and world atlas that I reference as needed again I use this for all my kids for all the years I don't have to buy things separately the books that I showed you I use from about second or third grade through fifth or sixth grade then I move on to a more comprehensive history textbook for my older kids I can tell you about that and a few of comments about it I can put it in the comments below just ask me so the other thing that you can add on in addition to historical fiction in addition to all the activities that you see on Pinterest is you can add by Murphy's to your studies and so this can be really great to get a good idea of what was going on during that time period to study the life of one or two key historical figures so there you have it choose one way to give your core to your children then add on the treats for older children you can also add on a presentation slash project and/or a report like a book report for your kids to do for history got it I have a blog about this and I also am going to include links with a blog and a video for batching alright so Kate Baker her already commented she wants to know what I use for older kiddos so I'm Catholic so I'm using a Catholic textbook and again it comes in a three-year set and so I use a Catholic textbook and I do get the quizzes and the tests starting in sixth or seventh grade and what I do is I I feel like my children are most likely going to go to college I know that at least for my first is definitely wants to go to college so I do think that test prep is an important component of it so I have light of the nation's is the history that I use and it's does fan middle school and high school and the teachers manual gives you ideas for how to extend it for older ages so we do it at a more sort of rudimentary level first and we can go through it twice right because I'm starting in sixth or seventh grade so we go through it twice and the second time around we get more in-depth so it's a similar idea to what I'm doing with my elementary school kids right because every three years we're covering all of history so we keep going through it and we just do it a little bit more in-depth as they get older and usually that means more projects reports presentations and or historical fiction books that I'm adding on as they get older junior high and high school is more primary sources that I'm adding on for them to read in addition to their textbook so I hope that helps and then I would just say to keep it simple guys you've got to keep the field trips and all the treats and all the to these and things to a minimum so I'm going to link to a blog and the video about batching so that all of those fun things you want to do you can get done without driving yourself crazy every week of the whole year okay so I am wishing you all the simple things and I will see you again soon bye guys

Channel: Zara PhD

Views: 1,699

Rating: 4.9000001 out of 5

Keywords: easy homeschool plan, easy homeschool history, homeschooling history, simple homeschool plan, minimalist homeschooling, minimal homeschool, minimalist homeschool, minimal homeschooling, minimalist homeschooler, minimal homeschooler, simple homeschool, simple homeschooling, zara phd, simple is the new smart, how to homeschool history, homeschool history, middle school history, high school history, grade school history, elementary school history

Id: YWIYT9lxnvk

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 11 2019