How To Teach History Creatively to Your Big Kid

For many kids History means a lot of memorization. You have lists and pages of dates, places, and people that you have to cram into your brain.  Who’d enjoy that?!  Even grown-ups would quit after just a few minutes. Luckily for our big kids today, there are many tools and paradigms that we can adapt to help them become more interested in the past.

 

It’s All About People: Start With People He Knows

Basically, History is the story of people.  Thus, as early as possible, it would be good to encourage the innate curiosity of our big kids to learn about the people around him.  We can help him learn about the lives of his relatives, friends, household helpers, and most especially his grandparents. You can be sure his mind would be very curious to know about the similarities and differences between his life and theirs.  These first doses of history are not only easy for him to comprehend, but are some of the most relevant forms of history in his young life.  And thus, the seed of inquiry and discovery for facts about the past is planted!

 

Make a Family Crest

Our family alone is a rich tapestry of historical details to get our children started in understanding history.  Though we may not all have been born into families that figure prominently in Philippine history, a peek up and down our own family tree may reveal a number of exciting historical details.  My husband’s family started researching into their family trees in their native provinces of Lucban, Quezon and Carcar, Cebu.  This led both sides of my in-laws’ families on interesting connections and quests about quaint, strange, and funny stories about the lives of known and obscure relatives from all over the globe.  Now, my father-in-law’s family even went a step further and made a family crest for their clan.  On it, they symbolized the three fields in which their clan has prominently excelled in through the decades—music, engineering, and education.  A family tree and a family crest are certainly fun ways to get your little history buff started.

 

Click here to read more ways to creatively teach history to your big kid.

[previous|page|next]

Read on for more ways to creatively teach history to your big kid.

 

Go on a History Field Trip!

Now that our young scholars are old enough to take trips (at least local ones) we make sure that they get to actually visit and encounter historical sites and landmarks that they’ll be taking up in school. Right here in Manila we have a great number of these places—Fort Santiago, Ayala Museum, The Chinese Museum, The National Museum, Malacañang Palace, etc.  Even the very entertaining walking tour of Intramuros by Carlos Celdran can be such a fun and interesting historical experience of our country’s rich and dramatic history.  During summer and semestral breaks you may want to plan trips around the country as well.  Corregidor, the old churches in Laguna, Lucban, Pampanga, etc. may make for a very exciting historical family trip for a day.   If your young history buff is ready for a bit of a longer trip, a day’s tour of the beautiful historical landmarks of Bohol, Cebu, Ilocos, etc. can open his curiosity to the lives of Filipinos in the past.  Recently, my sister and brother-in-law took their kids on a trip to Italy for 10 days.  Though their kids are older (ranging from 9-17 years old), their 12 year old daughter’s detailed and picturesque travel blog clearly showed how history lessons, taught in the classroom during the school year, just leaped out and came alive this summer for them.  These are memories and lessons they will treasure for all their lives.  Thus, go and explore history today.  There is nothing like travel, on whatever budget, to make history alive and real to your young student.

 

History Is Like Tell An Interesting Story

As mentioned earlier, history is basically a story.  Being such, many times it helps our young children absorb these topics better if we present it to them, the way we would their childhood stories—in the most non-threatening way possible:  cuddle with them in bed or in a comfy couch and have story-telling time.  My own son, who is now nine years old and is in the third grade, still enjoys sitting close beside me (sometimes with his head on my shoulder) on our couch, whenever I read to him his history topics.  We simply read it as we would his old story books.  He is free to interrupt me to ask whatever questions he may have along the way.  We also pour over pictures and graphs that may be found in his book.  As a result, he not only enjoys the topics we read about, but he also enjoys this time we have to be close to one another.  This makes the confusing and complicated topics of history more comforting for him, and more enjoyable for me too.

 

There Are Lots of History Resources Now, Including The Web

Lastly, today we are blessed with some of the most interesting, useful, and entertaining educational tools—from books, to visual aids, to internet based facilities.  Use these to your advantage and join your child’s cyber world.  This will not only guide him to see the positive applications of the internet, but will also give you both yet another possible opportunity to bond as parent and child.  Google Earth maps are great to give updated and basic locations of historical landmarks. 

For more detailed views of historical topics, there seems to be an endless variety of sources right at our fingertips (e.g. officials websites of National Geographic, On-line Encyclopedia Britanica,etc.).  For other age-appropriate websites, you may visit  www.besthistorysites.net.  The possibilities are endless. 

So, don’t be scared to tackle your child’s history lessons with him.  Enjoy these stories and together, travel back in time.

 

More Online Resources for Teaching History:

• Best of History Sites: www.besthistorysites.net This is “an award-winning portal that contains annotated links to over 1,200 history web sites as well as links to hundreds of quality K-12 history lesson plans, history teacher guides, history activities, history games, history quizzes, and more.”  Best of History Web Sites was created in 2001 by Tom Daccord, 15-year history teacher and co-director of EdTech Teacher.
• Ed Tech Teacher, Inc.: EdTechTeacher, Inc. Tom is an educational technology specialist and author of Best Ideas for Teaching with Technology: A Practical Guide for Teachers by Teachers and The Best of History Web Sites.

 

Photo from flickr.com