This year our history classes have been completely revamped. The kids, who have always seemed to like history, are now loving history. And they are retaining more than ever. During our last history session, I got out the camera and documented our class.
We are again using Susan Wise Bauer's Story of the World Series for history. The method that we use can be adapted to any curriculum though. With Google and a great text, history has come alive for us like never before.
Here are the steps we take in our sessions:
1. Place globes, maps, atlases, etc on the table for the kids to use.
2. Give the kids paper to be creative on. I like to fold a one inch margin so that they know not to draw or glue anything over that line so that their "book" can be bound when done.
3. Read the text aloud to the children. Whenever a country, river, or geographic feature is mentioned find it on the globe or map. Also perform a google search of the place, landmard, etc. Don't forget to use the "images" feature to get great pictures of the places that you're studying.
4. When ever you come across a person's name, use google images to get a picture of them. This is especially helpful if you are using an older history text that may not have many pictures available. I like to copy and paste some pictures onto a Word Document and then print them out. The kids can cut them out and incorporate them into their books if they want. Let them add notes and text to the pictures and you've got a great record of your history lesson. My kids don't like to color much for some reason (though I do provide markers, crayons, and color pencils each time we do one of these lessons), so their books turn out mostly black and white. (We have a laser printer for these projects. Trying to do this with our color inkjet would be very expensive.) Other kids might enjoy adding splashes of color to their books.
5. At the end of the lesson the one inch binding can be glued together. The pages for subsequent weeks can be glued right behind them, making a great history portfolio for the year. Kids love picking up their books and reading their own writing. They self-review almost automatically.
NOTES:*If you don't have a filter on your intenet service, you may want to make and print your pictures before the class begins - just incase an image that is not appropriate comes up.
6. Make sure the kids write their notes in pencil so spelling or grammatical errors can be corrected.
7. HAVE FUN LEARNING HISTORY !!!
NOTES:*If you don't have a filter on your intenet service, you may want to make and print your pictures before the class begins - just incase an image that is not appropriate comes up.
*Pre-Schoolers can use this time to practice cutting and gluing skills. Our little guy was cutting out pictures of Thomas the Tank Engine, Motorcycles, bridges, etc.
