Troubles with liking history

What are you using for books?  How are you introducing your readings?  I have to confess, I think history is the second most exciting and fascinating “subject” after economics, and my kids have been very eager to read good living books, cook food, “live” in a time period, think about experiencing life as others did long ago.  We have dressed in togas and recited parts of Julius Caesar; eaten pilgrim food; camped out with Lewis and Clark, eating under the stars and watching a re-enactment of one of them being shot in the bum accidentally; made a teepee; made food from every imaginable period; built a pyramid out of sugar cubes; gone to a Civil War re-enactment; hiked to historic spots and pretended to be there when they were famous; invented a character a little like Flat Stanley and “sent” him to different time periods and had him report back to us what he found (we had to take turns “being” Willis, which was his name lol) celebrated birthdays of our ancestors in “period” style, and we have read more biographies and historical fiction and terrific books than I can possibly list.  We have had a BALL!  I don’t know what you mean by “know” history?  Do you mean dates?  Those are nice, but reading about Laura and Mary and Ma making butter, and then making some yourself, is better!  That’s “knowing” history.  Later you’ll get a sense of what happened when, if you just keep reading, keep immersing, keep a book of centuries!  I used to assign to one kid to make a BOC entry for what we just studied, then send another kid off on a mission to find something else that happened at that same time in history.  We loved it!  Watch National Treasure!  My kids turned into total history nerds after that, and made up their own similar stories.  Wish I could share some of my library with you!  History is totally fascinating.  It’s REAL people surrounded by circumstances we can only imagine, trying to figure out how to answer big questions about existence and morality using the tools their society gave them!  People who are just like you and me and our kids.  What do THEY think when you read a biography?  Would they have acted the same as the person did?  Differently?  Why?  (No cheap escapes–they can’t conjure up a modern army and zap it to Wellington!  LOL) If they are bored to death with their books, either they have the wrong books, or the stage has not been set.  The only thing more interesting IMO is economics (don’t get me started on that one today) and my graduate work was . . . ECONOMIC HISTORY!  LOL

I am new to this, only finishing 2nd grade with my oldest, but finding a family spine, I can see as one of my biggest struggle. Something to “tie” it all together. I hope it will come with time but thathas bern a struggle for me. I so know not “necessary” but I like the idea of reading a main text and branching off of it.

Bookworm – great encouragement! It does not have to be memorizing facts and specific dates. Learning how people lived, why they did what they did, how countries were built and then fell (and why)… you are right, that is History. I know I easily get caught up in facts, thinking knowing those is knowing history.

I LOVE history too! And agree w/ Bookworm, we have fun w/ it! I don’t use spines at all! We use living books such as autobiographies, fiction and non-fiction, and then we even do a internet search of that time period. We have also added selective lapbooks such as one for the Civil War and Lewis and Clark! So much fun! We have also gone to museums to make history come alive! Oh yeah, dvd’s/netflix too!

I reallycan’t get enough of history! LOL! 🙂

Ok, I *like* history. I love knowing about how people lived, how they dressed, what they ate, how they traveled, arranged marriages, etc., etc. I don’t care for learning about specific people or dates. Does that make sense?? I feel like the spines (and even most of the recommended individual readings) focus heavily on specific people/kings/queens/dynasties/wars and don’t focus a lot on how everyday people lived during that time. THAT is what I would like to see more of, both for my children and myself. 

Honestly, I would just ditch the spine! If you really want to develop a love of history, or just enough to like it – I think a textbook would be a bad idea. Yes, you might “know” about history for awhile….but will it last? And more importantly, will your children care? I think we tend to miss the boat entirely with history. It is not so much what that we know what and when, but why. Why is the more important thing to know, why people did the things they did. My mother was a history major, and she told me as a child “If we don’t know where we’ve been, we won’t know where we are going” (I have no idea if that is her comment or if she picked it up from her reading.) We dull history down by distilling it to the dates and facts and dry boring sentences. When in fact it was lived, just like Bookworm said, by real people, in real places, who did real things. History is a story, and is in my opinion easiest to study as a story. The Bible is a story. Jesus taught in stories. Find some different books! And yes, I realize that spines are usually a narrative in story form, but that doesn’t mean that the spine book automatically places you right there – as though you are living the story as it unfolds. There’s a world of difference from a narrative on the Revolutionary War and Johnny Tremain. (I am not disregarding narratives or biographies or documentaries or advocating only historical fiction. I am trying to make the point that the history book should put you right “then and there”). I did not read Johnny Tremain until I was an adult (and no my kids haven’t read it yet) but as soon as I closed that book, I emailed my brother who was overseas on a military deployment, for the very first time I finally understood WHY he went into the military in the first place. So a man could stand up. A person could “know” the names, dates, places and outcomes of every battle of that war, and yet – not care. On the other hand a person could know Samuel Adams, John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson etc. (Or Abigail Adams, there’s a person most mothers especially would enjoy meeting!) To know them as people, not only who they were and what they did (good and bad) but what they believed. Just to know one of those people really well would serve a person far better than “knowing” dates or sequences of events. Because to knowing must lead to caring. And knowledge that is not applied is just as bad as ignorance. If you know, yet you do not care – what is the point of knowing at all? History is important it because it’s about people – people yesterday and people today. And people are more than worth caring about!!!

I will just be honest.  I am very much a here and now person.  That is not to say that I don’t think there is a lot to learn from history but I just don’t enjoy doing it.  I think God made us all different and that is ok.  I don’t enjoy it and my son, who is soo much like me, doesn’t either.  But, like Lindsey’s kiddos, he loves the books we read that are age specific.  Of late I have been struggling with the whole idea of who we are as a family and who are children are as individuals and how this all fits into our homeschool adventure.  One family’s feast won’t be the same as another.  And I am learning to just be ok with who we are.  When I read Michelle’s post she made it sound so great.  But like my husband said a few weeks ago “I like the idea of camping out but not the reality of it”  That is how I feel about history.  But because we want to strive to work hard and not complain we will learn to perservere through the mundane.  No offense you history lovers 🙂