Episode 28 Our Favorite History & Social Studies Resources

In this week’s episode of Homeschooling and Life Unfiltered with Court and Jess, we’re sharing the history and social studies curricula we’ve used, loved, and keep coming back to in our homeschool. From literature-rich programs to hands-on learning and family-style history, we’re talking about what has worked for our different ages and stages, why we chose them, and how we bring history to life in our homes. If you’re searching for a history curriculum or just love hearing what other homeschool families use, this episode is full of ideas and encouragement.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hi, and welcome to Homeschooling and Life Unfiltered with Court and Jess. Today we're really excited. Well, I'm really excited to talk about history and social studies. Courtney is too, but it's not her favorite subject. But we are going to dive into all of the things that we're currently using for our kiddos. So, but we're gonna pass it to Courtney to start us off.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

All right. And if you hear little baby noises, grandbaby's on the ground, and I'm sure he will join us at some point. He's in his little bouncer thing. He's having a good time. Um, okay, so history. I as I said to Jess, like this is a short one for me because I've really used the same thing over and over and over again. Um, with my first set of kiddos, we did story of the world, and we did story of the world on a three-year rotation, like or a four-year rotation. So we did it once and then we did it again, and then we did it again. So we really did that and we did it with a group. There was like three families that we met every Thursday. Um, and we would do the story of the world together. And so sometimes we read the chapters ahead of time, and then we always read part of them there. Oh, see, he's pumping on the apple. Um, and then we would do that as some kind of activity, right? So we, you know, um I was talking to my kids, like some of their favorite memories are when we climbed onto the picnic table and everybody had buckets full of balls, and we dumped over for like the Boston Tea Party, like representing the Boston Tea Party. And then we built like a cardboard city, um, and then like lit it on fire, like during the play, you know, like when the fires in Europe. I mean, my history, I mean, I learned way more with Story of the World than I think I ever did, like in school. Like, I learned so much history. Um, but it didn't have a ton of American history. So that like deep dive American history, and I mean it it touches it, but it's not as like American history as we want, American history. So that we kind of did on our own, but I piecemealed together from like all the different things. I never used a curriculum for American history. We did do a really good American history with our co-op when my kids were older. So like my older kids have done it. Um, I don't know if you have you ever heard of like Key of Liberty and um what's the other one? Sword of Freedom, like the their Thomas Jefferson education classes. Um, so Rory took a Key of Liberty class and it's like deep dive into like they memorize the declaration and you know what I mean, like American history, American history. So um, so we did that with my younger set of kids. We've done some story of the world, but we haven't done it because I didn't have like the community that we did it together, right? So it wasn't we haven't done it as much. Um, because it's just more fun with friends. Um, the last couple years we've used beautiful feet. I love their literature-based history, it's fantastic. Um, so we've done that and we're gonna do that again. I actually just ordered what we're doing next year. Um, we're gonna do a beautiful feet history. So that's I've kind of done those things and we've done um history with co-op. So we did have a our main co-op for like three years. We did the history rotation and we paired story of the world and beautiful feet together. So the whole co-op did like medieval history together, and we all did ancient history together. Um, so that was kind of awesome. So each of the kids was in different classes, so they were kind of reading different things, but then the story of the world was this fine, so we could kind of read it, and we were all learning about the same things each week. So that one was really fun. I just it's one of those subjects, it's an easy one for me to be like, eh, it's not like that big of a deal. Like, I just learned I need to do it with friends, or I need to have like a really good like books that we're excited about reading, um, that that I added into like family school, but I I always do history as family school. I don't um nobody has like individual history subjects. And that's literally it. Like, I just do we read a lot of historical fiction, we read a lot of literature, right? You know what I mean? That we tie in like with the story of the world because there's so many books that go with it. Um, history is pretty straightforward for me. I have not tried a million things because I've just stuck with what works.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Dude, um, so you talked about like the city and you let you lit it on fire and you dump out the buckets. How did you so I assume you were just reading about you know, like the sh um the fires or the plague, and then you just like how did you come up with those ideas?

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Oh, are you not familiar with Story of the World? Okay, so Story of the World has like your book with the stories, but it has an activity book that goes with each chapter. Yeah, it has the maps, it has the questions, there's narrations, and then it's full. Each chapter has, I don't know, five or six activities to do with it.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

I love it. We I we do love story of the world, but we've not we did a little bit of an activity book. No, I feel like it was a 15 years ago. It might not have been that long ago, but really long time ago. But mostly we've just listened to the books and then done other history.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

So yeah, so activities are what are fun, which is why I think this history failed for me this year because we were only just reading. We I didn't get out the activity books, and I was like, they're big, they don't really need it. We do, we do need it. We need the activities. That's how they're like embracing it and learning and and remembering the things, right? Like nobody's gonna they remember the Boston Tea Party because of us acting it out, and they remember us dressing up like warriors with like the face paint, and they remember, I'm trying to think of all I we were like looking back through pictures because we took a lot of pictures of history because we did a lot of like hands-on things, like when we embalmed an orange and um yeah, like there's all these really cool things that the first set of kids did, right? That my second set of kids has not done. So I need to be the not lazy mom and get out of the activity book because there's so many really cool hands-on things to do with it.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

What do you do? Um, so I know we're talking about history, um, but we're really talking about social studies. What do you guys do for like governments or geography?

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Yeah, so geography is weaved into story of the world and beautiful feet. There's always a mat, excuse me, that goes with it. But we also do good in the beautiful language arts, which geography is in that. And so the years that we've done US history though, we've done the um, you know, the maps, like the US history map or the US maps, and they, you know, they write in all the ones they memorize and then they check it, and then every day, you know what I mean, we do more. Um, I should probably bring that back out. We haven't done that in a few years. And then what did you just ask me that? Oh, government. We do um more like in high school. That's kind of my high school course. Yeah. When my kids get to high school, they do do some separate um social studies, like those kinds of things. I've never done government as far as our full class, like our I mean our full class, my full class of children's family school. The family school, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Um, that's awesome. Um, well, that sounds great. And it's simple. No, but it's but and it can be so simple, right? It doesn't have to be hard. Um, and I think that families will find, especially those who are new to homeschooling, like where your passions lie or where you're gonna go more in depth because it's fun, right? And then your kids catch your enthusiasm and they they want to do the fun things with you too.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Um that's where the books come in. So, like as we're reading and they're learning, they're like, Oh, that was so interesting. That's when we go look for those other historical fiction books and the things that match the time period to kind of like pull in more of that, more of that, you know, history, you know, out of the box, not just some textbook. That's a boring, the boring part.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

That no, that's um, that's great. Okay, so our this is probably our main subject that the foundation really is. I mean, we do social studies and history in classical conversations, and I promise you guys, and we are not getting paid to mention any of these things. Um uh, but I do love classical conversations. And so when my kids are little, like four years old, until they go to high school, they are memorizing history sentences, and it's one of my favorite things. Um, and so, like, for example, like um this one is one of our just randomly opened our book for the year, and it says, tell me about the civilizations of Mesoamerica. And so that I would ask that question to them, and then they would repeat back to me from memory three of the advanced civilizations of Mesoamerica from 1200 BC to AD, 1500 were the Omeks, the Mayans, and the Aztecs. So depends we have a three-year cycle. So depending on if we're like ancient history or modern history, there's going to be different history sentences that they um that they memorize with it. And then my favorite part though is the history song. So we memorize a timeline of historic historical events from creation all the way until um uh 9-11. And it's I can't think remember how many events are on it, hundreds of events. And my kids memorize it. We put it to music. You can memorize so many things to music, even these history sentences are put to music if we want them to be. Um, but that's one of my favorite things. And over and over and over, I see, even all the way to my daughter who's in college, that she'll talk about something from like the um Byzantine era, and she's like, Oh, and she has that peg in her brain because she memorized that as a kid as being one of the reference points on our timeline. And so um the way we do history is we have this timeline, right? So we have this idea of the order of events, and then we have the geography piece where we are memorizing um the whole world. So lots of major all of the all of the continents, all of the countries, um, some major cities and historic or um and and big like um like uh you know, the oceans and mountain ranges and some like the big geographical pieces in the world. And then they had dropped from memory at a certain age. I think it's in seventh grade. Um, so now we have the historical timeline and we have the geography map in our mind. So then when we go in to learn about all of these different historical events, they're able to say in their mind, they can picture when it was approximately right as it was um, you know, after the Roman Empire fell, but before this event. And it helps them to kind of visualize where that is, and then they can also visualize it on a map. And I've just found that helps them to be more engaged in history. Um, but again, this is coming from a family who like we love history, so it's a little do you have that link?

SPEAKER_00 10:17

The um is that song like with all the different things recorded somewhere? Yes, on YouTube or something like that?

SPEAKER_01 10:24

On YouTube, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Oh, okay. You'll have to link it, we'll have to share it because I'm curious. Like that sounds so interesting.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

It's so good. And so like I have videos of like my little four and five-year-olds memorizing this entire song, and we listened to it in the car, and the um classical conversations redid their a lot of their songs a couple of years ago, and I really don't like the new the new stuff, but their timeline song has remained the same. Um, and it is fun and catchy for for adults, so I have no problem playing it in my car on, and it's like I don't know, when my kids do it, it's like 11 minutes long. I mean, it's crazy, it's something crazy, it's not short.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

Um that's how we memorize like the states and like the capitals, like their songs, like because it's amazing what you can learn through songs.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

That's a great 100%. These kids can memorize you know, 10 popular songs. They can certainly memorize scriptures and books in the Bible and um timeline events and all of those things. Um, and so anyway, so that's kind of like the like that's what we base all of our history on. So then, so I I I kind of picture as like we have this big bowl, right? And that's the timeline and the geography work that we do, and then we fill it. And so we fill it with things. I always try to fill it with things that my kids can relate to. So I've brought a bro, I've I brought some resources to share. Um, so my kids really get into so we really like graphic novels at our house, like good quality graphic novels, not comic books. There's a huge difference.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Yes, there is, and I'm always looking for recommendations because those are my things.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

So these hazardous tales are awesome. Um, and then I heard of those. This one is Lafayette's, who is my oldest daughter's uh favorite potential history husband, is what she would tell you. So that's what we are when it comes to uh history in this family, is my kids are like, oh, this is who I would marry in history. So this is my daughter's list. Um but it it's really good, it's really heavy for a graphic novel, but done in a really fun way. My kids really like them. There's a lot of them. Um, other books that help my kids to what I like about these books, the ones I'm showing you now, they help kids to be drawn into history. They can imagine what it was like to be there, and I think that's really key in engaging a kid in history, um, for them to really, really embrace and empathize with with people. Um, this one you've seen, these what was, and they also have who was. Yeah, right. Um, I wish they were in color, right? Because it's like these beautiful, fun covers, and then they're kind of I don't love the pictures inside, but this one's Ellis Island, it's really great. Um they like they put some questions on the end as far as.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Because they're such an easy way to grasp like what's happening, you know what I mean, for the kids. I love them. Along with um picture books, like historical picture books. Oh, yeah. You read picture books, you know, you think oh, they're so easy and they're not, but there are so many, especially like biography picture books, that are fantastic, and it's it's way above like it's not like a little kid reading level, right? They're meant to be read as like a teaching tool. But even high schoolers, I introduce topics all the time with picture books.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

That's awesome. I love that. So these ones are I would say are are good-ish, right? I think these are great, these are good-ish. Um, these are some of my favorite. I think these are great. Um, and these are this is an older version of them, they make newer ones now, but um, I have a ton of them. It's if you traveled in, so if you traveled in the west in a covered way again. So it's like if you lived in ancient Roman times, and it tells you read through it and it's all about like what it was really like to live during that time period. Um, like what was it like to live during the time of Abraham Lincoln and just lots of really like if you traveled or if you lived um books. Um, the other ones that I really like are the I Survived books. Um, they aren't all historical, um, but this one is. This one is if um it's called I Survived the Battle of D-Day, and it's a graphic novel again, um, and really quite good.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Um it's funny, Macy's kind of a little bit of a wimp, and she thinks they're scary.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Some of them they really are real, you know. Some of them are very intense. You have to, you know, I cannot tell you how careful parents need to be with picking up books. For example, um there's a series that I really liked when I was a kid, and they have made a graphic novel version, and they are just not as they just aren't like they've incorporated like a lot of attitude uh negative towards parents, like just a lot of weird things that didn't need to be incorporated because they weren't there in the original books. Um, and so parents just need to be so aware of what their kids are reading, and it's a pain, right? Who has time to read every book their kid has read? Probably Courtney, but nobody else, because she reads at lightning speed. But this mom does not read at lightning speed, and I cannot read every book. My kids consume books on a level that is just not manageable for me. Um, so I use websites, right? So like um I'll use uh Common Sense Media, I think is one of them. I can't remember if they're one of the book ones or if they're just movie. Um, but I also ask other moms in my community. I often will go on my because I'm in a lot of homeschool Facebook groups, groups. So if I'm got a new book, I'll Google the name and then switch my settings to say show me posts in my groups. So if there's a controversy, usually a mom in my group is like, hey, you know, just so everybody knows this new book came out and it looks really great, but it's actually terrible. Um might not be terrible, but your kids might not be ready for the topic.

unknown 16:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Or they just sneak in like things that shouldn't be sneaking. 100%. We actually just had and they're so annoying. The other thing is you gotta train your kids on what to do if they encounter it. So my kids all are allowed to have a personal safe and they get to keep like their little candy in there and trinkets and things like that. Um, and recently this happened to us. We had a book that was given to us, and um, you know, no good reason other than just that it just it was one of those ones I flipped through. It I didn't do my due diligence with it, and it had a pretty um heavy topic in it, really and in a it described it in a really graphic way. Not a topic that um I think we could avoid forever, and it's a good topic to have a conversation on, but I definitely wouldn't have introduced it in that way. Um, and my my 14-year-old read the book and she and I was at home and she immediately put it in her safe until her and I could talk about it because she had such a strong reaction to it and slammed it closed. Her sister, who was reading next to her, was her little sister, like, oh what was that? What was that? And she knew enough to immediately close it and put it in her safe and lock it away until mom got home. And then we had and she brought it to me, and so I was so proud of her. So we can do all we want to protect our kids from all we're getting way off topic, but make sure your kids have a plan for when they encounter a topic that is just too heavy for them or or just completely inappropriate. Okay, so last one. Um, I love these. I loved these as a kid, and I didn't love to read as a kid, but these are the choose your own adventure books, and there's a couple different kinds.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

History one, huh?

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Yeah, oh, tons of history ones. So this is World War II pilots and enact interactive history, and the way that they work is um, so some pages you'll read and it'll just say turn the page, other ones you have a choice. So um, like this one is um did they do they want to fly the Avenger torpedo bomber, or do they want to fly, uh, do they want to fly the Hellcat Fighter? Um, and then they might have to say, well, they're gonna go to this battle, or they're going to stay home and nurse their broken. I mean, and then there's consequences to all the decisions they make. And full disclosure, sometimes they do die in this one. Like you might choose a path that leads them to a real life scenario where their character would not have survived because these are real historical events and battles. So, anyways, really like it. And then also, um, I think just finding like good old-fashioned historical novels like you were talking about, Courtney, that relate to what your kids are going through. So I have um a daughter who is um who's who is beautiful, but she's very tall. She's probably gonna be like 5'11. Um, she is over 5'9 right now, and she's 14. And she doesn't love being tall yet. She's going to love it someday, right? But every nobody is like all the kids her own age haven't caught up to her yet. And so this book I just happened upon and I was so lucky. I'm just gonna read you the first line of it. It says World War until World War II came along, 14-year-old Helen Marshall's biggest problem had been her height. Um, so it goes on to talk about how she was, she thought she was too tall. Um, and then she's plunged into World War II with her whole family. And so I think uh really making an effort to find books that are gonna engage your kiddo. And my daughter read the back of this, she's like, Oh, really? And she was so excited to read this book.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Um I love the um children uh was it children of America something? They're blue. Do you know what I'm talking about? Children of America. I'm gonna look it up. I have a bunch of them on the bookshelf out there, but they're all blue and they have like a red banner across the top of them, and they're they're all biographies of like American people.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Oh, yes, okay. And they is it like the diaries of America, like historical kids? Because we like those too.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Um I'm gonna I'm gonna look it up. If not, I will I'll have to go look on my shelf, but so this I can't remember, but there's a bunch of blue ones, and they're all American historical books.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Oh, that's awesome. So this one is a literature and history in one. Um, and again, it's about aligning your kids' interests with a topic, right? And so I my the same 14-year-old daughter is really into like fashion and makeup and hair and all of that kind of stuff. And so um we have several different ones of these, it's just the first one I grabbed, but this is the Jane Austen paper dolls, and so you can punch out paper dolls and learn about like the historical part of this, is like the clothing style and things like that that was unique to this era. Um, but it's also lip has that title literature, right? Because it's Jane Austen. Um, and we read those classical novels, and so um, I also I couldn't find it on her shelf, and she's not home to tell me where it is, but we got a um history of fashion, so it's this huge, really thick book. Um, it's either red or yellow, uh, and it's all about the different fashion, how fashion has evolved through um like the entire time back to like warrior times. Yeah. Um, okay, just a couple more to keep kids engaged.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

So many good books out there, seriously.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Uh coloring books and sticker books for literally every historical topic you can think of. Um, the sticker books are super fun. Um, so this one is the ancient Greeks. Um, so you can kind of see there's um like a scene there, and then there will be um there's sometimes there's more of like graphic novel style, and then there's all these great stickers that have different places throughout the book. Um, these I really like when we're we're listening to audiobooks that are historical. So when We're listening to the story of the world when it comes time to talk about the Greeks, we're gonna pull out these sticker books. Um, and then they like I said earlier, they make coloring ones as well. Um, and then I just keep my eyes open for things like um National Geographic, right? They just do generally a really good job at most of the things that they do, but they have great like history versions, like you just have to watch. Like this is a D-Day version that I picked up years ago, um, 2018. Um, and it's just fun for kids to kind of look through the magazine and things like that. But um, the last one that I'll show is um just books like this that I really like that have this, isn't it? It's not necessarily this particular book that I'm showing you, but a lot of books like this have like documents that are included that you can pull out the documents. Um, this is actually a newer one for us, and just you guys would be amazed at how much having a flap to open and a piece of paper to pull out will draw kids in. Um change things up for them, have them have books that are fun and unique. Um, we also love to do field trips, uh, and so we're going to a lot of historical sites that are local to our county is really fun or to our state. Um, and sometimes we go to bigger ones too. Um we uh do the wax museum. Courtney has mentioned that a couple of times. We do the wax museum as well. Um for governments, um we do the Institute on the Constitution for some older kids. We do some Hillsdale courses as a family or for older kids that are free online. Um we do a ton of history stuff. There's um townhouse, uh it's like I can't remember the names, but it's like the mouse, this mouse that goes to um the Library of Congress and they go to they go to the House of Representatives and they do a bunch of different things. So we do those kinds of things in high school. Our kids get really into history, they are annotating annotating um historical documents and things like that and reading biographies. Um let's see. Um we um also are really lucky that we have uh, and I've talked, well, I guess first let me say we tie our our English lessons to history as well. So when our kids write papers for ELA, they're tying it to like this when we aren't using this book this year, but this year we when we did this book, it was US history. And so all of the papers that they're using.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Those are fantastic. Sorry, I think there's a little bit of a delay. You're you keep oh stop stopping. I I was just gonna say we do the same thing, those IEW things are so great to tie in.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Yeah, they're super fun. Um, and then the last thing that I'll mention is just that um you don't have to do all of these things. Again, we are just a really, really, really um history-focused family. Our dad loves my husband, he loves history, he knows a ton about history and is just really engaged and help, you know, has helped to drive home that love of history for all of our kids. And um, so yeah, now we have a daughter who is an archaeology major and you know, in doing all things history all the time. Um, and so it's just part of our family culture. But that hopefully there are a few good tips and tricks there for families who either love history or who are struggling with history and just looking for some things to try to engage not only their kids but themselves. Because if parents are not engaged, their kids are gonna pick up on that and they're gonna be disengaged before you even get to the table. They're gonna pick up on that from you.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

So, one of the other things that I love to do when you showed me like that coffee table book, it reminded me is that one of my favorite things to do in the is go to the library and whatever you know we're taught wherever we're learning about. So, say we're learning about Greek mythology or we're learning about Rome or wherever, but our library has a huge nonfiction section, and you just go to that section and I would pull out you know different picture books and different biographies or different whatever that went with it, and then I have forward-facing shelves that you would put the books on so they can see the covers. And it's a they'll just you know, walk by and pick it up, you know what I mean? They have free time, it's just seeing the cover, it brings it in, and so they're getting the little nuggets of things, and then they're like, Oh, this is really look at this, mom. And then we might go look up a YouTube video, you know what I mean? It kind of like rabbit trails out, but just by having the forward-facing things for them to see, they're gonna pick it up more than if it's just like on yourself.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Yes, Courtney gave this advice um on a reel for Venture Upward, and it is one I'm still working to try to figure out where I can put that forward-facing shelf because it's so true. You guys, I was in her basement and I saw these shelves, and I'm like, oh, look at that pack. Oh, look at that book. Oh, I want to read that book, right? Just have a quick picture of this book. Like it is, you can't help but be curious about the book, so I think that's such a great idea. Still working on it.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

Still does that, and you know, I they're just um they're picture shelves for my Kia, and that's what we use is the forward-facing book though. So they're very inexpensive, but it makes a nice piece on a wall too. So I love it. Okay, yay, so many fun history tips. I'm excited, and actually, I just got my box of books from the beautiful feet what we're doing, and that's what I'm gonna do with them is I'm just gonna set them up on the forward-facing so they start looking at them like we're not starting it yet, but you know, maybe tip or toes and maybe they'll read them this summer.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

So I love it. That's so great. Well, this was such a great discussion. And if you guys have tips for us, share them with us, find us on social media, um, and we'd love to hear your tips and learn about your resources too.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

Yeah, and next week, here let's do a teaser. We I have to find my list really fast in this notebook. We are gonna talk about our extra subjects. So kind of the fun, um, you know, maybe your music or art or poetry or whatever it is, we're gonna talk about those kind of little extra subjects that I think sometimes they kind of get they get missed, right? They just get shuffled under the the rug. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

We're also in will also be like foreign language, which is always a hard one for families to feel like they're tackling well or that they can tackle. So come for some tips. I'll bring some tips for that one as well.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

Well, that's a great one.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Okay, thanks. See everybody later. Bye.