Teaching history to children doesn’t have to be boring. Check out 4 tips for teaching history creatively so your kids will love it!
History gets kind of a bad rap, doesn’t it? We tend to think of it as dry, full of boring dates, and kind of extraneous–like an elective we can skip.
In fact, history matters–a lot. History is impacted by ideas, what people believe about God and how they apply those beliefs to their lives.
Teaching History to Children
History teaches our kids:
- How people in the past lived through hard times. God always has a plan for his followers.
- To be grateful for the blessings God has given us here and now.
- That our character and the things we believe about God and about other people change our lives, and often history itself.
- The gospel of Jesus changes everything.
- God is the King over all kings and Lord over all nations.
- Ordinary citizens can make a massive difference in the lives of others when they love God and love their neighbors.
History matters. The ideas we live according to will impact those around us, and generations that come after us.
Teaching history to our children can be a lot of fun! In fact, it was one of our favorite subjects to study in our homeschool. We incorporated history into everything.
3 Tips for Teaching History Creatively
Being creative doesn’t have to be complicated. I think you will find these three tips for teaching history to your kids easy to implement.
1) Teach History using Story
God wrote Scripture to us primarily in the form of story. He has built us to love story, and our children are fascinated by the stories of God’s people in the Bible–and in history.
It’s so easy to intentionally build good stories into your day. Whether you read a biography aloud after lunch or assign excellent historical literature to your kids, they will be learning history in a fun way, through stories.
We liked to utilize a variety of resources to help our kids learn about history from a number of different angles, such as:
- Christian biographies
- Historical fiction
- Illustrated documents
- Histories of documents designed for children
- Narrative nonfiction books that related to the historical events and people we were studying
- Overviews of history
Find an absolutely enormous list of Christian history books for preschool to high school here.
2) Teach History with Hands-on Projects
Children through the middle grades are concrete thinkers. That means that abstract concepts can be difficult for them to grasp and process. Creating hands-on projects can be a helpful (and fun) way to help children move concepts from the abstract to the concrete.
Our family worked on a number of history-based hands-on projects. For instance, we:
- Made paper mache death masks when studying ancient Egyptian religion.
- Created a series of maps for the nation of Israel throughout the Old Testament, which showed the consequences of their national obedience to God’s Law.
- Drew a to-scale sperm whale in the street with sidewalk chalk when studying the book of Jonah. (We don’t know that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, but–again–it helped make that a concrete idea for our kids.)
- Created little historical figures of the people we read about.
Check out these printable hands-on Bible and history crafts!
3) Teach History through Narration
You can teach history creatively through narration. It’s so easy–just have your children recap what they’ve learned, either verbally, our in writing.
We did a lot of our written narration through notebooking and lapbooking. It was a fun, easy way for our kids to rehearse and retain what they’d learned, and their writing skills naturally developed as they practiced writing an overview of what they’d discovered.
4) Teach History on Field Trips
Finally, you can teach history creatively while on field trips.
It is so impactful for children to be able to see actual historical sites. If you can’t make it to the physical place you are studying, there are often online tours you can take. One of my boys used to study other cities using Google Earth!
History is important for our kids. You can teach history in a way that’s fun and creative–and super easy to incorporate into your day!
Bible Resources for Your Kids
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Christian Biographies for Kids | Christian History for Kids | Theology for Kids
Christian History Matters for Our Kids.
History matters. Now, more than ever, we see how important it is for our children to know and understand history and the Bible.
Here’s why:
- God is the sovereign ruler of all things. It’s important for our kids to see his hand in the history of nations and in the lives of both peasants and kings.
- Christian history is the story of our family history. Our kids get to see how people who love Jesus follow him.
- Understanding history can help our kids learn historic and biblical theology. They learn what the Bible says and what that means for us. They also see when the study of Scripture has taken important turns that have changed the Church.
- Reading Christian biographies and history can be a wonderful way for kids to think outside their own time and culture. God’s Church spans centuries and includes people from every nation.
- Christian biographies help kids consider their own faith, walk with Jesus, and the impact their witness may one day have on others–and on history.
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