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How we Study the
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How do
we study History?
I suspect that the reason for this
topic stems from the fact that so many of our generation (the
parents of homeschooled children) hated history at school.
I remember
it requiring lots of what we called parrot-fashion learning - where we
were required to memorise endless facts and dates so that we could
'regurgitate' them correctly on our exam papers.
What do
I remember of History?
For most of primary school I
remember learning facts about the history of South Africa over and over - the Trekboer movement, the Great
Trek and the clashes with the Zulu etc. In Std 5 I had to do a project
on an ancient civilisations and with my
mother's input, I learnt a lot from that.
Std 6 history I can't recall at
all. The only time history was any fun was in my std 7 year where we
had a teacher who was passionate about her subject and tried to make it
come alive for us. She decorated her classroom with a variety
of old newspaper cartoons that had political slants to them.
They were great examples of comic propoganda. When we were studying
World War 2 she would often goose step into the classroom and
start teaching us in a German accent! But alas, the subject matter
remained pretty dry and as boring as the black and white text books
from which we had to study it.
So how
have I taught my children the history of South Africa and world history?
Not at all like the above. We have
never studied history as an isolated subject and my
children have never been required to memorise dates
and facts so that they can repeat them later. Since we have always used
a literature-rich unit study approach
to learning everything(besides language and maths), history has always
been studied in the context of whatever literature we have been
studying.
When my eldest daughter studied the history of South Africa, using the unit study programme I co-authored, Footprints
On Our Land, I wanted her to have a good sense of
the sequence of historical events that occurred during the time frame on which we were focusing.
To do this, we set up a vertical timeline
using a fax roll down the side of a door in our school area. On this she recorded the important dates in the history of South Africa, brief facts and pasted picture
discs relating to the historical
but fictional stories
she was reading.
From that the whole family soon learned that
Dias arrived in 1488 and later, my then 3-year old son
recognised a large photo of Van Riebeeck when we
visited Kleinplasie Museum complex in Worcester!
Besides this, I required her to do regular narrations on historical topics. (Narration is simply the process whereby a child tells back what she has learnt from her reading.) At first, I would ask her a leading question and then play scribe for her and record what she narrated orally. As she became more familiar with this process, I required her to do written narrations. I'd say something like: "Write down what you have learnt about Simon van der Stel" or "Explain the uses of the Voortrekkers' wagons" "What did you learn from your reading about the lifestyle of the Zulu people?" etc.
These were recorded in her history
narration book. For this we used a nature study book, so that she could
also do a picture for each narration. She now has a meaningful record
of her study of the history of South African history. (We have since incorporated a
combined narration and timeline book into the Footprints
On Our Land programme.)
Since then, I have been
using two
Sonlight curricula
per year with my two age
groups of school-aged learners. I have not been as diligent
with narrations as I would like to be, often they are just oral.
However, with the great literature that we are reading,
history is no dull subject that we have to get through - it is
the CORE of everything we study.
The beauty of literature-rich
studies is that, instead of reading snippets of information about
characters in history, your children get to experience the lifestyle
and events of that era through the eyes of the characters in the
stories. A story with a hero, a plot and a climax grips kids and draws
them into History, without them associating it with 'boring
old facts'. Well-chosen reference books to accompany the
reading of historical fiction helps to place it in context.
This year we have been studying
ancient history beginning with the Egyptian civilisation which has
fascinated us all. We haven't done elaborate projects or anything
fancy, yet we have found our literary journey
back through time most interesting. Tutankhamen, being a boy king and
having his treasure in tact when his mummy was found is 'exciting
stuff' for children to read about, especially if it is presented by
means of good literature! Glitter glue was put to good use for some
dazzling picture narrations after the children learned about
him!
As we progress, my young ones are
diligently pasting the timeline characters that
Sonlight
provides into
the timeline book and are starting to get an idea of events in history
that happened in the same eras. Last year we read a
comprehensive children's Bible from cover to cover and plotted
the main Bible characters in the timeline book. This has given
them some points of reference, with the B.C. / A.D. division being the
most significant point of all. I believe that in the next few years, as
we keep referring back to this tool and adding more to it, that it will
become more and more meaningful to them.
We also have had some great impromptu conversational history lessons..and these are probably the best kind, as they are so relevent to the child at that moment. They have happened when the children ask specific questions about Bible times or times gone by like 'when Granny and Grandpa were young' and 'when Mom and Dad were little' or about changing technology!
We
have also done a little digging and investigating into our own family history and
discovered that one ancestor was an employee of the Dutch East India Company!
We created a family tree, which although incomplete went back
seven generations. The Young family discovered that they are
descendents of one of the characters in a story of a Huguenot family
which is included in the study of the history of South Africa in
Footprints On Our Land - South Africa's Heritage
programme.
The following are some historic
sites or museums that we have visited and
enjoyed to enrich our knowledge of the history of South Africa:
- The Cape Town Castle
- The SA Museum, Cape Town
- Whale Museum at Hermanus
- Bartholomeu Dias Museum Complex at
Mossel Bay
- Genadendal Museum Complex
- Kleinplasie at Worcester
- Toy Museum at Stellenbosch
- Dias Cross at Boknesstrand / Cannon
Rocks
- San (Bushman) Caves at the Cedarberg
- The ObservatoryMuseum at Grahamstown
I have found that it is best to let
these visits be paced by the children's interest.
While my husband was abroad in
Beijing, China last year, we did virtual tours
of the palace, museums and temple that he told us he had visited. When
he returned and showed us his photos, we could appreciate
them! This year we have done some virtual touring in Egypt
too. We should do more of that!
We have also used audio tape
stories about the lives of historical characters and watched a few historical
movies, (eg. Jock of the Bushveld, Anna and the
King, Cry the Beloved Country) to enhance our History learning
experiences.
I think the history of South Africa and the world is one subject that they didn't teach better, "back in the good ol' days".
To sum up, I've
described 6 alternatives to make the history of South Africa and the world more interesting:
1. literary journeys using
historical fiction
2. conversational history lessons
3. research family history
4. visits to historic sites and museums
5. virtual tours on the Internet
6. historical movies
Why use boring old text books to study the history of South Africa when we can make learning about dead guys come alive using the 'living books', multicolour resources and real places instead?
