Generating Interest in History with Educational Videos for Kids, History Field Trips, and Historical Fiction

“Can we go look for another history video?” my second grader asked me this morning. This was a bit unexpected. My daughter has not make it a secret that she is not interested in history. But since we found the Homeschool History website (created by the team at Notgrass history), I’ve found her more interested in the subject.

Sometimes it is hard to find the time to plan engaging or interesting ways to present history to my children. Those at Homeschool History have already done a lot of the work for me. A Homeschool History membership gives a busy homeschool parent access to a database with summaries of great homeschool history videos, history field trip ideas, and historical fiction for whatever history topics we might be interested in learning about!

Note: I received a Homeschool History membership for free in exchange for my honest opinions, and I was compensated for my time.

How to Find Homeschool History Videos

Although I’ve mentioned how we use streaming video in our homeschool before, Homeschool History helps take some of the searching away by providing an easily searchable database of videos available from various sources. The videos are also well organized by topic and category, providing a few ways to be found.

Some of the videos cataloged on Homeschool History are YouTube videos directly embedded into a popup. Others may be videos available on Amazon Prime, or available to rent on Amazon or elsewhere. Some videos lead to a “where to watch” page, and others lead to the IMDB page about the video. At any rate, with such ordered access to educational videos for our kids, Homeschool History makes it easy to find something to fit in to our history studies.

As I mentioned above, the videos were definitely my daughter’s favorite part of the site. While I consider Homeschool History to primarily be a database for homeschool parents to use in planning and supplementing, my daughter did enjoyed browsing through the videos and searching for her favorite subjects. We had to add some of the most interesting-looking videos to our Amazon queue!

Would you like to give it a try?

History Field Trips Ideas

But educational videos are not the only way to make history come alive for my history hesitant kids. The Homeschool History website also has historical locations indexed. When we want to get away from home for a weekend, we can look up our destination to see where we can visit.

When we browsed our state and nearby locations, we found information about the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum in Wisconsin, and Abraham Lincoln’s childhood town of New Salem, Illinois. These are both great options for us, and in fact, we’ve been to both places for trips! My daughter was so excited to see the replica log cabin in Wisconsin. I think that next up will have to be the Wilder farm in Missouri, I suppose!

Where are you? Do you need some ideas on where to go near you?

Learning from Historical Fiction and Biographies

Finally, I truly love historical fiction, and so I’m always on the lookout for more amazing historical fiction to enjoy. Whether we are studying ancient Israel or the civil rights era, historical fiction helps bring events, historical figures, and historical locations to light. A well written biography can all draw children into a historical scene.

Here are some historical fiction and quality biographies for kids that stood out to me as I browsed through various subjects.

• Victory on the Walls: A Story of Nehemiah (searching about ancient Israel)
• Pompeii: Buried Alive (searching for Ancient Rome)
• The Great Wheel by Robert Lawson (searching for ILlinois, about the first Ferris Wheel)
• Shaka: King of the Zulus (searching for books about Africa)

See what I mean? These sound like so much fun. In fact, I’ve already downloaded and read the kindle version of the Nehemiah book. I don’t know if my 2nd grader is ready for it this year, but for me, it really helped bring the story of Nehemiah to life. And I’m from Chicago and I’ve never heard of the Robert Lawson book! I’m excited to read that one too.

A Good Homeschool History Resource

No matter what stage you are in homeschooling, check out Homeschool History to find educational videos for kids, history field trip ideas (or virtual field trip ideas!), and high quality and engaging historical fiction and biographies. Get a free 30-day trial of the site to see just what I mean.