How We Homeschool: History Year 1

​Following with the deep dive into all our lessons, today we're diving into HISTORY. The history rotation we follow is based on Ambleside Online’s history book list for my year 1 student. 

I hope you enjoy this video that shows you all the resources we use as well as a sneak peek into our lessons:

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​We store all of our curriculum for Yr1 in these Magazine File folders.  It makes it really easy to keep everything organized and to pull out exactly what we need when it’s time for a particular subject. Here you can see that we have all our core curriculum books as well as some of the supplements for the term as well as our homemade History Timeline. To be honest, we haven’t been keeping up with the history timeline as much as I wouldn’t ideally liked, but since I know that was a weakness of ours this year, I plan on making it a more prominent part of our history lessons next year.

Yr 1 history in our curriculum starts in England and the primary history book used is Our Island Story (which can also be purchased under the title An Island Story). Here’s a quick flip through of An Island Story by HE Marshall. The stories are quite quick and jam packed with detail. The historical stories are easy to follow and paint a vivid picture of the story in question. If you are considering using Ambleside Online as your curriculum, I highly suggest perusing their website and all the amazing resources made by some amazing homeschool mama’s in the Facebook Group.  One of the best things I’ve downloaded that I use day in and out are these bookmarks that reference exactly what stories/chapters you should be doing that week.  Makes referencing the right story quick and easy when you’re sitting down with your child and don’t have your schedule at hand.

Now, I do find that my Yr1 pays way more attention to our history lessons when she’s strapped in the car so this year we have found it best to listen to history while driving to and from errands and she narrates, asks questions and we have our history discussions in the car.
 
We use LibriVox to hear the stories narrated for free by volunteers near and far. It’s interesting to listen to different people’s accents reading the chapters aloud and I think it somehow focuses our attention more.
Another great resource I found, were portraits of English Monarchs.  I knew we would get into some of these toward the end of the year, so I went ahead and printed them out on cardstock, laminated them, cut and bound them with a ring for ease. 

​The next core book in our history rotation is Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin.  This book is by far our favorite! The stories are engaging, pretty quick and very easy to narrate. It’s one of the few history books that we have never used an audio book for. However, popcorn and snacks is still a go to for me to ensure that I have their attention captured and mouths busy chewing so we can get through the readings for the day. We go into narrations immediately after every reading. 

​The next core book in our history rotation is Viking Tales by Jennie Hall which are tales of adventures, religious beliefs, and Viking culture told mostly from the point of view of the thrall or slave.  This particular thrall was a kind of skald who sung or told the stories.  Depending on the day and the story being told, we do tend to use an audio book for this book as well.  

​The next part of our history curriculum has to do with American biographies.  The three biographies for Year 1 are for George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Buffalo Bill.  These three books are from Beautiful Feet Books.  I sort of wish they were all the same size, but that is only for aesthetics when they’re on the book shelf.  Otherwise, I really love how engaging, informative and captivating these biography stories are.  The illustrations are also really lovely! There are a few more biographies that will be part of the AO curriculum in later years available through Beautiful Feet Books so I highly recommend getting the D’Aulaire Collection for these. It includes 8 paperback biographies at a pretty great rate for each one considering the prices you might find for them individually. It’s worth checking out at least. I’ll put the link below for you guys.

​School readings do sometimes happen right before our free reads at bedtime.  This does happen quite a bit for these biographies since I always supplement the story with other books for some free reads right after.  Today, I supplemented with the “ if you lived with The Sioux Indians” book I had from when I was a child.  It gives insight into what daily life was like and it still captivates my attention now as it does with my kiddos now.
 
So that’s it! History Year 1 in a nutshell.  Hopefully that gave you a pretty grasp on the books, some resources and other items.  If any questions came up for you while watching, please let me know down below.  Until next time friends!