Where to find homeschool history resources

A few years ago when we toured Monticello, the tour guide told us Thomas Jefferson wasn’t an innovator, he was more of a first adaptor.  He found great ideas and used them himself and adapted them to fit his needs.  That’s how I tend to think of myself and my homeschooling.  I don’t always come up with the idea first, but I do use great ideas I find. To make everyone’s life easier, I wanted to share some of my favorite homeschool history resources with you so you too can be a first adaptor of great ideas.

To start off with I use the Mystery of History as my base for our lessons (Mystery of History 1, Mystery of History 2, the Mystery of History 3, and the Mystery of History 4, all affiliate links, we’ll cover 4 the first time next year).

But, I add in quite a bit of hands on activities as I go along.

 

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My go to homeschool history resources online

(pretty much in the order I think of said blog)

All Things Beautiful– this is probably the first ever blog I found covering history besides mine, and I routinely use her ideas in my school work, and search her blog for more ideas.

Angellic Scalliwags– Claire’s kids are split into two groups, older kids that are about 2-3 years older than mine, and younger kids that are 4-5 years younger than mine.  So for me her history ideas are a fun combination of what we will be able to do soon, and reminder of what we have done and outgrown.

Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool– this is the new one (for me) on the block, and Tina always has the best notebooking and lapbooking pages you can ever find for history.  In addition she also has some great hands on activities.

If you search Mystery of History volume number you will find several people have put together playlists for each lesson (this particular list is for vol. 1 qtr 1).  I’ve used several of these playlists to supplement a lesson.  My kids learn so much from watching videos like this.

Pinterest- I search pinterest all the time, here’s my 10 favorite history pinterest boards.

Fun hands on homeschool history resources

Art in History– we used their King Tut Burial tomb project

Timeline figures*- I love our interactive reusable timeline, and the kids do too, which reminds me our timeline is woefully behind.

LEGOs- we use these ALL the time for our lego history lessons, I’m working on a separate page just for this topic.

 

Books for your homeschool history resources

There are a lot of random books you can find, but there are a few authors or series I know will be a hit with my kids.  I’ll link to a random book from each series. (All of these Amazon links are affiliates)

You Wouldn’t Want to be series– Batman loves these books, and they’ve got a nice bit of humor.

David Adler books– I love how simply he does these biographies, they are pretty much exclusively American history, but they are some of the best biographies for elementary kids you can find.

Dear America– I love these American history books, they cover most major periods in American history in a way that most kids will enjoy.  I’ve bought most of these, and then bought the TV series for our history lessons.

My America– these books are in the same vein as the Dear America but slightly easier read (this series has both boys and girls in it).

My Name is America– same idea as the last two series, only these are the boy books.

Royal Diaries– Scholastic was on a roll in the late ‘90’s with these book series, mostly in response to the American Girl Doll books I think.  Either way they’re awesome for teaching history.

DK Publishing– For the longest time the DK books were THE gold standard for children’s history books, since then several other companies have emulated their style of history books.

I’m sure there’s some other great homeschool history resources I’m missing, can you tell me any I should have included but didn’t?

Wondering what other top homeschool bloggers count as their go to resources?  Then check out People, Places, and Things for your Homeschool (live March 21)