Unschooling History Ideas for Elementary Age Children

Unschooling is a natural way for children to learn. Creative children may want to learn by doing crafts, while bookworms may want to read lots of books on the same topic. Natural learning can help them learn better and have much more fun than an ordinary curriculum. However, sometimes it can be hard to figure out what kind of activities your child can engage in.

Unschooling activities should be hands-on, fun, child-led, and child-centered. These ideas are meant to be a starting point for you to build on to make them perfect for your child. Every child is different, so the way you tackle these activities may be different than someone else might.

Feel free to get creative and change things up. The main thing is to let your child take the lead. Follow their interests. Here are some ideas!

Visit Historical Sites

The best way to learn is by doing. Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to experience history firsthand (and even if you could, that could end up being traumatic). However, you can visit places where history was made. Going on a trip to a historical site can be a fun and educational experience for children.

There are many great historical sites that are good for children. You can take them on the Freedom Trail in Boston or tour Alcatraz in San Francisco or explore Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. If your kids are learning about the Civil War, take them to Gettysburg or one of the other battlefields.

Going to the places where the historical events they are learning about happened will make the lesson more memorable. It can also help them understand better to picture what the environment looked like and where it happened. Some trips may take a little more than an afternoon if you live far away from them, but it is worth it to let your child see where history happened.

Visit Museums

Museums aren’t locations where history was made, but they do contain a lot of history. Museums are great places to see artifacts, artwork, and other cool historical exhibits. Many people think of museums as boring and quiet places that aren’t good to bring kids. However, there are lots of fun things for kids to enjoy in museums.

You can take your children to a well-established and famous museum, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Smithsonian. Many such museums are family-friendly and have great exhibits for kids to see. There are also many museums around that are designed specifically for children. They may not have many historical artifacts, but they have exhibits designed specifically for kids to enjoy and understand. They also have fun activities for kids to take part in.

Whether you go to a children’s museum or a more famous museum, there is going to be a lot for kids to do and learn. It can be a great way to see history a little more closely and let their imaginations run wild.

Travel Lessons and Games

If you end up taking your child to a lot of historical sites and museums, that probably means that you’ll spend a lot of time traveling, whether driving or flying or riding a train or bus. However, all this time traveling shouldn’t be the time that you waste. You can take the time that you spend traveling and turn it into a learning opportunity. Children can learn so much through travel, which is why we are roadschoolers!

You can spend the time getting to a museum or historical site teaching your child about what they’re about to see. You may not have much time to teach them the specifics when you get there, so spend the time in the car, plane, bus, or train to teach them all about where you are going.

Now, just a boring lesson may not make the trip very interesting, and your child may not take an interest in the information. However, you can make it more fun and interesting by turning it into a game. Whether it is simply trivia or a fun activity based on wherever you’re going and learning about, games and lessons while you travel can make the way there so much more fun and educational.

Watch Documentaries

Documentaries are another great way to experience history. They involve real footage and actual stories of what really happened. There are all sorts of documentaries out there for children to enjoy. It can help them to get lots of information that professional historians have set out to find. It can also give them a more visual experience than an ordinary lesson can give. Watching documentaries is also an educational use of screen time.

Make sure to carefully choose which documentaries to show your children. Some documentaries are not fit for children to watch. At best, some can be very boring and not fun for your kids. At worst, they can be frightening. There are many dark moments in history that elementary kids aren’t quite old enough to be exposed to. Make sure that any documentary covers the more violent or upsetting parts of history in a kid-friendly way.

Watch Historical Movies or Shows

Documentaries may be too difficult to get through, especially for younger children. However, there are a lot of movies and TV shows about history that are designed to teach kids about history. They are specifically geared toward children and teach them about history in an interesting and entertaining way. There are movies about historical events or historical fiction. There are shows about time travelers or archeologists.

When history is put into an interesting story with fun characters, it makes it easier for kids to remember the information they learned. Historical fiction movies, such as the American Girl doll movies, can teach kids about individual events. Longer TV shows such as Time Team teach about multiple events, as well as archeology.

Read Books About History

If you don’t want your kid to have too much screen time, you can also have them read books about history or read those books with them. There are all sorts of history books for kids. Some of them are true stories while some are historical fiction with fictional characters in real situations. There are individual books about specific events or series about multiple events. Books like these can help teach children about history while entertaining them.

You also might consider reading some books with your child that were written in the time period they are learning about. Books written by authors that lived through that time period can have a lot of information that isn’t in more recent books.

For example, the novel Little Women was written and is set during the Civil War. It can give your child more of an idea of what it was like for women at home during that time. Some of these books might be hard for children to read on their own, so you may try reading them with them or finding a kid-friendly, shortened version of the story.

Listen to Podcasts

These days, there are podcasts about anything. There are podcasts about TV shows or true crime or the news, so of course, there are podcasts about history that are specifically geared toward kids. Listening to a history podcast can be something fun for your child to do while doing a craft or in the car while you’re doing errands or doing chores.

Podcasts such as The Past and the Curious or Real Cool History for Kids cover interesting periods in history in a kid-friendly way. Listening to podcasts about history can be a fun teaching experience for those times when they can’t or shouldn’t watch a movie, read a book, or do another historical-oriented activity. There are sometimes when a kid can really benefit from listening to some cool historical facts.

Timelines

Much of history is knowing when things happened in relation to other things. Sometimes you just have to sit your kid down and teach them what order the battles in war happened or tell them all the events that caused the fall of Rome. Unfortunately, there is just no way to make this kind of thing interesting.

Or is there? Don’t just make your child memorize a bunch of dates or names. Instead, make it fun by using creative timelines. Have your child draw pictures associated with the different events along the timeline. Print out a big timeline to put on the wall. Let your child move the different events around and figure out which order they are supposed to go in.

Visual timelines lay history out in an easily understandable way. The kid can better tell the relationships between different events in a historical time period. A timeline that they can also interact with will make them more invested and help them remember those events much more easily.

Art Projects

This one may seem like a simple idea, but art projects are an effective way to get children more involved in history and get a more visual idea of what actually happened.

You can simply have your child draw or color a picture of a historical event. This is a simple and easy art project that doesn’t require too much work or preparation. However, there are more creative and interesting art projects that your child can do as well.

Your child can build a castle out of Legos, create their own Greek pottery, or make paper Egyptian jewelry. There are all sorts of art projects that your child can try that are based on different historical periods. Some are simple and easy while others are more complicated. Younger children may need to engage in simple art projects, while older children can do more complicated crafts. Either way, art projects can help children understand history better.

Period Crafts

Though period crafts may seem just like art projects, they take the historical side even further. These are crafts that children can engage in that are specifically something that a person during the time period they are learning about might have actually done.

Children can step into history by churning butter, woodworking, weaving, making soap, or another craft that someone in a bygone era might have done. Period crafts can teach children more about the things that people in history actually did. It gives them an idea of how life was during the time period they are studying. It can also help them remember the unit better because they have a memory of doing something strange and interesting that they used to do during that time period.

Renaissance Festivals

Renaissance Festivals are about recreating the time period for people to enjoy and learn from. Many areas will have one or two nearby that people can go to and learn about the Renaissance era, do crafts, and watch reenactments. It can be a really fun experience for a child to go and step into the Renaissance period.

There are similar events that are set in different time periods, though they are less common. You may be able to find some in your area that might be fun, but you will almost certainly be able to find a Renaissance Festival.

Renaissance Festivals are fun, but some are more accurate than others. Some will often mix other time periods into the festival, so they can be fairly anachronistic. Don’t rely too much on a Renaissance Festival teaching your child what they need to know about the time period. Make sure to do that yourself.

Reenactments

Many children enjoy pretending to play. They like to act out stories they’ve heard or make up their own. If your child enjoys this kind of thing, you can use it to your advantage to teach them history by reenacting historical moments.

You and your child can try to act out important moments in history such as battles or legends. They can connect more with the material and understand what happened more easily if they act it out. It is also a fun way to enjoy history by doing something that they love. If you join in on the reenactment, it can also be a good way for you to connect with and have fun with them.

There are all sorts of ways that you can help your child to connect with a history that is consistent with unschooling. Not all of these activities will be right for every kid, but try out some things that you think your child will like and figure out how they can best connect with the material.

Conclusion

There are so many natural ways for children to learn about history. From books, to crafts, to museums, and more, your children will enjoy learning because it is on their timeline and their terms. We, as parents, just need to help facilitate their learning and provide the necessary resources.

Happy unschooling!