How to Learn American History like a Homeschooler

I recently wrote an article on thinking like a homeschooler, In it address how homeschoolers take full responsibility for the child's education are are proactive in teaching a child what they did not grasp in school. Thinking like a homeschooler is much more involved than this and in this article, I would like to discuss how to learn American History like a homeschooler.

For homeschoolers, American History is something to be explored, more than learned. Sure we history textbooks, or at least keep them on hand, but they are more often used as a guide, or a starting point for research rather than an end-all, be-all source of knowledge.

If you open a history book and look at the table of contents, you will find many topics to explore. The first will very likely be about early American's or Indigenous American People. As a public school student, you will very likely go ahead and read that chapter, memorizing information needed for the test, but a homeschooler will very likely go a bit further. We might go online to see what different websites has to say about the same subject, recognizing differences and pondering correctness of the sources.

A homeschooler probably wouldn't stop exploring other opinions about what is written in the textbook. They would also go to the library and check out books on historical figures mentioned in their history books. These historical novels and biographies bring life to history and keep us enthralled and interested in the subject matter. As a side note, it is good to know that by adding more reading to studying history, that we are also meeting and exceeding language arts requirements too.

Finally, a homeschooler would take the extra step of seeking out museums, seminars, programs, and reenactments with subject matter related to the time period of history they are studying. We would have a list of museums far and near, and probably a list of current and upcoming exhibitions. When studying American History, my family was able to find Civil War reenactments, Puritan times exhibitions, World War Artifacts, and much more.

So, if you want to learn American History like a homeschooler, remember to look outside of the history book. Explore different history books, and resources, and get out into the world and experience history based events.