History is a subject which is a nightmare for most of us. Going back to childhood, we remember how hard it was to remember all the dates and years, which made history boring as well as a horror subject for us. Well, almost for everyone – there are people, though, who love to read history and want to know everything about our past.
I still remember how I got scared in my dreams when I had a history exam the next day. Those were the days when I thought maybe history was a horror subject for everybody. But my perception changed when I met my husband. History is one of his favourite subjects, and I like to listen to him talk about various past events.
Maybe history was never taught in the manner it should have been and that is the reason why most of us don’t like it as a subject. Children nowadays are highly active and very impatient as well. In such a scenario, if history is taught in a lecture method to them, they won’t listen to it at all. How can we teach history to our kids in an interesting way? Let’s get to know a few interesting ideas to help our kids learn history.
Learning through group projects
For ages, history has been ignored by students as they find it boring. If we could put some spices and colours in the teaching learning process, it would work wonders. Assigning creative projects to a group of students would help both a weak child and an intelligent child grow their interest in the subject. They would learn from each other as well, since they have to go through the facts and information to complete their project. They also have to search for different pictures and materials to make their project work more interesting. This gives them a hands-on experience of history and piques their interest in the subject.
Enacting on historical events
Children are very active and love to participate in different types of events. Taking out a small historical event and helping kids enact it would help them understand why, how, and when the said event took place in the past. It is difficult to recall the dates and years for kids during the time of an exam, but if they enact historical events, the information and facts become concrete in their mind.
Field trips
Field trips are always loved by kids. They have fun as well as come across different learning opportunities through field trips. Kids are naturally motivated to collect all the information about the place and increase their knowledge accordingly.
Watching movies
There are various types of movies. Some are entertaining, and some are educational. There are movies based on our history as well. Showing such movies creates more interest in them wanting to know about the incident.
Apart from this, history should be broken into concepts and must be simple to deliver. The idea should not be to burden them with irrelevant information but to help them learn about important events.
