Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Ways He Learns- Social Studies


Many Homeschoolers use a curriculum that they buy from a company and that seems to work great for them but for us it was a total bust and waste of money. Now I homeschool basically for free and rarely ever buy anything to use in our daily lessons.




I have to say, Social Studies has been a pretty fun and easy subject for us thus far. Of course, when Hyper Heathen has a mother who absolutely loves History it makes things go much easier for both of us.

When we started Social Studies several years ago I decided to start at the beginning which meant we went wayyyyyy back to Prehistoric Man. I was nice though, we started at around 10,000 B.C. and have been working forward ever since. The downside to having a History buff for a mom though is that I tend to spend way too much time on each era. Oops!

Some things I've had HH doing are:

  • Reading various books that pertain to the Era we are studying. For example, when we studied Ancient Egypt I had him reading books on all the great pharaohs, queens, reading hieroglyphics, the various pyramids, burial practices, learning the Egyptian Gods, and etc.
  • HH creates Lapbooks sometimes for whichever periods or people might interest him. So far we've done one for Ancient Egypt as well as one for Ancient China.
  • We watch as many documentaries as we can find on the time period we are studying. Netflix is a huge help with this and so is YouTube. 
  • We took online tours of several museums. Basically I look for whoever has the best online tours for our subject then we sit and watch them. Obviously it's not as fun as visiting the museums themselves but its a nice way to get to visit say the British Museum when we live in New Mexico.
  • We keep a Timeline that we add to as we go through each era. If really helps to show him where people and important dates really fit into our history. 
  • Various worksheets and activities that I print off of the Internet. I can't stress enough how much I love finding and printing worksheets for free. There are so many resources out there and the most I've ever had to do was get on an email mailing list in order to be allowed access to a site's free printables. 
  • Just getting out and visiting historical sites whenever we have a chance. In March we went to Boston to see family and while there we walked the Freedom Trail plus visited Salem. We saw a lot of amazing historical places and listened to some really great tour guides tell us the history. There is no way I could have found a better way to teach HH about life in Massachusetts in the 1500s-1800s. I highly recommend it if you are ever in the area!
So I've been doing a lot of pinning on Pinterest over the past year looking for new ways to help Hyper Heathen and found some really great ideas. You can see them on my Social Studies board HERE. You're also welcome to visit any of my other Homeschool Boards and pin whatever might help you as well.

Hopefully I've helped you with some ideas but if you can think of anything you'd like to see involving homeschooling a child with ADHD or homeschooling in general, please leave me a comment with your suggestion and I will do my best.

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