What activities encourage interest in history and social studies?
If you want to encourage your child to want to learn more about history and social studies, remember it's an area where we don't really want to rely on the school too much. They don't have a ton of history or social studies curriculums, especially right now, but there are lots of ways you can get your child interested. One is encourage your child to pick up on cues from around you. You might see a historical building, they might see something in a movie or on TV, they might read something in a book. "What are they talking about? What's going on there? Let's try to figure it out." I pull out maps all the time and try to show kids where things come from or why people in different areas speak different languages. You can show them the paths that settlers and colonists took around the world, which they sometimes find interesting. When you travel be sure to look at historical sights. In LA we have the missions, and that is a really rich part of our history. Even if we go and look at Angel's Flight on Bunker Hill, discussing, "Where did they come from and why did they need this trolley that went up and down the hill?" encourages interest. You can talk about how people lived. A lot of times it helps encourage children's interest if you can relate history to people rather than dates and events. When you travel you want to go to check out those historical sites. Make it fun, make it interesting. If you kid is interested in war, so be it - lots of little boys are. Go to the historical battle sites, try to figure out what happened there and what was going on. Buy the little brochure that you can get at monuments and then when you come home you can revisit it and talk about it. Look at your photos, look up more information and build social and historical interest from there. A lot of kids are really more interested in things that they can picture and actually feel than things that are just abstract. History to many kids is just very abstract and intangible.
