21 Ways to Mix Language Arts and History

Do you homeschool? If so you have the perfect opportunity to mix up those boring categories that traditional schools use to compartmentalize learning. Here are just a few ways to get some hands-on learning that mixes up the subjects. Feel free to count the time spent doing these activities as History, Language Arts or both!

1. Stage a debate between George Washington and King George! (Or any two opposing historical figures.)
2. Choose a historical event. Pretend you are a director who is casting the actors for a movie about it. Then choose people to play the characters. These can be anyone! – Friends, historical figures, actual actors, even fictional! Explain who you would choose and why.
3. Make a comic book depicting an event you are studying.
4. When studying historical conflicts such as the Civil War or the Civil Rights Movement, have your kids write letters to the editor written from the perspective of someone on each side.
5. Create a classified ad to promote a historical event. Figure out how much it would cost to run that ad in today’s paper for a little math twist!
6. Pick out a historical character. Have your kids pretend they are that person and write a blog from their viewpoint!
7. Look up newspaper articles from the time period you are studying. Read them aloud. Notice differences in spelling, organization, etc. from articles written today. Cut an article apart and see if you can put it back together correctly.
8. Copy one of those newspaper articles for handwriting practice.
9. Write a short story about a child in another time period. (Watch a historical show about a child such as Ann Frank, The Young Indiana Jones or Heidi for inspiration.)
10. Create a board game based on a timeline. Put in a few “worm holes” where the player has to draw a card from a pile describing an event on the timeline and jump to that event.
11. Create a crossword puzzle with names of people and places associated with the event or time period you are studying.
12. Pick up some letter stamps and challenge your kids to print a headline or maybe even a whole story with them. Talk about the invention of the printing press and how it changed the world.
13. Print famous portraits on stock paper. Cut out, put on craft sticks and create a puppet skit! Try to find out a little bit about the paintings and incorporate that into your skit. This one counts for art too!
14. Find poems from the time period you are studying and make up actions to do while reciting them.
15. When reading or watching historical fiction, look up the places and people mentioned.
16. Have a spelling bee with words from the time period or event you are studying.
17. Create a travel brochure about a historical place.
18. Have your kids pretend to be historical figures who write postcards to each other. Throw a litte art in there too by having them design pictures for the postcards as well as doing the writing.
19. Pretend your family is a news team from a different time such as Ancient Rome. What kinds of stories would you report on? Give each person a category such as human interest, crime investigation, politics, sports, weather and so on. When everyone has their stories together, put together a newscast and video it.
20. Watch a historical movie and then have your kids write reviews and post them to FB.
21. Have your kids make a family history book by decorating a 3 ring binder. Then after visiting older relatives, have them write the stories they heard down and add them to the book.

Do you have more ideas? I’d love to hear them!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue