History through Period Books

I wrote last Sunday on how I don’t like to teach history from any kind of textbooks. However, I make exception for well written period books. Of course they also have to be taken with the grain of salt and checked for accuracy. For example, I always enjoyed reading Alexander Dumas novels, but I cringe when I think about his “liberties” with historical events and real characters of the era. But we all very much enjoyed audio versions of Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie. The moment Anna came back from her grandparents, she requested to hear Little House in the Big Woods again. We didn’t have it, since it was a library copy (our own audio copies are now on the way), but it didn’t stop her from incorporating various Little House elements into her pretend play. There are hunting games, gathering games and “going to Kansas in the wagon” games. For some reason wagon usually stops in Canada for a picnic – I guess Canada sounds very much like Kansas to her. There are also building a house games, but she insists that she is going to buy the wood for the house in the store, because the logs from the forest will have dirt on them and I don’t want to get splinters. And, of course, there are innumerable cooking games – something that my daughter really loves. She had no interest in any virtual travel this week (she is still recovering from her long real trip to New Jersey), but she kept asking for “a baking day”, and Monday was a good day to fulfill her wish. The fall cloudy weather blew in, and I whipped up a cookie dough from scratch during my lunch time while working from home. Then Anna came home and had her baking day complete with eating freshly made and decorated cookies. It was my first time trying to do a colored glaze, and I feel pretty proud with how our cookies turned out. I only wish that clean up (including removing icing from Anna’s hair) wasn’t such a chore. I wonder how they dealt with clean up in Laura’s times?

Come and share your adventures in time and space at History/Geography Exchange hosted by Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn.