Monthly Archives: September 2013
FAMILY-FRIENDLY HISTORY-THEMED TV & MOVIE IDEAS
I won a copy of Penny Estelle’s Billy Cooper’s Awesome Nightmare when she was guesting on Kat Holmes’s blog last week. I’m really looking forward to reading it, as Billy gets to meet one of my childhood TV heroes, William Tell. Some of the history-themed shows I enjoyed back then are now on DVD, and […]
MAKING HISTORY FUN: MUSEUM MADNESS
According to the Oxford dictionary, a museum is a building in which objects of historical, scientific, artistic, or cultural interest are stored and exhibited. Oxford itself has several, and when I was a child, my mother took me to one of them. Which one, I’m not sure, but probably the Ashmolean. I liked it. A […]
BOOK PROMOS: TIME TRAVEL / ALTERNATE HISTORY MONTH
September’s almost over. Last chance to check out Marva Dasef’s month-long focus on Time Travel/Alternate History novels for people of all ages at http://mgddasef.blogspot.ca/. Featured writers: Pat McDermott: Irish kings still rule the Emerald Isle…and a princess is in trouble. Renee Duke (Yours truly): The two little Princes in the Tower disappeared five centuries ago […]
MAKING HISTORY FUN: GETTING DOWN AND DIRTY
Expanding on action-oriented history, it doesn’t have to be fast action. Kids love to dig, and history can be found in your own backyard or school playground. Depending on where you live, kids can unearth everything from arrowheads and dinosaur fossils to pottery shards and Roman coins. You can just supply some garden tools and […]
BLOG INTRODUCTION: MORE ON PRESENTATION OF HISTORY
As covered in yesterday’s post, kids like to hear about kids, and most kids will lap history up if it’s presented in an entertaining manner. Books like Tony Robinson’s Worst Children’s Jobs In History and Bad Kids: The Worst Behaved Children In History meet both demands. Likewise Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories series, whether in the […]
BLOG INTRODUCTION: HISTORY, YAY! OR HISTORY, NAY?
So, why do some kids like history, and others hate it? It might have something to do with presentation. If a teacher views a historical event in terms of facts and dates to be memorized, and presents his/her students with nothing but facts and dates, that’s all they’re likely to get out it. If, on […]
Time Travelling With Kids 