Social Studies for Kids – Homeschool History & Social Studies Curriculum
Social Studies for Kids with learning disabilities can be among one of the easiest topics to teach!
You can use hands-on or pretending skills to teach Social Studies for kids. Even if you are a history-hater, you can have fun and easily teach history for kids. (I hate to admit I was a history hater until I got my hands-on teaching skills going 😉 ).
Let me help you Find the fun in teaching Social Studies for kids!
Social Studies is one subject you can easily teach in a multisensory manner. Combine multisensory teaching methods with some of the Social Studies Curriculum for Homeschooling below to engage your child in learning about social studies.
You can study geography, cultures, history, religion, and other topics through a wide variety of hands-on activities. Visiting museums and historical sites, creating skits or plays, dressing up in costumes of the day, cooking food in an “old-fashioned” way, and re-enacting historical events are among the most entertaining ways to teach social studies for kids.
To teach your learning abled kid social studies, simply pick a history program or teaching method that suits your child’s learning style. For example, if your child is an audio-visual learner, watching the History Channel or History Channel’s Classroom DVDs can be an effective way to learn history.
If your child is a kinesthetic or tactile learner, then creating skits, acting out plays and having fun with re-enactments of any event in a traditional history curriculum can really be fun.
The key to easy learning of history and in teaching social studies for kids with learning struggles is to use your child’s learning strengths to his advantage. Memorizing a lot of dates, places, and names is often a struggle for kids with learning disabilities. Therefore, I highly recommend focusing on the bigger picture of what happened and why it happened rather than memorization when it comes to learning social studies.
Good Curriculum Choices in Social Studies for Kids with Learning Disabilities
Check out Hands On History for a truly hands-on social studies for kids program. The topic-based books and projects are sure to engage just about any child in learning about history, geography, and more. The Hands-On History series is a great way to incorporate aspects of history into your child’s learning without having them feel like they are learning history.
Visual History books are excellent to use if your child is a highly visual learner. The colorful images can help your child have a visual reference for the concepts being learned. The images can make a significant difference in your visual learner’s ability to remember and recall information. As far as social studies for kids who are visual learners goes, the Visual History books are a solid choice unless your child prefers an audio component too.
You may find the following two programs helpful as well:
National Geographic Videos / DVDs – National Geographic videos are an excellent resource and I highly recommend them as social studies for kids who love TV or DVDs. We used a LOT of educational National Geographic videos in our homeschooling. Often, you can find the videos or DVDs at your local library, and this is a great option for visual learners. Check out the National Geographic rentals at Netflix if your library doesn’t carry National Geographic.
The History Channel’s Classroom DVDs are an AWESOME social studies for kids who love audio-visual learning. We used the COMPLETE set of American History Classroom DVDs for our high school American History coursework.
Likewise, Discovery Channel has some great programs! My guys LOVE watching the History Channel and Discovery Channel DVDs.
This is just the introductory choices page of social studies for kids, so you will want to check out the Bible Study Curriculum, the History Curriculum, Geography, and the American Government pages. For upcoming holidays, you can find great hands-on learning opportunities in the Hands-On Holidays section of this website.
There are many great Homeschool Social Studies programs available through ChristianBook.com and Social Studies Curricula available through Amazon.com. You can look on either site and read reviews to see which program you think will be the best fit for your child.