Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Kinder, gentler history resources

So my first grade daughter's big thing is history. She usually gets hooked on one subject and wants to study it in detail for a long period of time. First it was mill girls, then the Titanic, then Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea, then British queens, now the Gold Rush.

At first I was very careful. I'd read books with her, discuss things, make sure to skip some sensitive topics. But over time I have become lax? lazy? less sensitive?. She's always seemed okay with everything, and she's read about a lot of mistreatment. Now we generally just go over the library catalog and I check out what she wants and help her research questions.

Tonight she had a bit of a head cold and asked me to find something less intense than the book she was reading that she's been happily talking about lately (it's called Seeds of Hope, if anyone knows it) and read to her myself. I told her I would and that it was always okay not to read anything she didn't want to and asked if I should take her Seeds of Hope book back to the library. She said no, she wanted to read it-- just not every day because it was too intense. Then she told me about a part where non Americans got their belongings thrown over the side of the ship because they needed more space to bring in more Americans. That really bothered her.

So I read her another book, and that was nice and she cuddled with me.

Then right before bed she looked very weary and she said she thought the books she was reading right now were too old for her and maybe we could take them back and she could check them out again when she was more emotionally mature.

I said sure.

Then I went and started leafing through this book she's been reading. With fresh eyes, I see much more exploitation and cruelty that I thought it had in it--way too much for a first grader. But the Sacagewea stuff was exploitative and cruel too. I just fear she's getting too much negativity. She asks for it, and I want to feed her. But I'm the adult. I just don't think it is good.

So here's the question: How do you handle kids who are interested in history without actually exposing them to too much history? It's her number one interest, but I'm starting to get worried and wonder if I should stop encouraging the interest.

Thanks.

I agree with Portia, that the key is the subject matter. You're not going to find good things studying the Holocaust, slavery, feudalism, the Crusades, etc.

My DD has recently been exploring the history of the Apollo program. Apart from the tragedy of Apollo I, it's a story of triumph. Very uplifting stuff. History of the sciences or philosophy are generally pretty good topics, as long as you don't spend too much time on what happened to Galileo, for instance.

Certain violent topics can be framed in an positive way, because of what was accomplished. The American Revolution. The US Civil War. World War II. In order, they ended tyranny, slavery, and more tyranny.

And even in some topics like the Gold Rush (I assume you mean the California one here, as there were quite a number of them), the devil is in the details. When you look at the big picture, you can show a lot of positives... many people getting rich, new towns being born and permanently settled, etc. It's only when you get down in the details of daily life that it starts to get ugly. So, maybe the solution there is to stick to materials that are more general. That's actually quite common for history resources targeted to elementary age children.

Would she be interested in art history? I know several kids around this age who enjoy learning about different artists & the development of their work. Of course the lives of many artists have their fair share of violence, but there are quite a few child appropriate resources available.

We've done music history, too, which, like art history, can be especially fun if you try creating things in the style of the artist/period. Or at least learning to identify the style when you see/hear it. Although there is plenty of difficult material in biographical studies of artists and composers, there is also the uplifting aspect of the beauty that they created, which I think adds a certain redemptive/transformative quality to the tragedy.

How about lifestyle history? The clothes, practices, cooking etc of an era. There are several great BBC series on you tube where archaeologists recreate ife on a farm in various eras. Tales from the Green Valley, Edwardian Farm, Victorian farm, War time farm, Tudor farm, also 1900 house, 1940s house, Edwardian country house, colonial house, frontier house, which are more reality-ish, but still interesting.

We used Story of the World for first grade (book, activity workbook, and CDs). Additionally, we used all of the Jim Weiss narrated history stories we could find on CD (I typically bought them through Amazon).

I have a 6.5 year old and we've been using Story of the World as well, and supplementing with DK Eyewitness books/Usborne books and Horrible Histories.