Living Books for History
Oh, my goodness. I have been having a time with my laptop!! It keeps going on me. After fighting with it for hours I can get it back up and running but I know it’s time to replace it. YILES!!! So here I am, working on the desktop. BLECK!! It’s so weird!! LOL I much prefer my laptop!! Everything is different on this old desktop.
Anyway, lately I have been thinking a lot about the different living books that we use. I have mentioned they here and there in different homeschooling posts and I always put lists of books with my resource posts but I thought I would do a few that were just about the books. I definitely have several favorites!
Most of these books fall into the upper elementary/middle school zone but there are some that even my high schoolers enjoy. I’ll mark those with ***.
I will arrange them by “type” of history, although several will fall into both categories.
WORLD HISTORY
***Horrible History and Horribly Famous – TV episodes of Horrible History can be found on Netflix
Value Tales – I loved these as a child and was lucky enough to find several titles for sale at a FOL sale!
Ms Frizzle’s Adventures – Ms Frizzle from the Magic School Bus series go on a few historical adventures.
*** Wicked History – Very much like the Horribly Famous series.
*** The Royal Diaries – Like Dear America
AMERICAN HISTORY
American Kids in History series– hands on activities
American Girls – Movies for some titles and don’t forget about the dolls!
*** Dear America – Shoot, even I enjoy a lot of them! 😉
*** My Name Is America – the male counterparts to the Dear America series
Picture Book Biographies – I put this under American History but I believe there is one or two that are NOT.
If You….. Series – Again, all but one or two are American History.
BOTH
Time Warp Trio – Also has a TV series that’s available on DVD
***DK Eyewitness – Also has DVDs for several topics
Who Was____? Series – fun, short biographies
Magic Tree House – Currclick has a free online book club. Don’t forget about the accompanying non-fiction resource guides for a lot of the titles!
Kaleidoscope Kids Books – Hands on activities
You Wouldn’t Want to…… Series – If you play around on the site you can find a few online for free.
Chicago Review Press – Hands on activities
Don’t Know Much About …. – My high schoolers enjoy the adult versions of the series.
HIGH SCHOOL ONLY
David McCullough – American History
David Nevin – American History
So, there you have it! A list of my “go to” living history books! There are too many single titles to list but I wanted to give you my favorite series!
I guess I could add Little House on the Prairie, Love Comes Softly (Canadian West) (12 and up) (also movies) and Canadian West Series (12 and up) (also a TV show When Calls the Heart) as a few non-typical favorites, at least for girls.
HAVE FUN LEARNING!!
Stacy Sews and Schools 