What a blessing and a privilege to be able to meet home school families and share tools and ideas that they might not have considered using to help their children be more interested in and engaged in the topics they are studying – especially in history!
We had a great time at The Great Homeschool Convention in Greenville, SC a few weeks ago. In addition to visiting with families at our booth, Matt gave his presentation, “A Fresh Approach to 20th Century American History,” where he challenged families to use “untraditional” resources to teach history and also to focus on the experiences of their own families at different points in history. Most often, the history written in traditional textbooks impacted the typical citizen, but not always as much as the textbook may imply. Our families were often impacted by more local and regional events that may not be covered in a textbook.
In our current social media driven world, it can be easily forgotten that people weren’t always as “connected” or aware of events that occurred across the state where they lived – much less across the county or even the world! A family living in a rural community was probably more concerned about that factory in town shutting down and most of the workers there suddenly being without a job than they would be about the big news of the day happening in larger cities like Chicago, Los Angeles or even whatever was happening in Washington, DC. Keeping that in perspective when you study history – and then ‘digging in’ a little bit to the story of your own family can breathe new life into your history studies.
If you are planning on attending The Great Homeschool Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio this weekend, Matt will be giving the same presentation on Friday morning at 8:30, and he’d love to see you there! We will also be in booth 818 in the vendor hall. In addition to The Great Homeschool Conventions, we will also be attending the NCHE’s Thrive! Conference in Winston-Salem, NC May 23-25 and will be in booth 57. If you are attending either of these conventions, we’d love to have you stop by and chat with us! We do have some “Conference Special” packages, and we have new resource DVDs/flash drives that are only available at conferences and conventions.
Hope to see you at one of the conventions soon!
Amy
MATTHEW McKENZIE 