Nov 5, 2026
Episode 63: How Kids Learn History: Curious Families Unschooling in Thoughtful Ways
When you reflect upon History as a school subject, what comes to mind? For many of us, it’s a memory of taking in facts in order to produce something that demonstrates we’ve learned the presented information. But what if history is much more interesting than that. What if it’s woven into family life in curious and meaningful ways? What if it naturally includes critical thinking? Developing empathy? What if it can be fun?
We are joined again by Anne of @obytheby and Kendel of @spark.to. flame.homelearning for a conversation full of the ways that history is quite naturally integrated into a thoughtful life and interesting life. We hope you will join for listen. 🤞
We Discuss:
Our initial feelings about history and exploring it with our children
The universal love of stories
The role that open historical conversation can play in developing critical thinking
History as “poke-able” — something we can look at from different perspectives and see what we think
The social-emotional value of looking at various perspectives
Stories as ways of introducing different events and circumstances
Stories as opportunities for kids to imagine themselves in various situations
The idea of doing “enough” as homeschool parents
How skills and ways of thinking (eg, curiosity, compassion, critical thinking, etc) about history are transferable and can be generalized
Being open to the mystery of things and not always knowing everything
Learning history through a topic or activity of interest rather than beginning with a historical time period
Collective learning through the interests of those around us … family as a whole being a rich foundation of learning, sharing and adding individual perspectives
Peering into local geography as a road to history and thoughtful conversation
War as a topic so big and potent that it gives energy through which to examine many other things
Grappling with sensitive and harder topics, and ideas for how to talk about them
Our parental role in introducing information or not — factually, morally, questioningly — and thoughts about ways of going about it
Music as reflective of culture and history — driving culture and history and being driven by it
The historical learning inherent in deep dives such as sports, politics, dog breeds, etc
Whether we are responsible for informing our children about certain issues, historical or current events
Thinking carefully about how we consider and go about “teachable moments”
Keeping the door open to curricula, courses or any resources as wished — it’s often not the tool but the way the tool is used
Living life interactively and with curiosity
Awareness of the different ways we each learn in our families, including our own
Resources:
The Rich Experience of Unschooling Science - Episode 30
Unschooling Math - What Does Learning Math/s Naturally Look Like? Episode 36
More Unschooling Math/s - What Does Learning Mathematics Naturally Look Like? Episode 38
How Do Unschoolers Learn to Read? Does Reading Need to Be Explicitly Taught? Episode 60
Usborne Encyclopedia of History