History is one of the most important subjects and mastering history can really help children succeed in school and in their life. But sometimes it can feel like a difficult and even boring subject to the children and you need to be creative in order to get them interested. Here are some helpful tips to make sure you can effectively teach children history.

Craft Historical Things

Children love creating things and so a really fun way for children to learn about history is to keep create things that relate to specific historical periods. You could, for instance, create the famous Greek philosophers as paper dolls and then use them to talk about the concepts they introduced.

Even drawing up maps to look at the British Empire, for instance, can be much more fun than just staring at a standard map and listening to an adult talk about it.

When children need to get their own hands ‘dirty’, so to speak, while learning they don’t really notice that they are actually being taught certain things and will learn without thinking about it.

Role-Play With Characters

You can also teach about historical characters by roleplaying them with the child. Instead of reading about America’s founding fathers, for instance, it is much more personal and engaging to actually pretend to be one and learn about what they really did.

History isn’t boring for children as long as it is taught in a creative and engaging way. When you tell personal stories and funny facts about historical characters you can get children much more involved in history.

Children will remember the storylines much better when they have been, in a way, personally involved in the story. Just as with all learning, being active instead of passive is the most important part of learning.

Use Toys

Children are always interested in playing so a good way to teach children about history is to use toys to tell stories. This will make sure the child can really get involved in the events and the whole situation is more of an active one instead of just a passive listening session.

You could get historical dolls for example and recreate the key historical moments from that era. There are a lot of great collectable dolls that come with background stories that can help children learn about different eras in time, such as the Victorian era. For instance you can find collectable dolls at A Girl For All Time website.

Use Online Resources

If you are teaching children at home or want to enhance their school learning then there are a lot of great ways to improve your teaching with online materials. The internet is full of a lot of good websites, such as the Teaching Ideas, which can offer you great tips to make sure children learn the most important concepts in a fun way.

Use your imagination and make the learning seem more of a play thing instead of a learning session. When you get children involved in the historical stories they are more likely to learn and stay interested in history for a long time.

David is passionate about history and is always thinking of new ways to get children involved in history. He loves to read historical books and his favourite period was the early Hellenic era. He is also a big fan of gardening.

Image:  Wessex Archaeology on Flickr