History - Parents Page

Why include History in Home Schooling

Why do students need to learn about history? Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Walter McDougall gave three important reasons:

Studying history helps you grow your mind and think more deeply.
Learning history encourages you to take part in your community and understand the world around you.
People who understand history can see moral problems more clearly and make wiser choices.

He also said that history lets you experience the past through others, helping you to think, imagine, and understand what it means to be human. Learning history gives you a way to connect everything else you learn — like maths, science, or literature — so it all makes more sense together.

When history is taught in an interesting and engaging way, it helps you see how past events and people relate to your own life. Knowing what others have done before you can inspire you to see what you’re capable of in the future.

In school, history can sometimes feel boring when it’s just read from a book. But with home schooling, we can go out and visit real places where history happened. You can meet staff and volunteers who bring the past to life at some of the country’s amazing historical sites.

Following A Set Programme of Learning

n the UK, the National Curriculum for History says it aims to help pupils learn about Britain’s past and the wider world. It wants to inspire curiosity, help pupils ask good questions, think carefully, understand evidence, and see how people’s lives have changed over time. It also hopes pupils will understand different societies, relationships between groups, and their own identity.

That all sounds great — but there’s a problem. Much of the history taught in schools focuses on people who were white, male, and rich. If you were poor, female, or not white, you often don’t appear much in the stories that get told.

Even though much of British history involves people who lived here and were white, only half were men, and most weren’t rich! But the way history is often taught focuses more on what Britain did to other places, rather than what we found or who we met when we got there.

So we need to ask more questions, like:

Did Australia’s history really begin when Britain sent prisoners there in the 1700s?
Are we saying Stephen Hawking was the first disabled person to make history? What about disabled people in the past?
Why do we mainly hear about queens and suffragettes when we talk about women’s history?
Were servants’ lives only interesting because of the famous people they worked for?

At Orchard Training, our learners are home-schooled, so we don’t have to follow the National Curriculum exactly. That means we can study topics that are more personal and meaningful to you.

For example, we might:

Compare Empress Elisabeth of Austria and Princess Diana and see how powerful people tried to control women in the public eye.
Explore local historical places near where you live.
Learn about the country your grandparents came from and what life was like there.
Study the Native Peoples of America instead of just focusing on American Independence — if that’s what interests you more.

With home learning, history can be your choice — learning about the people and stories that matter most to you.

Recording Evidence of Study

For our learners on the Autistic Spectrum, it’s important to learn not just the facts about history, but also to think about why things might not always be shown exactly as they were. History often includes different opinions and points of view, so it’s good to question what you read or watch.

A fun place to start is Horrible Histories — it makes learning about the past exciting and easy to understand.

Another great history presenter is Lucy Worsley, whose programmes you can find on the BBC. Try watching British History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley to see how some parts of history might not be quite what they seem.

You can write in your Evidence Diary when you watch a history programme. Include:

The title of the programme
The length of it
What topic it covered

For our dyslexic learners, writing long paragraphs isn’t always the best way to show learning. Instead, you can record your thoughts as an audio or video on your phone — that counts as good evidence too.

You can also include photos, ticket stubs, booklets, or programme sheets from your visits in your Evidence Diary.

These are great ways to show what you’ve learned.

Here are some amazing historical places to visit:

Black Country Living Museum
Bletchley Park
Caernarfon Castle
Cutty Sark
Edinburgh Castle
Hadrian’s Wall
Hampton Court Palace
HMS Belfast
Imperial War Museum
Leeds Castle (Kent)
London Transport Museum
Natural History Museum
Portsmouth Historic Dockyard
Science and Industry Museum
Science Museum
St Michael’s Mount
Stonehenge
The British Museum
The Globe Theatre
The Roman Baths
The Tower of London
The V&A Museum
The Weald and Downland Living Museum
Warwick Castle
York Shambles

Visiting these places can help you see history come to life — and make your learning even more interesting!

Including History in the Learning Routine

Here at Orchard Training, we like to include history in our projects in ways that feel natural and fun. For example, in our Cakes Project, we look at the history of cakes and how they’ve changed over time. In our Chess Project, we explore how religion and culture have influenced the design of chess pieces through the years.

In January 2018, our Walking for Friendship group helped an elderly man rescue his dog that was stuck between two fallen trees. He told us about the breed’s role in both World Wars, and our learners found it so interesting that we added this topic to our Working Dogs Project.

You don’t need any expensive or fancy equipment to learn about history. Each of our projects lists the resources you’ll need and gives ideas for visits. Everything is written with a home-school budget in mind. The main cost is usually the travel and ticket price for history attractions — some are free, but others may charge.

To save money, you can plan ahead, combine visits, and bring a packed lunch — just like a real school trip!

Even when you’re on holiday, visiting historic places still counts as learning.

Check out our Learning on the Move Blogs to find out how you can turn your travels into great learning experiences.

Orchard Training