I hated history in school. It felt dry and boring, and I couldn’t relate or connect with it. One of my goals as a homeschooling mom is to help ensure my children will feel differently about their history studies, even if just a little bit. Middle school history builds on the blocks you stacked in elementary school, going deeper, adding more, reinforcing the people, places, and actions you covered in elementary school.

As you already know one of the ways I love to engage with history is through historical fiction. Throughout our homeschooling years we have read many historical fiction books (way more than I have covered here on the blog). I find that having a story-line, a person to follow, something to engage in, increases their depth of knowledge and willingness to continue learning more.

This year I started adding the use of movies to enhance our history studies. With each historical topic, person, or time period we are covering I am trying to find a movie (not a documentary, although we are using some) that features what we are covering. I am so pleased with how much more conversation, recollection, and more research has come from watching a movie as part of our history studies!

Teaching Middle School History Through Literature

This year I was thrilled to get my hands on Beautiful Feet Books – History Through Literature.

{Disclosure: I received free copy of  Beautiful Feet Books Modern American and World History plus a few of the corresponding literature books as well as compensation for my time to give an honest review of these products. All opinions expressed here are my own, and I was not required to post a positive review. Please see my full Disclosure Policy for more details.}

“We believe the goal of education is to engage students. To this end we are dedicated to offering history programs with the best literature available, study guides to make each program easy to use, and the guarantee that your history studies with come alive.”

Could that fit any more perfectly into my learning style of choice for history?

Getting started with Beautiful Feet was easy! The Modern American and World History Guide begins with a brief introduction as well as a detailed list and description of all the books you will be reading.

What Topics Are Covered?

The Modern American & World History study covers from 1860 to modern day while covering:

• the Civil War
• Reconstruction
• the turn of the century
• WWI
• WWII
• Civil Rights
• Korean War
• Vietnam War
• and contemporary America

Who is This For?

The Modern American & World History is geared towards 5-8th grade students. This makes it the perfect study for middle school history using literature!

This 83 pages, full color guide makes it simple and easy for you to open, read, and go!

There was no prep work (other than having the study guide and literature on hand), and no printing. Each day I open the book to the next lesson and follow the simple directions. Teaching Middle School History couldn’t be easier!

Using Beautiful Feet Books

Below you will find some examples of what The Modern American and World History Guide asks you to complete each day. Sitting together to both read and do these activities is something unique to homeschooling. I mean, where else can you snuggle your guinea pig, get read to by mom, AND learn some history all at the same time!

1.  Sometimes there is vocabulary to do before reading the literature.

We looked up the definitions together and discussed what each thing meant. These were very helpful when it came to understanding them in the reading for the day.

2. Reading from the assigned literature book.

My daughter looks forward to sitting together and reading. This is something we don’t often do as all of my children were early and solid readers. But using this Beautiful Feet curriculum made it easier for me to have the time to sit and read with her because there was literally no prep work to be done.

3. Go through the discussion questions. There are only a handful so they do not feel overly time consuming or overwhelming to accomplish.

Right after reading together I open the guide and go through the questions. This means the reading is fresh in our minds to mull over and talk about. We often open the literature back up to browse for answers we are unsure of or reread sections to refresh our memories and understanding. Then I send her off to write all the answers in her notebook for that day.

4. Then sometimes there are other activities such as marking things on a map, checking out some extra learning online with the given link, or a short writing assignment.

I allowed these tasks to be more independent. We would go over and discuss what was to be done and then she would take the lead and get to work.

This is an example of a poem she was asked to write after reading War Boy: A Wartime Childhood.

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