It all started oddly enough from the Bible cover Anthony and I bought N. The cover said "Jesus is my Superhero" with a Superman like emblem, only with a "cross" instead of an "S". We gave N this, his first "real" Bible, at the beginning of 1st grade. He was thrilled! He felt so big. It was adorable. The next Sunday as we were in the car driving to church, N out of blue asked, "Are superheroes real?" We answered him no they were not (We had discussed this before, mostly because it meant super villains were not real.) and he burst into tears! Between sobs he wailed "But I want Jesus to be REAL!" Anthony and I stared in horror at the offending Bible cover as we assured Noah that all the people in the Bible were real, most especially Jesus!!! In the weeks that followed we made a conscience effort to give the boys an idea of history, of how there were people who did wonderful things before we existed. N can see a phone and a car, and knows someone had to invent those items. By learning about those inventors and understanding the concept that someone we cannot meet or even see on the internet existed, it was not much of a leap to understand that people in the Bible existed as well.
When I was hunting for an early elementary history curriculum, I got frustrated quickly. Most of what I could find was early American history, but if I find reading about Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson a little boring imagine what a wiggly 6 year old is going to think! I wanted something that was fun and presented people that had character traits or life lessons or accomplishments for the boys to learn from. I also wanted the boys to have a concept of the past and the present. Learning just about people from 18th century America was not going to accomplish that for me.
You might ask "Why not just do Bible stories." Well, because the Bible is not a history book. Do the events and people match history? Yes! But the Bible is the Living, Breathing, Word of God. It is redemptive, It is cleansing, It draws us to our Lord and Savior. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)While I want the boys to be able to understand the concept of Biblical events in the context of world events, I also wanted to preserve the preciousness of God's Word.
So, who did I include in my 1st grade history. I choose men and women, both secular and Christian, who lived from 1400's to present day. I also made sure we covered more than just American historical figures. Our God is a global God, I want the boys to have a global worldview. We covered each person much like you would with FIAR (Five in a Row). I had a story we read for each person, a fun activity, and then N drew a relevant picture and wrote the person's name and year on it. The pictures then went in a notebook, where he could chronologically look at them. So far we have done...
- Christopher Columbus
- Amy Carmichael
- Henry Ford
- Louis Braille
- George Mueller
- George Washington Carver
- Daniel Boone
- Preacher Mohr
- PT Barnum
- Alexander Graham Bell
- John Phillip Sousa
- Louis Bleriot
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- President Donald Trump
- Brother Andrew
Can N name the dates or even what these people have done months later? Lol, NO, but that was not the point. What he does know: believers who were provided for, people who obeyed, people who thought about others above themselves, and people who preserved despite adversity. By learning about people in history, the boys hopefully developed a concept of time and that people existed before them, and God's touch on world events. And I have to say, I think we have accomplished that, and had a really lot of fun!
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