History Quests

History Quests at Blog, She Wrote

Welcome to History Quests at Blog, She Wrote! Rebecca and I hope you will enjoy exploring topics in history while teaching your students to do independent research.

What Is a History Quest?

The History Quest was born out of looking for a way to customize Rebecca’s history text book experience as a 9th grader. As part of All American History, there are four “For Further Studies” topics in each chapter. In order to avoid the exercises being tedious, we came up with a way to do “Further Studies” without being hemmed in.

  • Rebecca reads the chapter and the further study ideas and comes up with a History Quest based on something that struck her during the chapter. It may or may not be one of the suggested topics.
  • While doing the research on a topic, she writes the notes for a guided tour of her topic and turns it in to me.
  • I take her notes, suggestions, and questions and put them into a blog post with pictures.

How to Use a History Quest in Your Homeschool

Just like Geography Quests, History Quests are meant to be an exploration of ideas, facts, and people from throughout history. You don’t have to treat it like a formal study unless you’d like to.

  • Read the History Quest and discuss it with your student.
  • Decide whether The Quest will be done independently or with others (either you or siblings)
  • Encourage your students on how and where to research information.
  • Specify how students will share the information they learn- this could be a discussion at the dinner table, a simple set of notes written down, or they can add it to other pieces of their work in history.
  • Keep a travel journal of your quests- students can record in pictures or words or both.

Benefits of Using History Quests

Why use a History Quest in addition to your regular studies?

  • Foster independent studies in your students
  • Teach how to do research
  • Use resources you don’t use very often
  • Visit a topic you might otherwise over look in your history curriculum
  • Take a History Quest on the go with a tablet or small device

Resources for History Quests

What do you need to have to do a History Quest? Research is so much easier for students now than it was before the Internet. Here are some basic supplies to have on hand:

  • History Encyclopedias– While the set of standard encyclopedias is long past its prime, topical encyclopedias are still very useful.
  • Atlases– Click the link for lots of atlas ideas!
  • Websites– As always when your kids are doing research, make sure you give them guidelines. How to do you make sure that research is as safe as it can be on the internet? Read Managing the Internet in Your Home for ideas.

History Quests

If you’d like to try out a History Quest, click on a link below. Come back to check because we are always adding to the list.

Habeous Corpus & The Civil War– Do you know what Habeous Corpus is? Find out how The Civil War impacted this principle of law.

The Anaconda Plan– Civil War strategy

Around the World in 1862– Rebecca’s favorite type of History Quest is to explore what was going on all around the world in a particular year. Look for more of these to come!

Civil War Uniforms– A quest on what was worn and how to make your own

Fashion Edition– Women’s fashion in the late 1800s. Rebecca reads a lot of sources on authentic fashion from a time period and will make garments based on her research.

The Ten Percent Plan– Lincoln’s plan for reconstruction after the war. Learn what it was and how it worked plus who supported and who did not.

President Garfield– Learn about this man who would become the 20th President of the United States.

Robert Fulton– Inventor of the steamboat. Find out what is first career was!