My approach to history with the kids has been fueled by what I perceived as deficiencies in my own history education. Firstly, I never got an overall sense of the march of time. I learned about bits of history from various eras but never got a feeling for how they fit together. I had no idea that Bach was composing while the French were mapping Canada, or that great African civilizations predated the Greek Empire. Secondly, history always seemed dry, remote and theoretical. I was never encouraged to try to imagine what it might have been like to actually experience life in other times. And so I was really drawn to a chronological narrative approach to history that is part of the "Classical Education" approach. I’ve been buying the Story of the World volumes by Susan Wise Brown as they’ve been issued. These use stories, non-fiction, imagined and mythical, to describe and illustrate history "from the start". Unfortunately the kids love these books too much. They’re somewhat gluttonous in their appetites for my reading aloud from them, and we’ve moved much too quickly through them to allow for much exploration and digestion of related ideas and materials. Despite my attempting to apply the brakes, we’re moving through the middle ages at a blistering pace. We'll hopefully return to these eras repeatedly.

Our other approach to history has been an "under our feet" approach. We’ve looked at history from our personal, recent, and local perspective. We’ve read about the history of our community, become familiar with local archeology and learned a bit about the history of the people we know. From there we’ve branched out a little, reaching backwards into the history of BC. We have been aided by some wonderful and unique homeschooling friends. We know one family living in a mining ghost town, running their own 100-year-old hydroelectric power plant from a converted miners’ shack. And another family has been homesteading off the electrical grid, leading a life which is a curious amalgam of pioneering and the 21st century. History seems much closer to home from knowing these families and their lifestyles.

• A Street Through Time by Anne Millard. Follow the same settlement from hunter-gatherer days through the days of the Roman Empire, the Black Death, the industrial revolution, all the way to modern times. There are similar titles by the same publisher and others, and we have several.
• The Great History Search, Usborne. A feast for the eyes, this one is an educated "Where's Waldo". Read tidbits of information and search for specific details in the incredibly detailed illustrations of various historical scenes.
• The Kingfisher Encyclopedia of World History. This is our general reference book. Arranged chronologically, it gives more than lip-service to non-European history. Thorough and thick and filled with small illustrations, maps and mostly balanced and accurate bits of text, we love this for browsing or research.
• Story of the World parts 1 and 2 (Ancient and Medieval), and accompanying activity guides, by Susan Wise Bauer. These are narrative chronological history textbooks for young children written in a very enjoyable story-like style. Written from a Christian perspective, we found it very easy to read the bible stories non-literally, as they occur in the same volume with mythology and folktales. The activity guides contain many activities which were too contrived and schoolish for our tastes, but there was enough good stuff to make them worthwhile. They're also invaluable for their bibliography of secondary resources and historical fiction.
• Historical Fiction, various. This brings history to life for both the kids and their mom. We're reading immense amounts of historical fiction lately, from Newbery Award books to series like the "Dear Canada" series to obscure recommendations from the Sonlight catalogue. Our discoveries are far too numerous to list here, but here is a great website with an amazing list of historical fiction worldwide, organized by topic / chronology and with helpful descriptions. We also like the Canadian History Reading List as a resource. We almost always have a piece of historical fiction on the go.
• The Story of Canadaand The Spirit of Canada are two volumes which are the foundation of our Canadian studies library. "The Story" is a lavishly illustrated overview of Canadian history, suitable for kids from 6 or 7 as a readaloud and probably intended for 12-year-olds and up. "The Spirit" is an anthology of myth, story, verse, song and art illustrating Canadian culture, geography and history. The selections are excellent, the presentation is enticing and the book is a great readaloud.
• Canada: A People's History is a CBC documentary series available on DVD. It runs about 24 hours total and is often carried by libraries. We rented it from Zip.ca. We certainly haven't watched them all yet but they are really nice as a complement to areas of Canadian history we've encountered elsewhere.
• Age of Empires computer CD-ROM. The kids bought AoE2 several years ago and it sparked reams of interest in ancient and medieval history. The tendrils of this interest spread out to involve reading, fantasy play, research, artwork, writing, crafts and costuming.
• History documentaries in general. Either on TV or (our preference) from an on-line DVD rental service like Netflix (US) or Zip.ca (Canada).
• My Amazing History Exporer This CD-ROM title from Dorling Kindersley is intended for kids 6-10. It had great staying power with my kids, though their interest peaked between ages 3 1/2 and 7. It's a discovery-oriented romp through time to a handful of eras and locations.
• Calliope Magazine From the Carus Publishing group that publishes Cricket and Muse Magazines and many others, Calliope is a wonderful, save-them-forever bimonthly magazine of world history for kids 9-14.
• Real life pretty much goes without saying on my mental list of resources. From people we know who have lived through world events to museums or living history sites and re-enactments to events mentioned in passing in books or on the TV or radio, there's always something that sparks a conversation about how things were different in the past.