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Best history home education resources

Best history home education resources
Don't be overwhelmed by the number of wonderful home education materials available to you as a parent – we've picked our favourite history-at-home resources to inspire young historians (and teach us parents a few new facts about the past, too!).

Best for eyewitness accounts of history

Find out about real-life spies, Home Front heroes and heroines and more with Adventures in History, a series of new videos from Imperial War Museums (IWM). Presented by family favourite CBBC presenter Ben Shires, the videos will introduce a different theme inspired by the national curriculum every week, offering ingenious, surprising and moving perspectives on history that children would not normally hear in the classroom. 

You'll then need to get hands-on and put your learning to the test with Family Mission fun challenges, games and activities inspired by the IWM stories and collections.

Best for world history

 

Explore objects selected from museums in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and learn about the history of the whole world using the teaching resources linked to each one. From prehistory to the present day, Africa to Oceania, find out what Teaching history with 100 objects can tell us about human civilisations and cultures.

Best for history explorers

Keep young historians exploring the past without stepping outside your front door with Historic Royal Palaces' games, videos and animations for home schooling.

They'll need to step into the shoes of a Tudor servant and plan a feast for a hungry Henry VIII (but be careful not to be unmasked as an imposter!), reorder some historical events in a Story Shufffle game, explore a millenium of history at the Tower of London in a podcast series and investigate Tudor times with a modern-day reporter... all in the name of historical accuracy!

Best for history crafts and historical how-tos

Explore the past on the English Heritage History at Home site, with crafts and history-themed videos and ideas for things to make and do, whether it’s learning making your own Roman mosaic, finding out about medieval heraldry, sculpting a clay dragon or forging a cardboard sword and shield to defend your castle (or home) with. 

You can also catch up with English Heritage's free weekly history lesson series hosted by CBBC presenter Ben Shires. The topics covered tracked the history National Curriculum, from Prehistory to the Second World War, and share information about some of the country’s most iconic sites, including Stonehenge, Hadrian’s Wall and Dover Castle.

Best for history downloads and activities

Download and print some historical figres activity sheets, wordsearches and timelines for fun at home. If you discover History Heroes you hadn't heard about before, do some research and find out more about them! TheSchoolRun's History Homework Gnome section is a great place to start for information about artists, scientists, explorers and leaders like Leonardo da Vinci, Mary Anning, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Anne Frank, Queen Elizabeth II and lots more!

Best for royal and religious history

Stage a royal coronation at home, make up a secret sign language and learn to navigate around an ancient place of worship – just three of the new A to Z online educational activities for primary children from Westminster Abbey. Led by the Abbey’s Livingstone the Lion cartoon character, the downloadable worksheets start with A for Abbey, B for Benedictine and C for Coronations. 

 

Best for (historical) cartoon capers

 

Liberty's Kids: Est. 1776 is an animated historical fiction television series in which two teenage reporters cover the events of the Revolutionary War for Ben Franklin’s newspaper, The Philadelphia Gazette. Listen out for celebrity voices such as Sylvester Stallone (as Paul Revere), Billy Crystal (as John Adams), Annette Bening (as Abigail Adams), Arnold Schwarzenegger (as Baron von Steuben), Liam Neeson (as John Paul Jones) and Whoopi Goldberg (as Deborah Sampson) and find out more about key events in US history, from the Boston Tea Party to the Constitutional Convention. Free to watch on YouTube.

Best for a virtual museum visit

You'll find activity and information PDFs, zoomable images and short films about all the KS1 and KS2 history curriculum topics on the Ashmolean Museum's Learning Resources website. Watch a film about mummification, find out more about Ancient Greek pots, read Latin inscriptions, learn to read, write and say Chinese numbers, understand Stone Age technology, listen to Old English and see Guy Fawkes' lantern – all without setting a foot outside your front door!

Best for Tudor activities

Whatever crafty materials you have to hand – paper, LEGO, wool or crayons – immerse yourself in Tudor life and artefacts with the The Mary Rose's brilliant Things to Make and Do activities. Put together a purser's chest for your chocolate stash, a pop-up Mary Rose (with crew finger puppets!) or a building-block Henry VIII, then try your hand at diving with your own Cartesian Diver, making a holoprism or knitting your own Tudor mini-hat.

There are 16th century-themed colouring activitiess, wordsearches and activities, too.

Best for interactive history games

Test your knowledge with some online quizzes, write your name in Egyptian hieroglyphs, explore Ancient Greece and take a ride in a chariot, have a go at making a mummy and more – there are loads of historical games, aligned with the KS2 history curriculum, to try on the Children's University of Manchester History website.

Best for learning to consult primary sources

 

The National Archives' Time Travel TV brings the archives to your armchair! Each session introduces a treasure from the collection to families, with exciting follow-up activities for viewers to complete, including a detective-based enquiry exploring other documents and a themed craft to make.

Best history activities resource library

A treasure trove of archaeology and social history activities to help educate and entertain, inspired by the collections across Colchester and Ipswich Museums. Museum From Home offers step-by-step instructions to help you make your own castle, construct a Roman shield, helmet or sword, recreate a work of art, explore life as an evacuee, work out the answers to some Anglo Saxon riddles and loads more!

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