As a homeschooling mom, I learned early on that there is NO way I can teach my children everything they need to know in the typical 18 years that we are given. My children are not pails that I can simply pour knowledge into and hope that it is all retained. There are some things that we will not cover, intentionally or otherwise, but I have found that we can cover some of those gaps with good quality movies. GASP!! Movies??!! Homeschooling??!! Yes, you can use movies to fill in or to even teach some facts. There are tons of great Creation-based science dvd's that are wonderful to introduce my children to different topics that we might not cover. Schoolhouse Rock is great for teaching parts of grammar, history and government facts. There are also lots of homemaking dvd's out there now that are interesting, entertaining, and actually teach a skill.
One resource that we have been using this year is our NetFlix membership. I can request movies that we are interested in and they are delivered right to my mail box! Or I can play them right on my computer! This week we watched the 1970 movie Cromwell. This movie covered a brief period of English history (around 1640), but this was a very important time in the history of English government. Cromwell was instrumental in bringing about the end of the English monarchy as it existed and brought in a democratic government. England still had (has) a royal figurehead, but the Parliament became its ruling branch of government.
It was actually during this time of English history that my first ancestor came to the New World. The Batte family (my mother's family) manor is still standing today in the village of Batley. The manor is called Oakwell Hall and is now a museum. My mom was blessed to go to England and tour Oakwell Hall. We now have a print of Oakwell Hall hanging in our den along with the Batte family coat of arms and other symbols. And yes, the coat of arms contains a bat! It was neat to be able to watch this movie with the children and trace those same events to our family heritage.
Filling in the gaps with movies works for me!!
3 comments:
We also use movies and DVD's in our homeschool.
We studied about Cromwell yesterday. I'm gonna have the kids watch it this weekend from our netflixs account. Thanks for the tip!
I've never commented before just came across you blog this week. Make learning fun caught my attention. I'm just starting out and started up my netflix account again for homeschool. I love that they have old movies.
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