History ~ This Week. An introduction

Here on Down Home we are excited to introduce a new series called History ~ This Week. Following the History Outlines for Primary to Upper Middle School, each Sunday/Monday we will feature a brief commentary or reflection from our History Experience presenter extraordinaire Sarah Shotwell. We hope that you find these posts complementary to your at home learning for the week and also serve as a gentle reminder of all the great information from History Experience. Take it away Sarah!

Traveling Through Time: Trimester 1 History Experience

Happy Monday! Sarah Shotwell here, SLOCA’s resident history nerd. I am thrilled to invite all parents to time travel with me tomorrow night at the Trimester 1 History Experience! This is the first live History Experience we’ve had at SLOCA since early 2020, and I could not be more excited to spend the evening with you.

If you are new to SLOCA, the History Experience is a lecture and discussion series we started years ago. Each trimester, parents get together to explore the time period we are studying, build community, and practice the habit of being lifelong learners. Tomorrow, I hope to regale you with exciting tales about the Ancient Near East, Herodotus, Babylon, and the invention of writing. We’ll also talk about the modern field of archeology, the current state of archeology in Modern Iraq, and how historians are using precious evidence from the ancient past to build their stories and illuminate our understanding.

History is a rich, vital living subject — an ongoing investigation crucial to our knowledge of ourselves and where we came from (not just a list of names and dates to memorize!) Tomorrow, we’ll encounter some of the vibrant work historians and archeologists are doing to try to help us understand just a little bit more truth about our shared human past. And then, starting next week here at Down Home, on Mondays we’ll be posting exciting history-related stories to keep our inquiry going all year!

Pack a notebook and some curiosity, and we’ll see you tomorrow!