Approaching the matter of teaching black history to your preschooler doesn’t need to be any different from teaching them about math or science or any other subject – it just needs to be fun and relatable.
As your child is still quite young and has many academic years ahead of them, you also do not need to worry about piling on too much information. As a people with such rich, deep culture and history black history should be viewed overall as African history and, as such, a world of lessons open up broadening the variety of things to teach!
Art lessons can be formed from black history, science lessons, math lessons… you name it. So then that begs the question; do I actually need to have a separate subject on black history or can I simply implement it into our day to day homeschool plan?
I think you know where I am going with this 🙂
11 Ideas To Implement Black History Into Your Homeschool Schedule.
Teaching your pre-schooler (or your child of any age for that matter) about black history is simply a matter of remembering that each day you have an opportunity to implement it into your day.
Here are some examples of how you can easily implement black history into your child’s day to day home education:
Literacy & Art Activity
‘Black History’ lettering. Draw out the words ‘B L A C K H I S T O R Y’ and cut them out. Your child can then paint, colour or cut out mosaic them with various patterns. Maybe you could use different African fabric-style patterns or actual cloth!
You can then stick these on a large A3, A2 or A1 and use it as a poster board for all of your black history findings. Make it look nice and keep it up on the wall throughout the year!
Art Lesson
If your child would usually be colouring or drawing, why not print off a black history-themed colouring worksheet? You can tell them a story about the historical figure and why their story is a significant piece of black history. Your child could draw their own picture and tell you what they remember from the story.
Dance/PE Lesson
This can actually be three lessons in one! Teaching black history through dance is a PE lesson – children love to dance and get up and move so you could structure this into your day before a break or after a stationary lesson such as storytime.
Put on the music and have fun with them trying to replicate some of the dance moves from the King of Pop himself or introduce them to the world of tap from one of the greatest dance sequences by the Nicholas Brother. After it all you will have so much to discuss with them… and they will probably want you to include that in their day to day schedule, good stuff!
Maths Lesson
This would be a great time to talk to them about the works some of the great mathematicians of our history and there are so many to choose from! You could use Benjamin Banneker to teach a time-telling lesson.
We have some free time-telling printables here!
Geography Lesson
If you have a globe, great! Otherwise, bring up a picture on your computer and let your child pick a country or continent… see what African presence you can find and learn about it. For an easier geography lesson, you could print off a map of Africa and either stick cut-outs of countries or colour them in, assigning each colour a country name.
Another preschool geography lesson idea would be to draw or pain African or Caribbean flags – the great thing with these activities is if you have older children they can also be adapted for them to join in. Be creative!
Music Lesson
If your child learns a musical instrument, you could research one of the many black movers and shakers of musical arts and learn to play a section of one of their songs. Another opportunity to discuss who they were and what they achieved.
Literacy Lesson
Creating a black history-themed literacy lesson is probably the easiest one to do. From preschool, through to young adult, there are hundreds of black history books, children’s stories, and poems to choose from.
Whether you are teaching your child to read or analysing a poem with them you are guaranteed to have enough content to formulate many lessons with.
Science Lesson
Sit back and watch some Neil deGrasse Tyson documentaries! They are fun, educational and are a representation of a successful, great black scientist and his achievements!
Building
It’s Lego time! Working on those fine motor skills while having a little architectural lesson on our ancestors in Kemet, the greatest architects in history. Playing with lego is also great for boosting cooperative play skills as together you could build a mini model of the Great Pyramid of Giza!
Or perhaps you could construct the amazing brick city of Timbuktu and tell your child all about the richest man in the world, King Mansa Musa. If you do not have enough lego or Megabloks you could buy a cheap pyramid construction set and do that together instead.
Foreign Language Lesson
Does your child already learn a foreign language such as French or Portuguese? For a preschooler, with this black history lesson, you could explore the different countries in Africa which also speak one of those languages as one of their main languages and tell them a bit about why while teaching them some new words. Or perhaps you could study Caribbean patois and compare the similarities with the language it derives from – all of this is fun and educational play!
There are many children’s books on learning an African language also if you wanted to introduce them to Kiswahili, Twi or maybe Yoruba; again, when we view black history, instead, as African history or African studies, the learning opportunities are endless!
Astrophysics Lesson
Watch Hidden Figures!…. Or read the children’s version. Then, build a big rocket out of cardboard or an astronaut helmet (most children are intrigued by space!) If they are too young to grasp Hidden Figures you could simply draw a rocket with them and teach them about the amazing NASA engineers, then have fun drawing, cutting out and sticking them in (or on) the rocket. Another chance to get creative and explore an entire lesson on space… with a slight edge to it. There is also a beautiful astrophysics-themed book about a little black girl called Rocket, and her brother – I highly recommend it if you are having a lesson on this topic, check it out you won’t be disappointed –
