History Day

This is my first post and I couldn't quite decide what to start with. Since last weekend we competed in the National History Day Competition at the County level, I decided I might as well start there. My sons have competed in this competition for 8 years. It's the oldest humanities competition in the U.S., although with budget cuts who knows how long it will continue. Students in public and private schools compete at District, County, State and National levels. We have been to the National competition at the University of Maryland 3 times . What a great experience each trip was. Especially last year when all 6 of us were able to make the trip and watch my two youngest sons do a performance on Honour Crimes in Pakistan. This picture was taken last summer as we explored Washington D.C. during breaks in the competition. (The lovely girls in the pic are the Miles sisters who we have teamed up with each year as we developed our projects.)

This year's theme is Conflict and Compromise. My son Caleb wrote a historical paper on the conflict in Northern Ireland. A new experience for Caleb, as he has always competed in the Performance category. We didn't know how he would do since we haven't seen many of the papers submitted for competition so this is a learning experience in many ways.

Joseph competed with 4 of his friends in the group performance category. They studied up on the conflicts and compromises on the New York Stock Exchange due to SEC regulations. I have to say Joseph had to spend alot of time explaining things to me as this was an area I knew little about.

Our school, Grace Prep, had a third entry, a group of Jr. High students did a project on Conscientious Objectors. They did a fabulous job.

Turns out all three Grace Prep entries won First place at the Riverside County competition and will be moving on to the State competition in Sacramento over Mother's Day weekend. In the meantime the kids will continue to fine tune their projects and add to their research. They have more interviews they would like to do before the State competition.

This is truly a great way to get kids involved in history, research, writing, and communicating. I hope more homeschoolers take advantage of the opportunity.