Studying History Should Never Involve a Co-Pay

I love history! I did not exactly give evidence of this in my school girl days, I must confess. With all due respect to coaches, most of my history classes were taught by football coaches. Yep, that is good ole West Texas for ya. A few of these men tried to make it interesting, (Thanks, Coach Black of Franklin Junior High, who had us do a game show-so fun!) but most just told you to read the book, take the quiz, blah, blah, blah.

As an adult, however, I have really been drawn to history. Of course, if you know me, you probably know of my historical birthday—I was born the day Apollo 11 launched for the moon landing! And yes, now you know how old I am as well. But history has really captured my interest through the years.

Our home school curriculum is a core of history that we do all together and then we branch off to do individual work in math & language arts. Science is covered by Dad:
     "Let's see what will blow up."
      Kids scream eagerly, "Yes!"
Just kidding! Dad does usually does the science assignments, though. Anyway, back to history.

This year our curriculum is covering the Roman Empire and goes into Early Church History. What a fascinating time period! We all have enjoyed learning about the culture, accomplishments, trials, and people of this span of history.

Although I love that my kids have been embracing their studies, at times, I feel maybe they could tone it down a notch. Don't forget that Only Daughter and I live in a Sea of Testosterone. Boys react to history a little differently than girls might. They tend to reenact it. Now, I know, girls get imaginative too, and they might do some play-acting of what they have studied in history. But boys do it with much more...let's say...enthusiasm?

I say this because the clothing in this family, along with our furniture, are suffering from the effects of daily gladiatorial fights amongst the boys. I hate crushing their zeal for history, but come on, there have got to be some limits.

• NO wedgies! 

Not only is this probably not historically accurate, but very hard on underwear that has a hard life already. Underwear for which Hubby and I are tired of constantly replacing.

• Keep the reenactments historically accurate!

While in the arena, I tend to be skeptical that gladiators spoke the words uttered by Youngest Son to Third Son:

It's just you and me, baby. Come on!

To which the brother replied:

Don't call me baby!

• No inflicting the need to take anyone, ESPECIALLY innocent by-standers, to the Emergency Room.

Studying history should never involve a co-pay.

Only Daughter participates by providing the token spectator they need or by sometimes filming their reenactments...which someday later she may use to blackmail them, who knows?

I love studying history. I love my kids. I love getting to study history with my kids.