Homeschool Mondays – Your Living History Books

When our first child was in the second grade, we began a unit sudy of the Dust Bowl. We lived in Oklahoma, and it seemed like an in depth look at such an important part of our state’s history was a great idea.

We spent an amazing month traveling the state to look at the different kinds of terrain and to see a wide variety of museums. (If you’re in Oklahoma, the Sod House Museum in Aline is worth the trouble of finding it.) We made trips to the library and made off with arm loads of children’s books and books of photographs from the era.

By the end of the month we felt pretty well versed in the destruction and aftermath of the Dust Bowl. We figured that by then we were mini-experts and willing to move forward in history to World War II.

We were wrong.

It was during a weekend visit to my husband’s grandmother that my daughter casually mentioned what we had been studying.

Grandma F. took off her glasses and cleaned the lenses, the replaced them and softly said, “I lived through it. Why didn’t you talk to me?” We spent that afternoon listening to her tales of chickens drowning in the dirt filled air. She told of silt that worked its way through the walls so that tables were set with plates upside down and only flipped over at the last minute to keep dirt out of the food. She shared stories of poverty and starvation and meals made up of a single hard boiled egg, a glass of warm milk, and a tablespoon full of sand plum jelly. She told us of her girlhood and we learned a history we had never thought to seek.

On our next visit, I dropped off a tape recorder and a stack of cassettes. “I want to know it all.” I told her. “Grandmothers don’t stay with us forever, please don’t take your stories with you.”

I guard those tapes, and the ones our other grandparents made, with my life. They are more precious to me than most of the other things in my house. They are our living, and no longer living, history, and they can not be replaced.

If you’re still blessed to have grandparents and parents in your life, please consider making a record of all the things they’ve seen. Make a recording for your children of grandma telling her story in her own voice. It will be the best history lesson they ever learn.