10 Ways to Get Your Kids Hooked on History
And 110 places to take them once they're hooked.
By: Johnny D. Boggs 06/01/2009
The video about Anne Frank was over— part of a special exhibit at Bosque Redondo Memorial in Fort Sumner, New Mexico—when my son told me, “Those Nazis were really mean.”
I agreed.
“Are they going to come to New Mexico?”
“No,” I told him. “But the next time you talk to Grandpa, you thank him because he joined the Navy when he was young to help stop those Nazis.”
Jack, then five, promptly asked, “Then why wasn’t Grandpa in that movie, Daddy?”
Jack is often my traveling companion to historic sites. We learned about John Muir together (Jack loved hearing about the accident that almost blinded Muir), plus the Anasazi, Charlie Russell, Smokey Bear.... It’s history time. Better yet, it’s quality time.
“At that age I don’t think they’re quite as into it as you would like,” says filmmaker David Zucker of Airplane! fame, “but I think some of it rubs off.”
Zucker knows. For years, he and historian Paul Hutton have traveled together with their young sons on a quest to involve their kids with history.
“The trick,” says screenwriter and producer Tony Ritter, “is to make the West interesting, but don’t shove it down the kids’ throats.... Tell them it’s a big secret and you shouldn’t talk about it. It gets them every time, like a curious monkey.”
It doesn’t all sink in. Charles Zucker, 9, was mesmerized more by a side trip to the UFO Festival in Roswell than Billy the Kid. Hutton can relate. Ask him about his trip to Wyoming, when he stopped with his family at Pahaska Tepee, Buffalo Bill Cody’s lodge east of Yellowstone National Park. The man who ran the horseback riding concession was a fan of Hutton, resulting in a memorable back-country ride.
“The children, who studiously refuse to watch any of my television programs,” Hutton recalls, “now were suddenly deeply impressed with the old man’s achievements.”
When that history sinks in, it’s certainly sweet.
Eighteen months after our Muir road trip, I was working on the house when a screwdriver rolled off a ladder and barely missed my eye.
Jack told me: “You were almost just like John Muir.”
Travel, of course, is not the only way to hook kids on history. True West turned to moms, dads, grandparents and kids-at-heart to come up with 10 ways to help your children appreciate history.
Comments (2)
Don't forget route 66, The Santa Fe Trail, The Mormon Trail and the Oregon Trail, I'd ask how they would have like some of those old walks?
New Mexico has history from one end to the other. Zuni and the other living Pueblos, the Pueblo Museum in Albuquerque. Man if you can't find something to excite the kids your not a very good salesperson!
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