H is for Homeschooling Hometown History with Historical Markers

You’ve probably seen them when you’ve been on some kind of field trip. Perhaps you stopped to read them or even snapped a quick Instagram shot.

 

Historical markers are everywhere. But unless you were specifically looking for them, you may not have noticed how prolific they really are.

 

 

Recently, a homeschool mom friend shared a link to this website with me. It lists all of the historical markers for the county in which we live. If you happen to live in Kentucky, you can search your county for its historical markers as well!

 

Because Ben and I are “get out and go” kind of homeschoolers, and because we live in Kentucky, where history easily come alive, we decided it would be fun to use historical markers as a jumping off point for a study of our hometown — Louisville.

 

So for the next few weeks, we will be heading out for weekly scavenger hunts to find some of those lesser known and more challenging to find historical markers, and then researching the historical topic of each marker further.

 

I suspect we will learn much more about our fair city than we can even imagine!

 

We’ve already chosen a few that excited us right away, and have reserved some books from the library for our book basket. True to our unit study nature, there will likely be some notebooking, mapping, science, cooking, photography, and other hands-on projects, too. So watch for this button, so you’ll know when we share a new post:

 

 

Here are a few links that may help you if you are inspired to study your own hometown history with historical markers:

 

Signs of History (Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Virginia)

 

 

And here are a few books to check out (all found in our city public library):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, a couple of my favorite apps to help you along your way:

 

 

 

 

For more Louisville fun, visit my Staycation Louisville article!