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World History Videos for Kids

by Winston Sieck updated September 12, 2021

Greek god icon for history videos for kids

Looking to elevate your kids’ video watchlist a smidgen? Perhaps add in some light reading to boot?

A few years ago, I decided to read a kid friendly world history book to my children (aged 7 and 10 at the time), and settled on Gombrich’s, “A Little History of the World.” Beyond the book, I thought it might also be fun and informative for us to watch some selected videos related to the history topic of each chapter. That simple sounding idea of watching history videos for kids then took on a life of its own.

The book is so broad, that you can’t hope to cover everything from a chapter in a single dvd. History videos for kids can provide a little more depth on a topic, and images to make the history more tangible and memorable. The book, on the other hand, provides a useful structure to organize the videos, in addition to being a pretty good read in its own right. Our approach was to read a chapter, watch a companion video once a week, and chat about our favorite parts to stimulate a little critical thinking. One of the more difficult aspects of this emergent history videos for kids project was simply finding suitable history videos for kids.

Good, interesting history videos that appeal to kids do exist, but are often difficult to locate. For example, they rarely turn up in ones’ first topical searches on Amazon, even when they eventually turn out to have a listing on the site. Nevertheless, I managed to put together a set of history videos for kids corresponding to the chapters in Gombrich’s book. Given the challenges in hunting these down, I compiled a list as a reference to others who may be interested in one or all of the topics.

Here is the list of World History Videos for Kids in pdf format that you can download.

There are links within the file that take you to Amazon’s descriptions of the videos. You don’t have to use Amazon! I’ve just made the links for information purposes. You can get most of these history videos from Netflix or your local library (or from my local library, anyway).

Over the course of the project, I learned a lot about history documentaries that appeal to kids. I used to think my kids would watch anything that was on TV, but it turns out they do have limits. Sure, you can try to motivate them in other ways. For something like this, it’s much nicer if the videos are enticing enough to pull your kids in.

One thing I learned is that the Amazon customer reviews and ratings are useless for predicting acceptability for a kid audience. Amazon history customers love long, in-depth documentaries that convey the period flawlessly. My kids’ favorite history videos were short (45 min or less), storylike, had some kind of cool graphics and period recreations, and were action-packed.

Yeah, right, who would have thought kids would want that?

I did adjust my selections to fit those criteria to a large extent, meaning that history purists may well gag at some the titles listed. I also did learn over and over that less is more, and found that watching half of a longer video would often work just fine. This is recommended for some of these history videos for kids’ viewing.

Going through the whole series might well be more than you want. Save the list for a rainy day. Find a topic that looks fun, and pop it in to watch with your kids.

Enjoy!

Image credit: Kyleboy668

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Filed Under: Culture & Communication, Learning Science Tagged With: Parenting Teens

About Winston Sieck

Dr. Winston Sieck is a cognitive psychologist working to advance the development of thinking skills. He is founder and president of Global Cognition, and director of Thinker Academy.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Ronald says

    June 11, 2012 at 2:11 pm

    Pretty cool.

  2. Veronik Garofalo says

    September 4, 2014 at 4:39 pm

    After a few weeks of struggling with my 6th grader to show some interested about History ( she used to say it was her favorite subject after American History last year), we are looking forward to the movies suggestions, just got the book online(new illustrated version). We will all learn together( 11 yrs old, 8 yrs old and mommy)
    Thanks for the info.

    • Winston Sieck says

      September 4, 2014 at 10:52 pm

      Glad to hear it, Veronik. Hope they go over well. My son, now 11, and I were just talking about those History videos again. It’s all coming back to him, as his class is tackling world geography.

  3. Melissa Camara Wilkins says

    July 19, 2015 at 7:02 pm

    We’ve exhausted our library’s collection of science videos, but somehow I hadn’t thought to check out history videos! Short, story-based, action-oriented: sounds exactly right for my crew, too. ๐Ÿ™‚

    • Winston Sieck says

      July 19, 2015 at 10:52 pm

      Hope you all enjoy them, Melissa. It can be a pleasant way to help them build their world knowledge. Good complement to the science. ๐Ÿ™‚ We also looked at maps and made simple timelines to get a rough sense of the wheres and whens. Those history videos have really stuck with my guys – surprises me what they remember sometimes.

  4. The Cod says

    December 6, 2015 at 3:44 am

    Thank you for publishing the list and sharing it, going to check it now. Appreciated ๐Ÿ™‚

    • Winston Sieck says

      December 6, 2015 at 8:41 am

      You’re welcome – enjoy!

  5. katherine says

    September 20, 2018 at 11:19 am

    Thank you! You just saved me 100’s of hours! I am homeschooling a 14 year old and this looks great.

    • Winston Sieck says

      September 20, 2018 at 1:53 pm

      Nice – glad you found it helpful, Katherine!

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