How Do I Teach About Monarchy to Students?

Be sure to distinguish between modern royal families and historical monarchy.

Most students you encounter have either no experience with monarchy, or a very romanticized view of monarchy obtained from reading fairytales and watching movies or TV. Particularly for girls, romanticized princess fantasies are a big part of their play. To successfully teach about monarchy, you need to get beneath these romanticized ideas and introduce children to historical reality of the rise and fall of monarchies by inviting them to imagine what it would be like to live in a historical monarchy rather than the Disney version.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Create two charts with the class. For the first chart, if the students are older, ask them to compare monarchy and democracy. If the students are younger, ask them to contrast our world and a monarchy. For the second chart, ask younger students what they think about monarchy based on books and movies, and leave the second half of the chart, labeled "monarchy in history" blank. Ask older students to compare monarchy in fiction with what they know about monarchy in history.

2. Ask students to research who they would like to be in a monarchy. Give younger students a few options, and ask them to pick a character. Ask students to explain the reason for their selection.

3. Discuss the answers with the students. Dispel the perceived benefits of each position. For example, kings and queens could not just do what they wanted - they worked very hard and had to listen to religious leaders in order to maintain popular support for their rule.

4. Using the characters the students picked, discuss changes in monarchies through history. Ask the older students to research how the life of their figure changed from the beginning of monarchies through their end in the west. Give younger students the basic information and ask them to make a visual aid, such as a drawing, to the class.

5. Conclude the unit with a special costume ball, where the students dress up as their character for the first half, and then as the "equivalent" of that person today. This activity enables the class to connect the lesson back to where it started, and demonstrates what the class learned about the differences between a monarchy and a democracy.

Tips & Warnings

• For younger children, focus on daily life in a monarchy, with age appropriate discussions of government. For older children you can bring in more conversations regarding government and how it influenced daily life.

References

• Teachlink: Elizabethan Monarchy
• History for Kids: Monarchy