One of the Best Historical Board Games {Why We Love Trekking Through History}
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Historical board games are great additions to any homeschool or family game night – Trekking Through History should be in your arsenal! Learn all about this history board game and why we love it.
I have always loved playing card games and board games, and my kids are finally getting to the age where we can have some seriously fun (and competitive) family game nights.
We recently began a new routine in our family. After we finish dinner and clear the table, we take turns choosing a board game to play together. We have had such a great time rotating through my growing collection of traditional games, learning, playing, and enjoying our time together (and teaching some great sportsmanship lessons along the way, too!).
Well, I just added one more great game to our rotation, and I can’t wait to share about it with you.
Not only is this a game you can play with your family, but it’s a no-brainer way to sneak some amazing history into your homeschool!
Trekking Through History is a strategy game brought to you by Underdog Games (one of the biggest names in the board game industry!), and it’s designed with families in mind.
That means it’s both the perfect game board to bring out in the middle of your homeschool history lessons, or play with your family around the table for family game night.
Trekking Through History
If you could go back in time, which historical moments would you want to experience? This beautiful board game invites you to imagine taking this journey back to some of the most inspiring events in human history, many of which you might learn about for the first time!
You may already be familiar with (and have played) some of the other Underdog Games board games, such as Trekking the World or Trekking the National Parks. This game has many of the qualities families love about Underdog Games products, but different elements, mechanics, and game pieces that will be new to explore.
One of the things I love most about this game is that it’s not your typical historical board game.
The creators at Underdog Games strive to create an experience; they want their games to always encourage curiosity, discovery and learning, so they strategically chose unique and not-so-familiar historical events to include in Trekking Through History (108 to be exact!).
That means you get to explore and help your kids learn much more history of the world than your school books cover.
You’ll play Senet with the ancient Egyptians and excavate ancient Egyptian tombs. Fire a trebuchet from the middle ages. See the signing of the Declaration of Independence during the American Revolution.
Plus, the game involves time crystals – and who doesn’t love those?
Playing Trekking Through History
I will admit that this was our first go-round with a game quite like this. My kids are 9, 9, and 11, and with this being recommended for ages 10+, they all did fairly well. During the first round, we all were kind of learning how the game worked, and then everyone realized just how many different strategic opportunities there were – and it became even more fun!
Trekking Through History can be played with up to four players. Our first play took us a couple of hours, but once you get familiar with it, you’re looking at about an hour to an hour and a half to play all the way through.
The game was easy to set up and learn, because the directions are very clear and step-by-step. I really appreciated how easy it was to follow, because there are a lot of pieces to get into place before we could start playing. The more we grew familiar with the game, though, the easier set-up was.
The entire game is based on the idea of you traveling back in time through history, and experiencing different events as you create “treks” (basically just chronological events of your journey) and collect experience points.
There are three rounds in Trekking Through History, each being one 24-hour day you have to fill with your time traveling adventures.
As you take your turn, you’ll select different historical cards (which have beautiful art work, by the way!), each having different time allotments and tokens you can earn to score points and make your way up the score board.
Here’s a short video Underdog Games created to give you a peek inside the game’s rules:
Why We Love Trekking Through History
As I mentioned above, not only is this a beautiful board game, but there are many strategic choices involved which makes it engaging. It’s not a trivia game, so you don’t have to worry about knowing specific things about history to play – it’s really a game that will take your family on a journey.
You have to consider the historical events you will travel to, taking into account the time you have on the clock, your position to other players on the board, and experience tokens you may earn from your choice.
Not to mention, you work on mad timeline skills since you need to work in chronological order!
I really love the history cards; we read our cards out loud during our turn, and learn new things each time we play. Some of the text was challenging for my 9-year-olds to read, but it provided an opportunity to practice reading and even learn some new words. My kids got a kick out of seeing historical figures on the cards that we have studied in the past.
It was neat to see their brains turning as they figured out different ways to strategize, and overall, we really loved playing Trekking Through History.
And bonus – I can count play time easily towards our homeschool hours!
Using Historical Board Games in Your Homeschool
I’ll be the first to admit that history was not always my favorite subject going through school. I absolutely love being able to work history into our homeschooling through historical board games!
There are multiple ways your kids will learn and pick up information just by simply playing these types of games. But if you want to take learning even further, here are some creative ideas for using Trekking Through History in your homeschool.
Learn About Chronological Order
One thing you may have to discuss with your kids is the use of BCE for the dates in this game. We use “BC” and “AD” in our homeschool, so my kids had honestly never seen this before and it was confusing for them.
This may have been the one and only thing I did not really like about this game; changing the semantics has been popular recently in order to not offend those who don’t recognize Christ as Lord and Savior. I will say it provided a good opportunity for discussion, especially considering that this is not the last time my kids will see this labeling. We discussed how simply changing the label from BC to BCE doesn’t diminish the fact that there was a shift in how we record dates because of the life of Jesus.
That being said, using the cards can provide a good opportunity outside of gameplay to work on chronological order. The historical cards range in date from 37000 BC to 1994, and with over 100 of them, you have a few to work with! Give your kids a set of cards and see if they can put them in the correct order. If you have multiple kids, make it a game and see who can order them the fastest.
You could also play a “war”-type game, where each player flips over a card, and the one with the most recent date wins.
Use the History Cards to Promote Research
Some historical board games are easy to pair with a unit study, but this one might be tough to use in that way since it isn’t specific to one particular area of history. However, you can use Trekking Through History to spark interest in your kids.
Have conversations about the things they learn from the history cards, which may lead to other areas they want to research and learn about. If you have an interest-led homeschooling style, this could work really well!
You might also simply ask your child to randomly select a card and use it as a research topic.
Just Have Fun
Don’t feel bad if you don’t want to do anything extra – adding historical board games to your homeschooling doesn’t have to be complicated!
All you have to do is play Trekking Through History with the purpose of having fun with your family. Trust me, you’ll all learn something along the way!
More Board Games from Underdog Games
Underdog Games is an award-winning company, and has created a few other fun and educational board games. Not only can you travel back in time during family game night with Trekking Through History, but you can travel the world and experience new cultures as well!
I appreciate that they are a small business, and donate a portion of their proceeds to nonprofits so they can give back and make a difference around the world.
Add the following educational games to your Amazon Wishlist for the future:
Trekking the National Parks
Trekking the National Parks: Trivia
Trekking the World
Trekking the World: Trivia
Coconuts Game
Underdog Games Bundle
Herstory
Where to Buy Trekking Through History
Trekking Through History helps make learning about history fun. If you’ve been looking for new games to add to your collection, this would be a great one to try.
You can purchase this board game for your family on Amazon. I hope you love it as much as we do!
I would love to hear from you: which other historical board games do you love to play with your family? Drop your favorite in the comments!
Trekking Through History Board Game Giveaway!
I’m excited to be able to give away the Trekking Through History board game to one lucky winner!
The giveaway runs through September 30, 2022, midnight CST. Open to United States entrants only. Enter for your chance to win below!
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Blessed Homeschool is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. You can read my full affiliate disclosure HERE.
I always loved history but my husband didn’t. He’s working towards his GED, so this would be really great — something fun that helps us learn!
I love Trekking the World board game and this looks so interesting and educational as well!
We love board games! Being able to include them in our school day and count them for educational hours is a huge win! Thanks for the recommendation. We’ll definitely check this out!
Schooling through games is the best! We love Ticket to Ride too!!
My oldest loves history and games so this might be perfect for him
Looks like such a great game!
This looks so fun!! Just added it to my Amazon wish list. 🙂
This looks great! Would be neat for small co-op class to review at the end of the year!
I love the other 2 trekking games. I cannot wait to try the history one!
Games are a great way to teach children, not only academic areas but also social areas. This game looks amazing.
I think my kids would love this!
Thank you for introducing us to this game!
Thanks for sharing!!
I love history and board games. This sounds like the ideal game for my family.
Thank you very much for giving away this game. It looks like such a fun family activity, we would love to have it!
This game looks really intriguing and I know our family game night will benefit from it. Thanks for the chance to win it as well as promote it too.
History is our favorite subject! This game would add so much excitement. Even encourage some cool field trips. We have so many history books, but a game would blow my kids mind!
Thanks for the giveaway
We have had these Trekking games in our Amazon cart for a looong time! I saw this one come out and just swooned. We have been trying to log more homeschool hours using games and projects but it can become so difficult financially to purchase everything. Thank you for the chance to win!! And for your awesome blog! ~ The Beagle Family
This would be a great addition to our homeschool. We are currently homeschooling 3 boys and I’m always looking for ways to add fun to the journey. Thanks for the opportunity!
Sounds like a fun game!
Oh wow what a neat way to learn history!
I know my kids will love this game! They love history and I think this will solidify a lot for them while they play.
So excited to see what this entails. Did not know there was even a variety of games like this.
Surprisingly, we haven’t ventured into this type of game much yet, either, but I suppose my kids are just getting to the right age for it! This was a great one for us to try first!
This is right up my family’s alley!! Love this!
Finding a way to make history fun for my girls has been challenging, but they love board games! This looks like a great option to pique their curiosity when it comes to learning about people and events from the past!
Looks like lots of fun and a great way to game-school!
We own a lot of games, but hardly any historical games. The Oregon Trail card game is a favorite. Trekking Through History looks like so much fun!!
Thank you for this opportunity. I look forward to reading you blogs.
What a great experience! We love Catalan for some of those reasons. Does it work as a game with two players?
You can definitely play with two players!
Our youngest loves board games and this would be an amazing way to hammer home historical facts and information.
This looks like such a fun way to learn. I’m hoping to win it to gift to my home schooling niece. She and her kids would love it!
This game looks like fun! I like learning about history, more so now that I’m helping my kids to learn about it. Would it work to play teams, though? We have 6 children.
If you wanted to try teams, pairs would probably work the best! Really, they would need to be able to collaborate on the strategy…it might make the game even more interesting!
Ahmazinggg! So excited for this! Thank you for sharing!
This is awesome!! Thank you!
What a cool concept for a board game. I love educational games!
I think this looks like an amazing game that will last for years. I would love to add this to our homeschool stash. I have it saved on my Amazon wishlist now. Thank you so much for sharing it and also doing such a wonderfully in-depth review of the game. You really made me want to add this to our home with the fantastic pictures and amazing info you shared. Thank you for the opportunity to win a copy. Have a fabulous night!
The game looks amazing. Fun for all and super engaging. Great review.
Ah I have seen quite a few recommendations for this! Would love to own this!
This looks exciting!
One of my favorite history board games is Oregon Trail. We also have a Ticket to ride version that we have yet to play, but I love history. Thank you for the chance to win.
I’m adding this to my “wish” list! I’ve struggled with finding a good history curriculum that’s engaging and entertaining! This looks like its all that!
Looks like so much fun. Thanks for sharing.
This is so exciting! I’ve been looking into adding this game to our homeschooling!
Thanks so much for sharing this with us…sounds like a wonderful game that our family & friends would enjoy playing together!
This looks like a great choice for family game night! Thank you for sharing all of this and for the generous giveaway opportunity!
Excited to try out this game! Thanks for sharing!
Wow!! I have never heard of these games. I’m definitely adding one to our Christmas gifts!
This sounds so fun! Thanks for sharing!
This game looks fun and visually striking. Clever to include lesser known events. Thanks for sharing!
We have (and love) Trekking the World. I love this concept- what a great game. We have been following the creation via Kickstarter updates.
I had seen this board game on Amazon before and been wowed, but my kids were still too young, and I forgot all about it! Thank you, Sara, for reminding me of an awesome must-have!
This looks like such an awesome game! Thanks for the opportunity to win 😊
Love the other games in this series. Going this one will be great!
We have Trekking through the National Parks and love it! So excited for this game to add to our homeschooling, game loving family!!
I love history, but struggle to make it fun for the kids. Adding this to our “wishlist.”
This game sounds really cool. I would love to win it, but if not, I might just have to purchase it for our homeschool.
Looks like a game I’d love, and I’m 56! Makes me think about wanting to be an explorer!
I’ve been eyeing these Trekking games – this one looks like a lot of fun and a great learning opportunity.
Looks like fun. We love history.
Thanks! We are always looking for family friendly games that provide an opportunity to discover interests that we didn’t even know existed.
This game sounds fun!
I’ve created a couple boardgames to help with math basics (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) and our son loves playing the games. I’m very excited to give a game about history a chance! Unfortunately, because he has autism some things just don’t click and because I’m a widow I just can’t afford a game that costs $50 to only find out it doesn’t click. But, since I love history and would like to pass on that love to our son! Thank you SO much for this wonderful giveaway.
Our family enjoys strategy games & it looks like this would be beneficial addition to our home!
I’ve played both editions of Trekking Through the National Parks with my kids, and I was impressed with the production and design quality from this company. This game was definitely on my radar.
These Trekking games look amazing! Thank you for sharing.
Looks like a fun and informative game!
Thanks for the recommendation—can’t wait to try it!!
Thanks for the giveaway
I love the idea of using history games. I wasn’t the biggest fan of my history class in high school (and did it in summer school to get it over with so I could do “more important” classes during the year).
MAKE ME A WINNER
This looks like a fun thing to incorporate into history lessons!
Looks like a fun game!
We really need this for our game collection- my kids are loving getting educational credit for the time they spend “playing” to learn. I love this!
This looks like such a fun game for the whole family & a great way to learn history!
Sounds like a fun game to introduce new historical events!
This looks like a great educational game. How complicated is the set-up? I have a “great game” we’ve never played because the set-up was so complex. It seemed like such a wonderful idea at the time, but after more than hour messing around with intricate parts, reading the booklet and watching online videos, we lost interest.
There are a lot of parts, but, I don’t think the set-up was too bad at all! The first time playing took the longest, but my kids got the hang of it quickly.
We have never played a “trekking through” game but we recently checked out trekking through the national parks from our library and look forward to trying it.
Can’t wait to try it out! Sounds fun!
Looks like a fun game. A great way to refresh the memory of history.
This game looks like so much fun!
My youngest absolutely loves board games and this one would fit her well.
Wow what a great looking game. Thanks for the review and suggestion.
There are not a lot of educational history games out there so I was excited to read all about this one. It looks awesome! Thanks for sharing!
This game looks amazing. I teach my kids through games. This would be great for social studies.
Thanks for the detailed review! This os definitely something my children and I would have fun playing
We love to incorporate games into our homeschool and this would be a great addition to our stash.
Looks like a great way to reinforce history lessons.
Thank you for sharing about this game as it looks great for my children who cover a large age range.
So great there is fun games out there to make learning fun and not boring.
My great nephews would love this game!
We love board games and to incorporate it into our homeschooling is going to be more exciting and also a learning experience for all us. I’m excited for this gameboard already!
Looks like a great way to learn more about history and have fun doing it!
Anything that involves family, games, and learning about history is always a fun time!
Oh! I’ve been eying this game and would love to own it!!