Intimidated By Hands-On History: It’s Not Complicated, really!
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I was completely intimidated to review a lap book set by Home School in the Woods, I was afraid it would be complicated and full of busy work, but since we are going to be jumping into American History this year, I thought we would check and see what quality lap books really look like. We chose The Early 19th Century from the Time Travelers Americal History series. It includes 25 lessons that can be used over five to ten weeks, depending on your preference.
You can find the complete Scope and Sequence doc HERE. The Early 19th Century Set covers the first sixty years, from the birth of the newborn Nation. The set covers the first 12 Presidents, Inventors and their creations, Westward Expansion, Pioneers and Natives, Slavery, the early wars and a lot more.
Projects are designed for kinesthetic learners in mind. Younger kids might need more help with fine motor skill activities, but you control freaks could just let them cut it out of the lines a little and it would still look beautiful because Home School in the Woods art is amazing. The reading was not difficult and clear. My upper elementary kids took the packet for the day with no assistance from me…other that finding the scissors…and the tape…and glue…and the not dried out markers. Being summer supplies are a little less than…well…just less than. Good thing there is a supply list that could have your family ready to go from the beginning. The good news is that – I did get my steps in!
Timelines so Beautiful You’ll Want to Keep it on Display
I first discovered Home School in the Woods (HSitW) when my kids were in Kindergarten. Our curriculum partnered with them to offer their beautiful history timeline figures as part of their package. I have to admit, since the kids were small and I didn’t want them to go to waste, I colored them ALL myself. Our history timeline was the most beautiful K timeline ever. Over the year the kids took over, but having these amazing pictures to mark the significant events in our readig was a part of our homeschooling routine. Every page I printed in this set was of the same high quality art work I have come to expect from them.
Travel Time With A Great Guide
We love history and reading, but I am not a project Mom. I give the kids tons of unstructured creative free time. With so many different ages in our school, I find it difficult to find projects that can be done and still enjoyed by everyone. When I was offered a review, I almost passed it up because I find the concept of LAP BOOKS, intimidating. I don’t like highly structured activities. I HATE tedium! Could these really be fun to do without being overwhelming?
Can Hands-On Be Easy?
On the first day that I downloaded everything, I was totally overloaded. I started to panic. There were like a million buttons with pages to print. It took a little reading and navigating to see that everything was actuall reallly well organized and separated, keeping pages easy to find and print as you needed. I never had to print an extra page. I was always able to find the page I needed. If for some reason you get lost and can’t find a page in your lesson, you can click the “Masters for Projects” tab and every document for the entire set is in numerical order. Just seeing all of this helped me a great deal with my dislike of hands-on projects. I am a questioner, and I need all of the answers up front before I can just jump into a project. After doing a little reading, I found myself without excuse and had to get started.
Do You End the Year After Lots of Work, but Nothing to Show for it?
We use a literature based model of school. Read read and discuss a ton of books, but come portfolio time there is literally nothing to show for most of our year. I hate to create artificial busy work. With ten kids, I also hate clutter and waste. Most projects we do during the school year go in the “round file” if you know what I mean.
HSitW lap book format appeals to me for two reasons. One, everyone could do parts of the hands-on projects instead of creating ten separate folders. Second, everything lays flat. You can pop the finished project in your box or stuff it in your accordian file and at the end of the year, you will have a thing to show Grandma or proudly display in your portfolio. If you have a reasonable amount of kids, thay could each do their own, but we are not reasonable and I usually improvise and modify to save.
Each Full Set Is Packed With Options
I presented the kids with a packet each. The main reading pages, usually three pages, followed by the instruction pages and printed project sheets.
Penmenship and Histroy Timeline pages I printed separately for each pack and for each child. I could choose blank lines for the older kids and the dotted guide script for the kids who were less familiar with script writing. The font is less familiar, but that was not a problem.
I love vocabulary and feel it is a very important part of any schooling program. The kids had their own vocabulary envelopes to add to as they read. There were also blank pages to write quotes or more new words too.
This Could Be a Full Curriculum or a Packed Supplement
We aren’t done with the full Lap Book (because Summer) but we have many of the project pieces ready to assemble. I am thinking that after trying our this Lap Book style, I will definately add HSitW to our school program. It is the perfect compliment to our literature based school. I know that some of my kids really like the hands on approach, but I need all of the work done for me, because I don’t like it as much.
For history this could really stand alone as a curriculum and you would cover a good deal of history, while still having a little more room to explore. In my opinion this is one area we always lack in, exploring on our own. This set did give us lots of good questions and ideas. I could see taking more time on day five to look up more about what we learned. There is even a page that has learning resources to help you get started that is included.
No matter what era of history you are planning on teaching about Home School in the Woods has it covered in a hands on format. There is literally too much to begin to list, do yourself a favor and just go to the site and have look.
They just realeased Project Passport: Ancient Rome, which is one of my favorite periods in history…so I might have to check it out a well.
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