Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.
Our favorite way to learn is to make our studies interactive, interdisciplinary, and fun – that’s why the Time Travelers U.S. History Studies for the American Revolution by Home School in the Woods is so appealing – it’s super hands-on! This series covers lots of time periods – I’d love to have the World War II one for our study next year!
The product is a download that comes with a LOT of folders, so these simple pieces with directions are very helpful! I started with the introduction above, which gives you an overview of how the product works. Basically, there are 25 lessons which come with lots of pieces – so many that there are way more than you need for 25 days’ worth of learning. Instead, you can use these as extension pieces, for kids who finish early, or other things. There are daily readings, a lap book, a notebook, recipes, printables, writing projects, copywork, and more. You might choose to do these lessons one each day for five weeks or to spread them out more, moving more slowly through the material or doing more of the projects.
This piece also tells you how to prepare your materials.
These tips are important nitty-gritty details. If you’re the mom who isn’t into crafting, then many of these things may be new to you. If that’s your thing, then these may not be important.
The lesson plan schedule puts all the pieces into perspective for you. I like that there’s a theme to each lesson and that the study works chronologically through this era. Structured this way, it’s easy to see what comes with the study and what is available to you.
The additional resources piece is important if you’re a fan of unit studies. With this, you can easily incorporate books, biographies, videos, and more into your lessons. We like to line our read-aloud up with our main study, as well as to watch things in the even for fun that dive deeper into our work, and this makes it easy to do.
Although the lessons are structured chronologically, you don’t have to do them that way. There is enough pieces and materials here to make a great ELA unit out of this; with writing, handwriting, reading, and history, you’ll certainly have what you need for weeks of learning just by adding math and science.
Because we’ve been studying the American Revolution, and this is kind of our thing, I let my Little Man choose where to start. His favorite project was making Boston Baked Beans. He’s working hard on his cooking skills lately, and he enjoys helping me in the kitchen. He’s learning to make simple meals on his own, and he was excited to be able to make baked beans on his own, from scratch! They were a great complement to the meal, and they added a fun element to that lesson.
As the Time Travelers studies are recommended for Grades 3 – 8, my kids are definitely on the upper end of this. Still, with so many printables contained in the study, I would have loved to see bigger, printable recipe-style cards instead of the recipe being small, in a corner of the project page. Still, it’s certainly not hard to read, and if you’re printing out everything, it would be easy to use.
If my kids were younger, I would definitely have printed all of the master, text, and project pages and bound them as separate books to make it easy for them to use. Since they’re so much older, however, we saved the paper and ink and only printed pages when we needed them. This study is definitely print-based, not digital, but my kids are accustomed to reading their work online and were able to do much of the reading that way.
The hands-on, interactive element is by far my favorite component to the Time Travelers studies’ though. This is the way that I love to teach, and I love that this study incorporates so many of them. Even if you choose to use this as a supplement and not your spine, there’s an abundance of resources and options here to make your teaching life simple.
In this election year, with all the political drama that contains, it’s important to note that Home School in the Woods also has a US Elections Lap-Pak. You can read more about what that entails here.
Of course, Covid19 has also added to the craziness of this year – and so Home School in the Woods is offering a FREE copy of their Greek Life! File Folder game with code TOSGameNight. No purchase is necessary. The code is good through the end of August.
I love how much comes with these lessons! Don’t take my word for it, though – click on the banner below to read more reviews from the Homeschool Review Crew.
Interested in what else Home School in the Woods has to offer? Click through to read my review of their Project Passport World History study!
