Home School in the Woods ~ Review

While we have reviewed different items from Home School in the Woods in the past, I wanted to try something designed for my youngest daughter. I have not done much history with her and this was the perfect way to introduce her to some history while learning about a man from history who is interesting. This lap-pak is also geared for children in grades K-2nd grade where as the other products we have reviewed have been for the older kids. We spent the last several weeks learning about Benjamin Franklin from the Hands-on History Lap-Paks collection.

Home School in the Woods is a hands-on history company that offers several different products. The lap-pak collection offers a way to spend time on one topic through the process of making a lap book along with a text booklet. The student is able to focus on one topic and learn more about the person, place, or thing.

The Benjamin Franklin lap-pak has everything you and your child need to make a wonderful lap book and read a story with the text booklet that is included.  Your child learns more about Benjamin Franklin’s life, family, and what he learned while growing up. There are twelve hands-on projects to complete that include the following:

• The Franklin Family
• Leather Apron Trades
• Ben Franklin, the Printer
• Printer’s Type
• Ben, the Good Citizen
• Poor Richard’s Almanack
• Franklin’s Inventions
• Benjamin Flies a Kite
• Documents
• Vocabulary
• Pocket of Virtues
• A Timeline of Ben Franklin’s Life

As with all downloadable products, the lap-pak does take some time to print out and read through the instructions. After I had printed all of the pages, I organized them  in the way I was going to use them with my daughter. I know this product is to be made into a lapbook, but we like to do the pages and place them onto construction paper and put them into a three pronged folder to make a book project. The page shown below is how my daughter wanted to show the printing press page. She said “the label should be on the same page and just flip up so we can see the picture.”

We have done each section like the one above and have used more than one page if things didn’t fit just right. My daughter liked going through and coloring the pages and cutting them out and putting them together on different colors of construction paper. She liked making a book and making it her own way.

The only con I have with using these products is the time it takes to print out and figure out how everything is to go together. I love the hands-on approach and I think my children do learn more when they are doing the projects.  My daughter soaked up the information and learned a lot of great things from Benjamin Franklin’s life. I also learned some things about Benjamin Franklin that I did not know about. I also helped my daughter with some of the coloring and it was fun to have a one on one time with her while we were both learning.

Overall, I highly recommend Home School in the Woods for your hands-on history needs.

Be sure to check out their newest product on Ancient Rome.

F is for Favorites

It’s time for the annual Blue Ribbon awards from the Homeschool Review Crew. You can find the post here of all of he favorites from the crew. Last year, I mentioned our top five favorites. This year we have so many favorites, I am going to post our favorites in the different categories.

ART ~
We have a couple favorites that we used this year in the art category. The first one is the Thin Stix from The Pencil Grip, Inc. We were actually lucky enough to review this product twice this year. This product is one of my girl's favorite art supplies.

Another art product we enjoyed this year was the  ACTÍVA rigid wrap that we used to create a butterfly. We plan to make some Christmas items with the product that we have left.

HISTORY ~
This year, we have reviewed many history curriculum and supplements it was difficult to choose our favorites because there are so many great ones. We narrowed it down to the following products.
Drive Thru History ~ This was a favorite of my high school boys. We all learned so much from the videos and look forward to watching more.

Another favorite history curriculum is from Home School in the Woods. We reviewed Make A State and The Middle Ages. Even though there is a lot that needs to be printed, this curriculum is packed full of information and hands-on activities.

Our favorite history supplements are from Heirloom Audio Productions. We reviewed two of them this year, In the Reign of Terror and Captain Bayley’s Heir.

BOOKS ~
We reviewed so many great books this year and we are looking forward to the next books in both of these series, Imagine…The Great Flood and The Secret of the Hidden Scrolls.

Here is a link to all of the products we reviewed this year and past years. You can read through to see how we used and how it fit or did not fit for us to learn more about these different companies.

Be sure to stop by the Homeschool Review Crew blog to see the rest of the crew’s favorites from this year.

I am linking up with:
Hopkins Homeschool

Home School in the Woods ~ Make-a-State Activity Pak Review

I always look forward to teaching our state’s history to my children. I have tried many different things to try to make it a fun learning experience, but I always feel like I could do more or the kids want to do more hands-on projects while learning about the state. When I found out that Home School in the Woods was offering a new Make-a-State Activity, I was excited. And that meant we could study, learn, and do a hands-on activity for any of the states. Their Make-a-State Activity is part of their line of Activity-Paks series which includes The Old Testament, The New Testament, Composers, and Artists.

What is Make-a-State Activity Pak?

This activity is offered as a download or on CD. We received the download version and it was easy to download the zip file to the computer. Once downloaded, all I had to do was unzip the file and click on the start file. The start file has all of the links needed to make your state lapbook. This pak includes everything you need to make a lapbook for all 50 states. There is an introduction file that explains the project and also lists some other helpful resources. The start file has all of the links to the activity pages you will need to print. It also includes a photo of each activity so you can have visual while putting your lapbook together. And it also includes directions on how to assemble the finished activities into the lapbook. There are also two bonus items- a state page that has info about each state and a “Name That State!” file folder game.

How we used the Make-a-State Activity Pak:

We will be visiting Florida later this summer and I wanted to give my kids a brief history of the state. My three older kids have visited the state before, but they were very young and don’t remember much. The last time we visited was when my older daughter was six months old and she will be twelve this year! So, I figured they could use a brief history of the state before we went this time.

I printed out each activity all at once. We decided to do one activity at a time. We worked through about 2 activities per week.  My girls did most of the coloring and cutting and my boys helped with the writing.

We mostly used the one page bonus about the state and some of the websites listed in the introduction file for our research. I didn’t want to do a full history about the state just a brief one before our visit and using the bonus page and websites helped us to learn just what we wanted to learn before our trip.

Instead of putting the lapbook all together at the end, we would put it together as we went along. After each activity, we would add it to the appropriate place in the file folder (lapbook).

Oh, I almost forgot. Each state comes with a recipe for you to try out. We kind of cheated on that one. The recipe for Florida is key lime pie. I have made key lime pie in the past, but for this project (and since it has been so hot here in NC) I cheated and bought a key lime pie for us to eat. Maybe when the weather is cooler, I will make a fresh key lime pie for us to enjoy.

What we thought:

Everyone (even my teen boys) enjoyed going through the activities and learning a little bit about the state of Florida. I think I will use this with my 1^st grade daughter over the next few years and do a more in depth study of each state. We can cover as many states as we want to each year until we have covered them all.

Home School in the Woods has so much to offer. We have reviewed the U.S. Election Lap Pak from their Lap-Paks series. We also reviewed The Middle Ages from their Project Passport series. We love the projects from Home School in the Woods because they are hands-on. It helps my kids learn a lot more when they are doing a history activity and not just reading about history.

FREEBIE ALERT! Their latest “project” is offering an A-La-Carte page full of hands-on history projects. Right now, because it is the 200^th anniversary of the Erie Canal, you can get that project free by using the code “alacarte” during checkout.