HISTORY Through the Ages Hands-on History Lap-Pak: U.S. Elections {Review}
Mostly we are educating from a Classical Christian Education method and the products from Home School in the Woods ~ (http://homeschoolinthewoods.com)
often comes across as a recommended item for our studies across the board in history, especially. Last July, we were blessed with the opportunity to experience and review Project Passport World History Study: Ancient Egypt. We learned that the recommendation lists are right and we love what is provided from Home School in the Woods! We have done a lot of research on resources for studying history. It is my desire that I teach my children using a Classical Christian Education method. For years I’ve heard of a family that created their own timeline pieces and now more and more creative hands-on projects. One of our main curricula resources we have opted to use for history recommends resources of Home School in the Woods.
This year we have been blessed to review HISTORY Through the Ages Hands-on History Lap-Pak: U.S. Elections (and while we were at it, we went ahead and bought copies of the full-timeline HISTORY Through the Ages: Historical Timeline Figures Collection, Time Travelers: New World Explorers, and HISTORY Through the Ages
Hands-on History Activity-Pak: The Old Testament!), easily it is safe to say we are fans in this Creative Madness Mama household. We are slowly working through the Project Passport: Ancient Egypt and Hands-on History Activity-Pak: Old Testament this year as we are doing our Old Testament Ancient Egypt studies.Â
In the news lately it seems that everything is developing around the American Presidential Elections. Who is running? What do they stand for? What’s the point? And then of course, there was just recently the holiday, Presidents’ Day. This has been the perfect opportunity for us to endulge in the Hands-on History Lap-Pak: U.S. Elections.
We acquired the Elections lap-pak as a zipped file of downloadable access.
It is also available as PC and Mac compatible CD-Rom. My collection is a combination of both with our various HSITW materials. The suggested grade levels are third through eighth an my nearly third grader is loving every minute of it.
With this lap-pak we have a 24-page booklet of information text to share with my student. She can read it alone, or I can read it aloud to her, or she can even listen to the audio and follow along in the text. MP3 files are included. As with our previous experiences, there is quite a bit of printing and changing of paper to go on. While one could just print it all one color, we have had fun printing things in a variety of color shades and paper and cardstock. I will not hesitate to tell you that it took a long time to get things printed. While I was in here, I decided to go ahead and pull out our other files to be printed and printed all the cardstock items at once, and then the blue, green, and so-on and it took me a good day to get it all accomplished. It was a good choice for a weekend, while the Enginerd had the littles distracted.
How do we use our lap-pak?
I have gotten gallon size zipper bags and as we finish pieces we put them in the appropriate bag. Unlike with Project Passport, I did not need a full notebook binder for this one. So along and along as we discuss the next topic in the Elections booklet and work on building those portions of the lapbook we are adding it to the bag. (We have another bag for PP:AE and the activity-pak for Old Testament.) In our school day mornings we are working on our main curriculums and then in the afternoon I tell AppleBlossom to pull out our HSITW materials.
For Elections, we grab one of our books (a recommended book list is included) and read about presidents, or suffragettes and the right to vote, or the American government. Then we work on the next element of our lapbook.
All in all this is pretty hands on for mama, but not overly so. It was more the setup that was all me, and while we do this as a gathered family, I think that AppleBlossom could easily run with doing it by herself (minus the exacto-knife) through the end. It has been an enjoyable part added to our day and I definitely want to continue to add more HSITW projects to our curriculum as we go along.
We have really enjoyed reading books like this, this, this, and this, and it has even been perfect timing to spark studying Women’s History this month of reading about Suffrage and women’s rights.
A detailed scope & sequence as well as audio demo downloads and a sample can be found on the Home School in the Woods website.
This year with our Frontier Girls scouting I knew that I wanted us to work toward our Elections, American Government, Women’s History and other related badges and I wasn’t sure where to begin our research. Everything I needed was provided in the purchase of Home School in the Woods Hands-on History Lap-pak for U.S. Elections. And it was the sparking point for further research. I am completely delighted with this product and how fun it makes our topic for the school day. I cannot wait to try another pak in our future and to continue to work on our other history paks as well!
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