While we’re enjoying a break from our regular schooling in celebration of baby Bryson, learning hasn’t completely come to a standstill around here. We have a four-day school week, and on Fridays we work on what I call fun school. The kids were getting bored without our typical structure, so we dove back into our fun school this week. One element we’ve been loving is HISTORY Through the Ages Project Passport World History Study: Ancient Greece from Home School in the Woods.
I’m so thankful that we were asked to review this hands-on history program. I’d never tried any material from this vendor before, and I was impressed with all that was included in the program.
What’s Included
I received the downloadable version of HISTORY Through the Ages Project Passport World History Study: Ancient Greece. There’s also a CD option available if you prefer not to download curriculum material.
Once I unzipped the file, I was shocked by how many things there were. It was a bit overwhelming at first, until I opened the folder labeled PDF. That’s where I found the directions! After I read how to use the product, everything made a lot more sense. I was then able to start printing things to get started and prepare for our first stop.
This unit study curriculum is divided into stops. Since we were only doing it once a week (until this past week), we did one stop a week.
Additional Materials Needed
You will need to purchase some materials to get the most out of this curriculum. I found everything I needed at Wal-Mart, and spent about $25. But, I was buying for six kids so your cost will probably be less!
I bought:
- Colored Pencils
- Pocket folders with prongs
- A binder for each child
- Cardstock
- File Folders
Everything else we needed was already in the house–we’ll call those basic school supplies.
You also will need some ingredients if you decide to cook up some of the delicious recipes.
How We Used this Ancient Greece Curriculum
The first stop was the most time consuming. I was a little worried that all of them would take that much time, but thankfully they didn’t!
That first lesson is just jam packed with the creation of all the different elements your child will need to document learning throughout all the stops. Once those are created, the subsequent lessons are much shorter.
You might want to do what I did and break that first lesson into multiple days. Or you could prepare some of the items yourself. My younger kids were definitely done by the time we stopped.
But, they made some great looking things. One of the key elements is the lapbook. They’re a fun way to document learning in a condensed way. In other words, they don’t take up a lot of space, which is a huge plus for a large family!
The Suitcase!
One of my favorite parts of this first stop was creating the suitcase. It’s a genius idea, and a fabulous way for the kids to hang onto different papers.
Once we finished up day two of our stop one, the other stops took much less time! On Stop 2 we created our postcard racks. There are a variety of postcards added to this rack throughout the different stops. My oldest really enjoyed the blank postcards she could create to represent what she found most interesting each week.
The map was another element my kids enjoyed. They’ve always loved looking up places on the globe or in maps, so they liked cutting out the labels and attaching them.
I didn’t like that the labels printed in one sheet, but you used them throughout the various weeks. That was a lot of tiny pieces to keep track of! I reprinted that page several times because someone lost a label.
Lots of Learning
We learned a lot about Ancient Greece as we completed each stop. The lessons covered leaders, Ancient Greek culture, life in Ancient Greece, and more. There were recipes to try (our favorite was the Pasteli (Sesame Honey Candy)), and a cookbook to put together.
The hands-on integration opportunities were numerous. We picked a couple things to work on each week, because we just didn’t have time to do it all.
My Thoughts on Ancient Greece
I highly anticipate that I’ll be pulling this curriculum out again in a few years to cycle through it when most of the kids are a bit older. Some of the tasks (like the creation of a newspaper) were just too much for this stage in the learning game.
I was impressed with how many different projects there were. It’s definitely worth the price! You’ll be able to meet the needs of a variety of learning types with this curriculum, and it’s easy to adapt to younger and older students.
Since doing it all is overwhelming, you have the flexibility to pick and chose what will work best for your family. Skip the projects that are too intense or sound boring, and focus on the other ones instead!
I definitely would recommend this curriculum, and I’m definitely going to keep Home School in the Woods in mind when I prepare my curriculum shopping list for next year.
