History Through Games

History Through Games

Homeschool Review Crew

We love history in our house and learning history through games is definitely more fun than textbooks.  That’s what we found when we got our review materials from Home School in the Woods.  They are part of the Á La Carte  products and tons of fun!  We received the Liberty at Last game that focuses on the Revolutionary War time frame, New World Explorers Timeline, and The Progress of Faith from Europe to the Colonies Timeline.

There were so many products to choose from.  We had a hard time narrowing it down.  The war studies and games were definitely on our list as we narrowed it down.  My boys are already asking when we can get those so they can play them as well.  I love that they’re excited to learn using these fun products.

Products

 

The Á La Carte line of products is a fun asset to any homeschool if you want to make learning history through games part of your curriculum and make school fun.  I love when history can come alive to my kids and this definitely makes that happen.  These come as PDF downloads so you save to your computer and can print off as much as needed.  We were glad for this when some of the game pieces went missing and I had to reprint them.

There are two categories of these products when you go to looking.  You can either search through time frame or through type of product.  We chose two time line projects and a file folder game project.  There are many more to choose from.  It can almost be overwhelming!  The 3D projects look especially fun for my older boys to work on.

Liberty at Last

Liberty at Last is a file folder game focusing on the Revolutionary War era.  This is an era we’ve studied quite a bit so this was chosen mainly as a review item for my kids.  It’s a very fun way to review facts and places of history.  Made to have two to six players and for grades 3rd through 8th this game retails for $3.95 as a family download.

My oldest son took on the responsibility of getting this game ready to play.  We didn’t have any card stock on hand so we just printed these out on regular paper.  I did giggle quite a bit as my son was coloring and talking to himself.  “Thomas Jefferson, what color hair does he have?”  I had no answers for him.  He also took a lot of time to color in the game board as evidenced by wondering about hair color.  Easily it took him several days to do all the coloring but it was well worth the effort as he really enjoys the game.

New World Explorers Timeline

Ready to timeline?  I personally love a good timeline as it helps you see where people are in relation to each other.  This timeline shows all the new world explorers.  We haven’t studied all of them so this is a great review/new material to use in our history.  While some don’t consider a timeline history through games I definitely do!  I mean when kids act out the explorers it’s tons of fun!

 

 

This particular timeline as a family download retails for $2.95.  It has 27 figures/sets to place along the timeline and is geared for grades 3rd through 12th.  I was horribly unprepared for printing this.  For some reason I didn’t pay attention to the fact that you should print on card stock and so we didn’t have any in the house when I went to print this off.  So regular printer paper it is!  My oldest did the first run through of this timeline for us.

 

 

Because she has studied this time period before I had her use her knowledge for as much as she could and then she used her history books to research and figure out the rest.  Card stock ordered and then we’ll start a full study for the semester covering all of these people.  I’ve already been informed that we have biographies on several of them.  

The Progress of Faith from Europe to the Colonies

Our last product is The Progress of Faith from Europe to the Colonies and is also a timeline.  We have not finished this timeline yet as it’s a lot more information than I was expecting!  That’s always a good thing.  So much to learn and explore here.  This timeline has 24 figures/sets and is geared towards grades 3rd through 12th.  Cost for this particular timeline is $2.95 as a family download.

 

Again, we didn’t have any card stock available so we just used printer paper.  I can definitely see that card stock would be a better choice and we’ll invest in some before we do this again.  Because I do have lots of kids I’m positive it will continue to be used over and over.  Each child wants to do their own so a large package of card stock is in our future.

 

 

 

Learn More

You can find Home School in the Woods on social media via facebook, twitter, pinterest, google +, and YouTube.  They have so many products in the Á La Carte line so make sure to check out all of the reviews.  Reviews for all the products are linked up over on the Main Blog for the Homeschool Review Crew.  As Passover is fast approaching, the Passover Seder Game would be a good one to have on hand for the kids to learn more about the holiday and why we celebrate it(at least our family does).  History through games is a hit around here and we’re definitely going to be using this over and over.