World History Study

Homeschool Review Crew

In our house we love history.  Not just one part of history but history as a whole.  Because of this we are very excited to tell you about a world history study we received through Home School in the Woods.  They offer several different varieties of history studies but ours is in the Project Passport World History Studies.   We chose Project Passport: The Middle Ages as our study of choice this time.

About the Curriculum

We have used and loved many of the Home School in the Woods products over the years.  This world history study is no exception!  Available as a download we received the family license meaning we can download for our families use.  I love products with this because I can download to more than one computer and print off as many copies of each piece as we may need.  Other licenses available are for teachers and schools.  The homeschool family download is available for purchase for $33.95 currently.

This world history study is geared towards grades 3-8.  An estimate of time it takes to complete states for 8-12 weeks.  I find that it takes us significantly longer to do these as we like to use a lot of the recommended reading and supplement a lot of extra reading on our own as well.  In our house books are a huge component in school.  

There are 25 stops included in this curriculum.  We tend to take one stop per week.  This study on the Middle Ages has gone slower than most for us because my boys tend to see a need to reproduce all the war and battle scenes.  Sometimes they’re creating their own just for the fun of it as well.  

Stops Being Made

I love seeing what the stops are going to be ahead of time to help me prepare what library books I want to check out.  A dining guide is also included so I make sure to at least add one dish a week to our menu plan.  Because we grow our own meat and one of those is lamb this has not been hard for us as lamb seems to have been a great feast meat!

1. Packing for the Trip
2. Barbarians in the South and East
3. Barbarians in the North and West
4.  Family
5. Clothing and Food
6.  Community
7.  Crime, Punishment . . . . and Entertainment
8.  Towns and Guilds
9.  Merchants, Trade, and Exploration
10.  Science and Invention
11.  Education
12.  The Arts
13.  Medicine and Disease
14.  The Church -History
15.  Church -Church and Other Religious Events
16.  The Church -Monastic Life
17.  The Crusades -The Big Four
18.  The Crusades -Other Crusades
19.  Knights and Chivalry
20.  Viking Life
21.  Era of the Vikings
22.  The Muslim Invasions
23.  Eastern Europe
24.  England
25.  Final Stop: Packing Up

How We Used

This is one of the few curriculum I don’t just go and print the entire thing off first.  Partly because the download comes in zip files and though I can unzip them it is a lot of clicking on different links to print out!  A weird side note for this project passport.  I was not able to get my printer to correctly print the travel itineraries so we had to make sure and come back to the computer to reference those.  I’ve not had this problem before but our printer is new.  I’ve got my husband trying to figure out what keeps going wrong.

Side note, studying all the bits and pieces of a castle is very interesting.  I’m not sure I even knew most of these details and I’ve taken college level courses on the middle ages!  We loved the above diagram.  I blew up or changed the scale of the diagram a few times to focus on one section over another.  This really seemed to help understanding in part of my kids as well.

Confession. 

I’ve never liked lap-books.  At all.  Ever.  I know.  I’m a horrible mom because kids think they’re fun but they don’t stay together well and I like to keep records of our history fun times.  So to make this easier for us we use a three ring binder to hold our information.  I like to use page protectors as well to ensure we have a great undestroyed record of the courses we’ve used.  This is NOT how this is created to be used.  There are wonderful detailed instructions on how to make the lap-pak version and I highly recommend you give it a try at least once.  

If you’re like me and want an overview of what you’re going to study and when to help you plan out how long this should take please check out the Scope and Sequence.  As you can see from this there is SO much information that is covered.  Because I primarily am using this with some of the upper grades (6-8) this time I really wanted to dig deep and take our time going through this.   I’ve made it into an entire semester worth of history.  We actually will be starting our “normal” school year soon and this will still be done through that time as well.  So a bit of doubling up on history but my kids are not complaining!

Projects

There are over 50 projects in this world history study.  That seems like a daunting number to me at first because I’m not a huge craft person.  But these projects are fun and really don’t take a lot of effort on my part. 

My boys especially love anything war and knight related. I like the disease and medicine sections because I love learning more about that as a nurse.  My daughters of course like the clothing and the romanticism of the age.  

I liked seeing more about the church in this particular world history study as they are glossed over in a lot of modern books when in fact they played such a crucial role.  We’re also looking forward to learning more about the Vikings as we’ve recently found out that we have roots to Vikings settling in Scotland in our family tree.  Explains all the blonde hair and blue eyes! 

Something fun my boys did with their dad this time was make wooden swords because obviously they need swords to recreate those famed battle scenes!  It just wouldn’t be the same without them.  My boys are ages 11, 10, and 10. 

Side note.  I also had to buy more colored pencils as they are the color of choice for these pages we do.

And just for fun.  The toddler really enjoys these swords.  And his swinging them wildly definitely has helped the other kids work on their speed and agility.  Don’t worry though we make him be nice and not beat up his siblings.  But definitely so so cute!

Learn More

Want to learn more about the entire Home School in the Woods line?  Make sure to check out all the reviews linked up on the Main Post over on the Homeschool Review Crew Blog.  Reviews include several different series including Hands-on History Lap-Packs, Project Passport World History Studies, Time Travelers American History, Hands-On History Activity-Paks, Hands-On History Activity Studies, and the A La Carte Timelines.  Each of these categories has several different titles and you will find more than one featured in reviews. We love the world history study and have used other products with as much love.

Home School in the Woods can also be found on facebook, twitter, google +, and pinterest.  I also have some previous reviews for the company that can be found below.

Renaissance

Reformation

US Elections

History Through Games

Fun news!  The latest history stop now available!  Take a trip back to Ancient Rome in the Project Passport series!  Some day we’re definitely going to have to take that trip.