Home School in the Woods A' La Carte Project Collection Review

Home School in the Woods has been a favorite homeschool resource for us for several years now.  We recently had the opportunity to review two products from the A' La Carte Project Collection that they offer as supplements to your studies, The Erie Canal Lap Book Project ($1.95) and Art Gallery File Folder Game ($6.95).  What fun additions to our learning.

We have been studying Art History all year with all the kids.  This has been a bit of a challenge, since studying art isn't a favorite of the boys.  Plus I have multi-level teaching requirement with four different grade levels.  So we were excited to try out the Art Gallery File Folder Game.  Created for students from early elementary through high school (roughly grades 3 - high school), there is minimal reading needed to play this game.  

The Art Gallery File Folder Game came as an easily downloable standard PDF.  Once I had it downloaded, I determined which pages I needed to print.  I decided to print the game cards in color, but you could easily print them in black and white and have the kids color them as part of their studies.  You will need to duplex the game cards, since the name of the work of art is listed on the back of the card.  This took a little longer for me, since I couldn't remember the duplex feature on our printer....lol.  The game board and player piece I finished printing in black and white.   The only other supplies that you will need include some type of coloring device (crayons, markers, etc.), glue or tape and two file folders.  They suggest you print on card stock, but I used regular paper and we have been just fine.

Then we tried it out.

This game was much harder than we expected it to be.  The challenge was in remembering the names of the works of art.  Even though we had been studying major arts all year, there are many artists that we have not studied.  Definitely showed us that we have a lot more studying to do and a lot more art history to look at!

Home School in the Woods has done a wonderful job in creating an easy to understand game for all art study levels.  It easily stores on the shelf, since you use a file folder to create the game.  You can make it multiple level by sorting the game cards into easy, medium and harder levels to make sure that every art lover has a challenge.  This has been a great addition to our art studies.

The Erie Canal Lap Book Project ($1.95)

The Erie Canal lap book is a supplement to your American History studies.  It's a fun, pop-up project that you can include as either a worksheet while studying this part of history or you can put it into lap book studies that you are working on.

The Erie Canal Lap Book Project is delivered as a PDF file directly to you.  It is very easy to download, and contains full printing instructions, as well as assembly instructions.

You can decide which style that you would like to print.  One style has all the information printed.  So if you have younger or special needs students, there is no extra writing involved.

But if you have older students, there is also a blank form that you can print to have the student fill in their own research.

Assembly was very easy, and only took us a few minutes.  You can easily color this project with whatever medium you choose.  I used tape instead of a glue stick, since I was nervous about it drying.  So if you use liquid glue or a glue stick, expect assembly to take a bit longer.

As I mentioned earlier, you can add this to your notebook studies of American History, so you do not need to be just using lap books to use The Erie Canal Lap Book Project.  In the case of this project, we easily added it in with our Ohio History studies, since we live in an area where several canals were built and have been restored for historical field sites.  Great supplemental material for the kids.  We are not using a lapbook currently, but was able to print and use these on a piece of card stock.

The ease of use with The Erie Canal Lap Book Project has me checking out other easy to use projects from Homeschool in the Woods as we continue through our Ancient history and Ohio history studies.  These projects definitely add just a little extra fun to "boring" history and art history studies.  Homeschool In The Woods offers several other A' La Carte Projects for the different World Wars, Native Americans, Lewis and Clark, and even Biblical, Ancient History, and Medieval History studies.

Several members of the Homeschool Review Crew were given the opportunity to try out several of the A' La Carte Project downloads from Home School in the Woods.  Click on the link below to read reviews on the projects they used and how they worked out in their school studies.