I absolutely love teaching history....most of my kids do not enjoy history though. We recently had the opportunity to review the Time Travelers U.S. History New World Explorers study from Home School In The Woods. This program takes the boredom out of history by using a hands-on approach to learning U.S. History.
The creators of the Home School In The Woods curriculum are a homeschool family themselves. They want your student's to love history and have a memorable learning experience while studying. We all know history can be a bit dry and boring to read. I will admit that can be true. It can also be a hard subject to teach, especially when a student has a bad attitude. Home School In The Woods uses a creative approach to exploring history that include lapbook type activities, printable timelines, costumes, games, hands-on crafts, and recipe ideas.
We had the opportunity to use the Time Travelers U.S. History New World Explorers unit. This unit was created for students in Grades 3-8. So it's great for multi-grade level teaching. It is easily adjustable for your student's learning level.
We received an easy to download PDF file for our studies. It does seem a little daunting when you do download your ZIP files, but they are clearly labels where to start. Your download also includes teacher keys.
Each of the lesson project pages includes textbook style reading materials. There are 25 lessons, including a final lesson on how to throw a Project Party to share with family and friends how much you have learned about the famous explorers of the New World.
Caty is getting started in U.S. History again this school year. I was looking for something other than regular textbook studies for her. I really liked that she could do her reading on her Lesson-Text pages independently. She really liked some of the project lesson activity ideas that include anything from drying meats and vegetables (dehydrating) the way explorers had to preserve their food to making board games (which she has not gotten to yet but will be soon.
You can really go through the Time Travelers U.S. History New World Explorers study at your own pace. If you really want to dig into a topic plan the amount of time you want to go through the material on your own terms. You could use a lesson a week, or a couple lessons a week depending on your student's learning level. We were going slower since it is summer, and we do not do lessons daily in summer months. But as we get started on school year, I can see us going through the material a little quicker, allowing her to start on Colonial Life by the middle of fall.
She loves to bake. So she really enjoyed learning more about spices in lesson 1 and baking cookies based on the recipe included in the Lesson Activities.
Other activities include learning why lime juice was so important for explorers, and we also learned a popular location for sailors (and pirates) to come and get this life saving food. She opted to not build a ship, but that type of activity is great for younger students, while older students can watch videos on the parts of the boats and type of boats that many explorers used in their travels. We watched a few family movies that featured ship transportation.
Since Caty is not a fan of lapbooks, we talked about the pieces that she could have been cutting out and including in a notebook for her studies. This is one of the big reasons that I truly enjoy unit studies from Homeschool In The Woods, adaptability!! You can easily adapt the material to your student's abilities. If your student struggles with writing, verbally discuss materials and you can decide what to decide how much writing according to their abilities. If they thrive on hands-on activities and lapbooks, all the materials are ready for you to print and go in your downloads.
We plan on continuing to learn more about the New World Explorers in the next couple of months and graduate into the Colonial Life studies. Such a great way to learn about U.S. History and be a real time traveler as you re-create how the explorers lived.
Home School In The Woods has several individual units in the Time Travelers U.S. History studies that include:
- New World Explorers
- Colonial Life
- The American Revolution
- The Early 19th Century
- The Civil War
- The Industrial Revolution through the Great Depression
- World War 2
Through the years, we have had the opportunity to review other products from Home School In The Woods. Click on the links below to see how much we enjoyed those products also.
Homeschool In The Woods really knows how to bring history to life for your students!
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