Several months ago I shared about our hands-on history Ancient Greece unit study we did a few years ago. At the time I thought I had a pretty definitive list of cool history lessons for ancient Greece, well I was wrong. I felt like a quick review was in order a few months ago and I’d been curious about a new product from Home School in the Woods*, so I tried out Project Passport: Ancient Greece* from Home School in the Woods.
TLDR: this is awesome use it, scroll to the bottom for my ideal hands-on history curriculum order and a giveaway
(This post is sponsored by Homeschool in the Woods, all opinions are my own, and to be completely honest I’ve bought several of their products before, the list will be at the bottom, so I’d probably have bought it anyways, extra note links with an asterisk are affiliate links)
Why this is a perfect compliment to our old Ancient Greece unit study
As I went through all of the materials, and like any well-designed unit study, there is way too much to do in Project Passport. I sat there looking through all of the material and thought, “This isn’t a review unit, this is an amazing unit that’s going to be my spine in two years when we cycle back to Ancient history, fingers crossed by then they also have a Project Passport Rome to go with their slowly growing stack of units (I also have their Time Travelers: Explorers, Colonial America, American Revolution, and I think early 19th century, oh and Project Passport Middle Ages, read to the bottom for my ideal timeline of hands-on history curriculum).
Project Passport: Ancient Rome is scheduled to be out 2018, no need for crossed fingers anymore. Now for them to add Persians to their Project Passport list and my ancient history study will be complete.
Here’s the thing, I’m great at coming up with fun activities, but I don’t want to figure out the textbook, and I really don’t enjoy making notebooking pages or lapbook pages.
You know who does?
The people from Home School in the Woods, and they make really cool ones (like this one from their American Revolution study). And they came up with more projects for me to do with the kids (keep reading and you’ll see the one we did for our review unit), and a fun audio story for us to listen to as we worked on our project.
Now, when I used their Time Traveler US history sets I didn’t have an e-reader of any sort, so I printed all of those texts out. They’re still sitting on my bookshelf to be used again someday. You can save a bunch of ink now if you have an e-reader, I still like to have printouts from time to time, so I may print it. We’ll see.
I loaded up the adventures to my phone and we happily listened to them as we worked, and the kids were able to recall what we’d read earlier AND what we’d studied a few years ago, so they worked great for reminders.
Sorry, I got distracted looking at their Pinterest boards and lost my train of thought, I was trying to look something up and instead found a recipe for apple cider to go with their colonial studies……
As we listened and worked on our projects the kids kept commenting with different things:
“I remember the Greeks had columns!”
“Oh wait we talked about that before, that was that whole thing with the bridge!”
I seriously cannot wait to dig into this as our main study, and not a review. It’s going to be awesome.
How to modify Project Passport lapbooks for kids with fine-motor problems
My kids do not have fine motor problems, what they have is “I hate cutting out all this stuff Mom” attitude. They also have, “I don’t want to color all these pictures because you told me to” attitude.
Now, when I don’t expect them to, they spend great amounts of time adding details. But, here’s the modifications I made.
For the timeline, instead of printing out the student copy I printed out the Teacher’s master. This makes a great compromise. They have the materials to look through (and I love the visuals, it’s the same ones they use for their timeline figures (side note, here’s our re-usable timeline to go with those figures)). This got them happily looking through the pictures, AND they can color pictures as they want to for the story.
For the Project Passport maps, I also printed out the Teacher’s master. I learned back when we did the Time Travelers: New World Explorers my kids do not like coloring maps. Like that got tears, now that was 5 years ago, but still TEARS!
The actual lapbook pieces of this awesome hands-on history curriculum I used my paper cutter* whenever possible (I love this paper cutter because it uses the same blade as my rotary cutter for fabric, so when the blade is too dull for fabric it becomes a paper blade). If my kids are only asked to cut out a few things here and there, it makes things so much better.
Side note, I love how Selena over at Look! We’re Learning used Project Passport and she printed some of the pieces on colored paper. That is brilliant! I SHOULD have done that, and wish I had.
I almost forgot our awesome hands on history project!
Make Greek Armor
Now the Project Passport suggestion was to make armor for yourself, but I decided to save that for our in-depth study in two years (yes I do plan out my curriculum that far in advance). We opted to scale down the instructions and make one for our dolls instead.
The kids happily sewed and cut out our felt. The boys opted to not make their armor removable, whereas Princess and I made our armor removable with a few buttons.
I just discovered Home School in the Woods Facebook page has history facts shared, totally following that, how did I not know this already? I also just realized I’ve been using their newsletter for my “This Day in history” facts I occasionally share on my Facebook page. Go figure.
My ideal hands-on history curriculum timeline
Now some of these are not created yet, and I have no clue if Home School in the Woods* has plans for these, but here’s what I’d love to see happen (these are all affiliate links).
Project Passport: Ancient Egypt (don’t own it yet)
Project Passport: Ancient Mesopotamia**- this could include Persia, Babylon and all that since none of these empires last the length to be a full unit, I’d probably hop back and forth between it and…..
Project Passport: Ancient Greece
Project Passport: Ancient Rome (coming out in 2018)
Project Passport: Renaissance and Reformation/ Time Travelers: New World (these two overlap in time periods, by necessity it covers the Explorers more)
Time Travelers: Colonial America (where we learned about making presentations)
Time Travelers: American Revolution
Well, you get the idea, just walk on down the Time Travelers hands on history curriculum, my only caveat to that is the Time Travelers series, while a great hands-on history curriculum is American history, so it’s not going to cover the material around the world. Maybe Home School in the Woods will continue with their Project Passport for more World history? I look forward to finding out and will continue to read their newsletters for updates on this hands-on history curriculum.
** I have no clue if this will ever exist as a product, just expressing my interest…..
Win the entire Project Passport line (so far)
If you are international and you win, you will get a downloadable copy instead of the CDs.
Interested to learn more about our hands-on history lessons?
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