Review: Home School in the Woods

Time for another awesome review! This one was from Home School in the Woods and we were chosen to review: HISTORY Through the Ages Project Passport World History Study: Ancient Egypt. We received our copy of this program digitally. It was incredibly simple. We got a zip file, unzipped it, and stored it in our "homeschool" folder on our computer. Everything we needed to get started was included right in those files. They were all PDF's which were easy to open and access. Even those of you who aren't very technologically literate, should be able to follow this program pretty easily.

The curriculum for this unit is designed to be done in about 8-12 weeks. It is technically for kids in grades 3-8, however, I did the program with my two boys who are in second grade as well as my pre-K daughter. The boys were able to easily follow and my daughter hung right with us. In fact, I let my three-year-old tag along many days and just let her scribble and color over her own set of papers and it worked out quite well!

I took a video of a day that all four of my kiddos got involved. You will see that I was able to tailor the lesson depending on their age while they worked. (And no big surprise that my three-year-old was most concerned with the smell of her scented marker than anything else.)

The unit includes nearly every facet of Egyptian life you can imagine: everyday life, agriculture, trade, education, writing, the sciences, the arts, great builder and their architecture, religion, medicine, government, the dynasties, kingdoms, famous pharaohs, fitting Egypt into the Bible, archaeology, and tons more! There is more included in this unit than you could ever possibly do. You really have to pick and choose what fits for your family and your kids. 

Here are just a few pictures of my kiddos as they prepared their travel suitcases and passports for this adventure:

Abigail isn't in Kindergarten yet, but she thoroughly enjoyed the unit and while she sometimes wandered away mid-unit, she usually stayed right with us until the very end.

The boys had a blast with this unit. We are only halfway through it and will definitely be seeing it through to the end. This is Sidge who is 8 and in the 2nd grade.

Isaac doesn't love that I post his picture, so he agreed to let me get a photo of him coloring. He is also 8 and in the second grade.

Each lesson is called a "Stop". These are designed to be about the length of what you would do in one day, but you are encouraged to do more than one "Stop" in a day or stretch them out over multiple days depending how long they take and how many of the things in the "Stop" you choose to do. There were a lot of art projects that were a little too complicated for us (or I didn't have the materials for them.) I would just skip those and move onto something else that fit us a bit better. 

Each of the stops has text that I, the teacher, am "assigned" to read. These are PDF's in the zipped folder. Very easy to utilize! I am also given an "itinerary" for each stop which tells us what we can do on that particular lesson.

There are also 10 MP3s which feature things like "Touring Down the Nile" which is an incredibly well-done little audio bit (9 minutes long for example). These are not throw together. The quality is very good and the detail is good! There are sound effects, and I was impressed by how well my kids sat and listened.

I wanted to take a special moment to mention that Home School in the Woods recently added Ancient Greece to their items for purchase. In addition, Ancient Rome will be out in 2018. You can find out more about Home School in the Woods by visiting them on Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, or Twitter (@HSintheWoods).

As always, please do not hesitate to contact me at wkitsteiner@gmail.com or on Facebook if you would like to ask me personal questions about this product. You can also leave a comment and I will reply. I know elementary parents often struggle with what to do for history, and this is a very inexpensive and well-done option.