Training Happy Hearts: Get Hands-On with Ancient Greece ! {A Home School in the Woods Review}

Thursday, August 2, 2018

Get Hands-On with Ancient Greece ! {A Home School in the Woods Review}

If you like history and hands-on learning, you will love Project Passport World History Studies by Home School in the Woods!

We have been enjoying the Ancient Greece study recently and, like everything we've tried before from Home School in the Woods, we have found the quality of the Greece study to be top-notch.

What is Project Passport: Greece?

The Project Passport World History Study Ancient Greece is a resource that makes learning Greece hands-on and memorable. The study has depth, breadth, flexibility, and fun!
You can use the complete curriculum as a deep, hands-on study of Ancient Greece, or you can pick and choose projects based on specific topics that catch your interest. You can also do as many or as few projects as your life and learning schedule allow, since projects can stand alone or can complement one another. That means that the Ancient Greece study can work equally well as a stand-alone curriculum our as a stellar supplementary one.

However you choose to use the Ancient Greece study, you are sure to find yourself immersed in active learning and review alongside your children!

Text portions are well researched and written, directions are explicit and easy-to-follow, and projects are engaging and often punctuated by delightful hand-drawn illustrations.

Make Up to 25 Stops on Your Virtual Journey Through Ancient Greece

Project Passport World History Studies Ancient Greece is recommended for students in Grades 3-8 and is available in a CD format or as a digital download, which is what my family received.

The download version comes "zipped". Once unzipped, the download has multiple folders and files accessible in your document folders or through a handy "start" button, which automatically opens a hyperlinked welcome page that makes navigating the copious amount of included files easy. By clicking on the "start" button, you can easily get on with your learning journey without having to wonder, Where do I begin and how do all these files work together?

Included in the curriculum are 25 "stops", or lessons, which will take you 8-12 weeks to complete if done as suggested. However, as I said before, the curriculum is flexible. You can use it at any pace that works for your family, dipping in here and there, doing the entire thing in order, choosing portions that speak to your children's learning styles...

My family tends to use things in spurts, picking and choosing activities based on our interests and time availability. As we've been journeying through Ancient Greece with Home School in the Woods, we have typically checked out some of the included photos of completed projects, read through the menu of specific topics, and, then, let the children work on a select maps, timeline portions, or mini-projects, while I have read the Guidebook (or text) to them, just starting at the beginning and stopping when time for our studies ends on a given day, then picking up where we left off on another day.

As I have read and the children have worked, we have paused to chat about different points that come up. This has been working well for us, and I find, therefore, that this curriculum is one I like to do with my children, not one that I would hand over them and say, "Here, go to it!"

I like being present and reading the Guidebook to the children, so I can learn and discuss as they do.

Undoubtedly, there is plenty to learn! Lessons cover a bit of everything - both in specific topics about Ancient Greece (from clothing to government, to mythology, to geography, to people, to so much more) and in ways materials are presented (as maps, lapbook pieces, timelines, printable mini-projects, cooking projects, building projects, etc.) There are even audio tour portions! Love that!

Plans are laid out with clear instructions for what you'll need to print, what extra materials -such as scissors, colored pencils, tape, glue, file folders, cooking supplies, etc. - that you will need to gather, and how you might wish to approach each lesson segment.

There are also visual snapshots of completed lessons projects, so you can get an idea of what each might look like, or, as I said my children and I do, my children use the pictures, to help you decide which portions of the study to do next.

Being able to quickly get a handle of what projects are about and might entail through looking at the photos as well as through browsing the well-named links on the "start" page, handy icons on that page, and linked quick-look instructions is a huge perk of the curriculum. For truth be told, there are so many projects included in the study, that I know my family will never get to them all.

My time and patience for printing materials is limited and my family's schedule always leans towards "full", so, while we love Project Passport World History Studies, we simply can not commit to "doing it all". The well-organized nature of the studies and the awesome sneak peak pictures of completed projects, then, help us to decide what we can and will do. Decisions made, we dive in, and without exception, always enjoy our time journeying through history with Home School in the Woods. We believe you will, too.

Seriously, the Ancient Greece study is fantastic! Taken in part or as a whole it promotes engaged, hand-on learning. There are other Project Passport World History Studies, too, including a just-released Rome one we hope to do in the future.

What We Think about Project Passport: Ancient Greece

By now, it is no secret that the only part of the Ancient Greece study I do not relish is all the separate files for printing. (I would much prefer files bundled into single documents per type of study - lapbook, mapping, craft instructions, or, better yet, per stop, so I could simply open one document, select pages to print, hit print once, walk away, then, come back to enjoy learning alongside my children.)

Still, the time and relative tedium it takes to do all the printing is well worth it.

Why?

Because each of my children enjoys Project Passport studies and, once we are all sitting together immersed in them, I thoroughly enjoy the time, too.

No kidding. We sat down to do a brief amount with the study this past week and found ourselves late running out the door over an hour later because we got so pleasantly caught up in what we were doing that the time flew by! You just have to love a resource that engages like that!

When I asked my children for their thoughts on the study so far, my 11-year-old daughter said:

I really like this Project Passport World History Study on Ancient Greece. It has coloring sheets and glue projects you can do while Mom is reading. That entertains your hands while the reading entertains your mind.

I also enjoyed making a clay pot and helping my brother with his helmet. These are two of the many crafts suggested in the study.

I think this study is good, because there are lots of different things. If one person prefers reading, another prefers copying, another drawing, another pasting... there is all of that in there. There are many different ways to learn about Greece in this study. I really like it!

Obviously, she enjoys the hand-on nature of the curriculum and also appreciates how different parts of it can appeal to different learning styles.

My 8-year-old son said:

I like the crafting, pasting, and coloring. Mom has not been doing as much of this with us lately, and I really like it. I also liked learning about Ancient Greece because it is easy and fun.

So far, I like making the helmet the best. We did not have everything we needed, so I looked at the directions and came up with other ideas. I used a toy workers hat duct tape, foam, and cardstock and plan to cover the cardstock with duct tape and try spray painting it all.

I think people who like crafting, coloring, pasting, and history would like this!

I'd say his comments are spot on and would like to highlight that, while my son always doe well with creativity and problem-solving, the clearly written directions for the helmet and the inspirational photos included in the downloads spurred him to easily figure out how to use the pattern and idea for the helmet with the materials we had on hand. It brought him such joy to do so!

My 12-year-old son said:

I wanted to do this study for the costumes, but have not done that part, because we have been so busy and, when we have sat down to use the study I have not been feeling the best. So, instead, I have listened to Mom read the history parts, done some mapping, and done the Aesop tales.

I like the way the history is written. It has a good style and is interesting. Now, I know why the period is called the Hellenistic period. I learned some new things and made connections to other things I have learned.

I did not like the fact that there is cutting and pasting for the maps, so we printed the key map instead and just colored and found places.

I think this study would be good for people who like history as well as for those who think they hate it. Sometimes history is taught poorly, but this study great. It's not just names and dates. It is stories and activities.

Between a busy schedule out of the house, trouble sleeping, and a summer bug, my oldest has not been himself each time we have sat down with this study. Yet, he has been drawn into things and has also appreciated how we can adapt to his glue-hating ways. (We use the teacher keys instead of the cut-n-pastes for him.) He also has noted what I note: the Project Passport Study can make history engaging for anyone - even those who think they don't like history.

We love history here. We also appreciate opportunities for family learning, curriculum resources we can stop and start with as life demands, and well-designed options that help us create memories as we expand knowledge.

Project Passport World History Studies Ancient Greece is all this and more. It is a fantastic hands-on resource that can be used as a base curriculum or as a supplement to other studies, with you picking and choosing which included projects to complete.

Well-researched materials engage the mind. Inviting hand-drawn artwork makes for wonderful coloring, painting, or just looking. A wide variety of activities appeal to visual, kinesthetic, and auditory senses. Everything included in the study is, without question, top notch.

Home School in the Woods offers a wide variety of products, some in-depth, some one-shot, all well worth a look.