Home School in the Woods: Project Passport World History Study: The Middle Ages Review

History is one of those subjects I have a hard time figuring out. I loved American History when I was in school and for some reason, it's one of those we haven't done a whole lot with. While I have been working on adding more history to our homeschool, this review came up and boy was it amazing! 
We got the chance to check out the Home School In The Woods program called Project Passport World History Study: The Middle Ages. This hands-on history program took us back in time to the age of knights, castles, and even the Vikings.  Home School in the Woods was developed by a homeschooling family that was looking for a way to make history interesting for their children. These programs are engaging for your children, involve all sorts of learning styles, and are chock full of activities and timeline figures to help you remember what you've learned. This award winning curriculum is a great option to add to your studies and they offer a variety of historical topics. 
What We Received... We received a full download of the Project Passport World History Study, The Middle Ages. This is a digital download product and includes items to print out, audio files, and instructions for you to teach this program. You can also get it on a CD-ROM if you choose. It will work with both your Windows and Mac programs.  The digital download file includes everything you need to teach about the Middle Ages. Start off with your Travel Itinerary. This goes over each "stop" you'll make along your journey. There are 25 stops in the Middle Ages and for us, a stop was usually a day or two , sometimes longer. You could stretch out the stops themselves by adding in extra studies on the areas of your travels. The curriculum itself says that the travel is around 6-12 weeks long. 

Each stop has corresponding printouts to work on. There's the reading information that you print to tell you all about the area of interest. The reading material can be read aloud to your students or they could work independently depending on age. For us, I read it out loud to him and he would work on the timeline. Other activities involved with the program include: - Map work - Newspaper articles - Recipes/Dining out guide - Postcards from famous people during the age - Lapbook projects - And the list keeps going!!!  How we used it... First we created our luggage and passport. This was very simple to make using items we already had around the house. I made up a binder for Boo Bear to put all his timeline pictures, newspaper articles and other work in as we worked with the project.

Each day would start out with the reading on the stop. There is typically one to three pages of information that I would read aloud about the area and time period. It goes over special events and the wars or battles fought during that time period. Boo Bear would work on adding his famous characters and symbols to his timeline as I read. We put it all in our Scrapbook of Sights to keep everything we saw along the way together in one place. 

After we went over our information for the day and added our characters, we would work on the projects listed to help with remembering the information. These included items such as mapping out invasions, recipes of the time, and filling out our newspaper. The newspaper articles are a great way for your children to use their imagination. They can write out an article as a journalist and it will also be a great refresher to go back to at the end.  What we thought... This was a lot of fun for both of us. Creating the binder and materials took hardly anytime at all as it was items I had here. I did the cutting out of the luggage as it was a little harder for him to do alone. 

The information is very thorough and you can work with as many of the activities as you want. We spaced them out, such as the newspaper writing, over a day or two simply because he's a boy and you know boys and their handwriting.  There is a lot of information and items to go with your study so you get a very solid foundation and education on the topic, in my opinion. The hands-on activities are fabulous for those learners who learn easier by doing than by hearing only.  The Passport Collection offers tours to Ancient Egypt and to the Renaissance Era. If you're ready to pack up and go on an adventure without ever leaving your home, this is surely the way to do it. You'll feel right in the heart of the action with all the extras including the dramatized audio files that are included.  I highly recommend you check out this award winning curriculum option for your upcoming school year. You're sure to love how easy it is to work with and well put together it is. Your kids are going to love seeing new places and trying new things while they are in their own house.  Check them out on social media at: Facebook Twitter Pinterest Google + Discover other Project Passport adventures by clicking the link below and reading about other TOS Crew members experiences!