Studying Ancient Greece is Fun! – Home School in the Woods Review

Home School in the Woods is one of my favorite history curriculum vendors so I was thrilled to be able to review HISTORY Through the Ages Project Passport World History Study: Ancient Greece. I’m serious, if you have never checked out Home School in the Woods history products, you are MISSING OUT! THEY ARE AWESOME!

You can read our previous reviews of their products here: Home School in the Wood’s Hands-On Activity Pak: Composers and Project Passport World History Study: The Middle Ages.

The kids and I are having so much fun with this product. Taking out history study to another level is great and having fun doing the projects and learning at the same time makes it a great combination.

What You Get

Home School in the Woods products are available in digital download or CD and are a great way to do some hands-on history. We received the digital download of the HISTORY Through the Ages Project Passport World History Study: Ancient Greece so I will tell you about it, though the CD is the same except its all on the CD for you instead of in a .zip file, which is how your digital download comes through.

Your download includes everything you need studying Ancient Greece in this case. The Ancient Greece study is considered for grades 3-8, though we used with my 2nd grader and my 6th grader together and it worked great. So you can definitely use for all ages in my opinion. The Ancient Greece Project Passport covers 25 “stops” with hands-on activities and projects throughout. During your time studying Ancient Greece, you will be studying and meeting interesting people from Ancient Greece including topics like Greek Government, Everyday Life, Business, Education, Science, the Arts, Philosophy, Athena and Sparta, Alexander the Great, Archaeology and so much more I couldn’t even list them. It’s amazing what this little (well, gigantic) .zip file contains.

The study is meant to be approximately 6-12 weeks, depending on how you decide to do it. We did one stop per week, reading one day and doing the activities another. But this study is so flexible you can really do however works best for you. You could do more than one stop a week or an activity a day. I love the flexibility of this curriculum.

Your download includes activities such as:

creative writing activities
“dining out” guide
file folder games
maps
“postcards from famous folks”
souvenir craft cards
Scrapbook of Sights
Newspaper “Greek Weekly”
Snapshot Moments in History Scrapbook timeline
eight dramatized audio tours (over 1 hour of listening) – you can hear a sample here
and lap book projects and more

The download includes step-by-step directions and master files of images to see completed projects and activities. You also received travel tips, teacher keys quick stop itinerary, and a travel planner. There are even cover options for your Scrapbook of Sights where you keep everything you work on and complete on your journey.

How it Works

The first thing you do when you download this awesome hands-on history is breathe and read through the guide. The installation is easy and the files are very intuitive and user-friendly. It seems overwhelming if you have never done them before because of all the files but the step-by-step instruction included in the Stop Itineraries is easy to understand and follow. Every activity is spelled out. You don’t have to do all the activities included, you just pick what you want to work on in your studies.

If you have never done a HISTORY Through the Ages Project Passport World History Study, you will need to get your passport ready. This is a fun activity and then can be used on all further passport studies you do with Home School in the Woods, which is pretty fun. Your kids can get stamps in their passports with each one completed. (The fun stamps are included.)

Then you get started. Stop #1 is long because you have the passport and luggage setup and starting off your binder and timeline but after that, the stops aren’t too labor intensive. And, again, the step by step is very well explained. The kids enjoy putting the timeline photos on their timeline.

And since we like the focus on geography in our homeschool, we definitely decided to include the geography mapping that is part of the study. The kids are labeling the maps themselves, though there are cut out words that are included if you prefer to cut out and glue on the labels for your maps.

The Stop Itineraries are very easy to read and help you know what to cover each day. The stops can be read on the computer or you can print them out. To save paper I just read them on the computer then move over to the text and read on the computer as well. Though I’m sure you could print them out if you wanted. But that would be a lot of paper.

The text each day is just like a book or textbook. You read from it for that day and then move on to the activities. I read this to the kids each time but older kids that can read well could certainly read it themselves without any issues. The amount covered each day is very manageable and is a good amount of reading for each week or day, depending upon how you decide to do it.

What We Thought

We loved the study of Ancient Greece. One of my sons favorites was the postcards we received from famous people. Postcards from Famous Folks was fun. The kids get to draw on the back of the postcard and read a note from the famous people like Agamemnon, Asclepius, Pheidippides and Plate, to name a few.

Overall, we are really enjoying our HISTORY Through the Ages Project Passport World History Study: Ancient Greece study and look forward to completing it. We did not complete it during the review period as we only do a stop each week but we are looking forward to completing the study and getting another stamp in our passport. You can check out a complete sample lesson here.

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