Review: Home School In The Woods - Ancient Egypt - Simple Living. Creative Learning

Our boys have been interested in learning about Ancient Egypt for a while now, so when we were offered to review this Project Passport World Study: Ancient Egypt (3100BC to 30BC) by Home School in the Woods, they were ecstatic! We received a download version of this study, there is a cd version available for purchase as well.

Homeschool in the Woods offer many hands-on history lessons for children. It is a great way to step back into history and live what you are learning. There are many other studies available as well, such as The Middle Ages and the Renaissance and Reformation. The whole concept of these studies is to take you on a trip back into the respective time period. You are given everything you need to ‘pack’ for this journey, completing a timeline and postcards while on this amazing journey.

On first opening the pdf file, I was a little overwhelmed at how much information there was. But after reading the introduction, travel tips and planner, I was put at ease. Everything is set out for you and explained in easy to understand terms!

Included in the download or on the cd are:

All the Reading Material
Travel itineraries for the 25 Stops
Masters for Printable Projects
A list of additional resources and Travel Tips
8 Audio Tours

As the majority of the activities included are lap book or notebook related, the initial set up can be a little time consuming with all the printing out. The supplies you will need are:

Colored Cardstock
White Cardstock
Copy Paper
Lots of computer ink
1 x (3-ring) binder for you
1 x (3-ring) binder for each of your children
craft supplies for some of the activities

This program is meant to be used in a 6 to 12 week period, depending on how deeply you delve into it and how quickly and many projects your children wish to complete.

All up there are 25 stops that can easily be done one stop a day. Each stop has one or more projects to complete and as some of these could be quite time consuming, we only completed a couple of stops a week.

Each stop is clearly labelled and contains a Guide Book Text and a Travel Itinerary. After reading the introduction for each stop, we completed the activities.

The topics covered by the stops in this pack include:

Laying the Foundation – Parts I and II
Everyday Life – Parts I, II and III
Agriculture, Trade and Transportation
Education
Literature and Writing
The Sciences
Medicine and Disease
Ancient Egyptian Arts
The Great Builders
Religion and the ‘gods’
Governing the Land
The First Dynasties
From Chaos to Order and Back Again to Chaos
A Land Divided
The New Kingdom Begins
Egypt’s Most Famous Woman
The Conquering Pharoah
Akhenation and Tutankhamen
Egypt Fades Away
Ancient Egypt and the Bible
Bringing Back the Past
The Final Stop

I like to be a organised, so I printed out everything at the start and then had all the binders prepared ready for the boys before we started at Stop 1. This was one of the longer stops, as you are getting ready to embark on your amazing adventure, preparing your luggage and passport for the trip.

Our boys were really excited with this study and loved making the projects. The lap book was awesome, bringing together so much information which will bring many opportunities for review in the future as well.

Here our boys are completing the Map and the Scrapbook of Sights for the first stop.

After learning about the location of Egypt and how important the Nile River was to the people, we learnt about their clothing. Our boys really enjoyed learning about everyday life in Egypt and loved making an Egyptian cuff and Falcon Pectoral Necklace.

Learning about Mummies was one of our boys favourite part of this study. They have been interested in this for ages and have been looking forward to this stop since the beginning.

They made their mummy out of aluminium foil and masking tape as suggested in the Ancient Egypt material.

They also love learning about the Rosetta Stone and hieroglyphs.

Homeschool in the Woods makes learning so much fun! Our boys have loved completing this study, not really thinking of this as ‘schoolwork’ at all. The projects are easy to make and enjoyable, the audio tours are exciting and the newspaper writing has really encouraged our boys to start enjoying writing.

There is a lot of hands-on activities, which our boys enjoy and I find they learn more from creating things with their hands and being able to relate the material to the project they have created. We have also completed many lap books and note booking in the past, which our boys really like to do.

I loved how easy it was for me. The instructions were very clear and easy to understand, making it easy for me to have everything ready for each stop and the artwork was fantastic!

Overall, we have thoroughly enjoyed this Ancient Egypt study and would recommend it to all! This is a very thorough study, very detailed but also extremely enjoyable!

Details At a Glance!!
Name: Home School in the Woods
Product: Project Passport World Study: Ancient Egypt
Price: Download version $33.95 and CD Version $34.95
Ages: This curriculum is for children in grades 3-8, though could be used with younger children