Make history memorable and a lot more fun with a hands-on project based homeschool curriculum from Home School in the Woods.
Disclosure: I was compensated for my time reviewing Home School in the Woods, but all opinions are honest – I want to help YOU in your choice of homeschool curriculum!
The Best Homeschool History Curriculum For Kids – lapbooks, hands-on projects, and more!
There are a few curriculum companies and products that have been such a slam dunk in our homeschool experience that I simply don’t shut up about them. I tell everyone and anyone who will listen about them – because they’re just that good.
Home School in the Woods tops my list of homeschool history curriculum sources that I feel so strongly about. Maybe it’s because history is not my easiest or most natural subject to teach. It doesn’t hurt that my kids love arts and crafts either. We also learned right at the beginning that my homeschool teaching style looks nothing like reading a text and answering questions.
I want our homeschool history lessons to be fun, interactive, and experiential. All these reasons make Home School in the Woods my family’s all time favorite homeschool history curriculum we’ve ever used.
Take a look at Home School in the Woods:
- All digital downloads with easy to navigate teacher’s manual. You’ll print & prep all materials yourself.
- Very affordable, use with subsequent kids
- Project based! Hands-on activities help kids really understand and remember what they learn
- Works well for teaching multiple ages at once
- Many products contain Christian content
- Great for crafty kids
- Great for moms who don’t like teaching history OR who really want to go deeper into history lessons
Scroll down for a coupon & a giveaway!
My girls absolutely loved making their history lapbooks!
New World Explorers – A Hands-On History Curriculum
We have purchased and completed a few different units over our homeschool years, but one of our favorites was the New World Explorers. We learned all about why countries sent out explorers to find new lands and what life was like for them. We learned about gold doubloons and the anatomy of a ship.
We mapped the routes of famous explorers from Leif Eriksson and Columbus, to Ferdinan Magellan and Hernando Cortes. We studied Native American tribes and mapped them on the Americas. We wrapped up with John Smith and James Cook, having learned all about what it was like to be a New World Explorer.
My girls’ beautiful lapbooks:
Isn't this the cutest lapbook cover you've seen? I can never throw these away!
This was a mega lapbook - one of the biggest we'd ever made. I'm all about hands on projects, printables, and paper crafts which is why I just love these history studies so much!
Many of the projects your kids work on throughout the year become part of the lapbook that they complete at the end of the unit.
We really like the wheel reference projects and the pop-up pieces as well! Lapbooks just make history lessons so much more fun 🙂
The little mini books for each explorer was a great way to remember key facts for each explorer. It made it really helpful to have a reference as well in case we got them mixed up.
An Affordable History Curriculum That’s Easy On Homeschool Parents
The texts are all included within the teacher’s manual – a local webpage that organizes ALL materials so simply and makes it very easy to use. What’s great about this is that you can print everything all at once and make one big binder for yourself. OR, you can print weekly.
If you don’t want to print it, it’s super easy to use on your computer. I often did a screencast to my tv from my laptop and we read the text together as a family, taking turns reading it from the tv.
The digital local website organizes all your lesson plans, project pages, and various resources to they're available with just a few clicks. So helpful!
The digital teacher's manual is so well organized that it's incredibly easy to reference throughout your study. This means you can print and prep everything all at once, or reference your lesson materials whenever it's convenient for you.
Components Of A Curriculum From Home School In The Woods:
- The lapbook. Throughout the unit, many of the hands on projects are pieces your kids will add to their mega lapbooks. The lapbook for the New World Explorers is really great! We loved making the Navigational Equipment wheel and it was really fun to have all the little mini books for each explorer we studied. As an added bonus, this becomes a useful reference when talking about explorers later on.
- The timeline. We made long timelines by printing out the templates and taping them together. They fold accordion style and tuck neatly in the student binder. When you study a new explorer, your kids cut out the timeline figures and paste them into their timelines.
- The activities. Each lesson includes a short two page text lesson followed by a variety of activities. Most of these activities are of the cut, color, and paste variety, but there are some fun art projects and cooking projects you can do as well. We had so much fun coffee staining paper and making a captain’s log for each kiddo. They absolutely loved writing in them!
- The games. I love that the units from Home School in the Woods includes print and play games that go along with the lessons. We loved playing Merchant Marauder and trading our doubloons.
- The teacher’s manual. Your download will include all your digital files tucked away into a file folder. There is a local webpage included in the download and this is how you will navigate all the materials. I can’t tell you how incredibly helpful this is! It’s so crazy easy to find exactly what you’re looking for. As a bonus, there are pictures of the completed lapbook so you can get some help with assembling it. You can print all the lesson and project pages for the whole unit and assemble a binder. Or, try what I did sometimes and read from your computer or screencast to your TV and have your kids take turns reading the lessons.
Get $10 off any purchase:
A Homeschool History Curriculum That Works For All Your Kids At Once
If you have just one or two kids this will be a sweet curriculum to do together. One of the best things about it, however, is that it’s so conducive to teaching your whole family of various ages of kids. I was always able to find pieces of the projects that my youngest could do at the table with us and feel included. The best part was going on this adventure together as a family!
“Home School In The Woods is the history curriculum company I can’t stop telling people about. When you complete a unit like New World Explorers, your family not only learns history through experiencing it, they’re also making memories they’ll be talking about forever.” -Christy from pk1kids.com
I just love that all my kids could work on their history projects together at the table. We made so many wonderful family memories working on Home School in the Woods studies!
We made pullout timelines that go in the student binders. Pro tip: use envelopes to store the timeline figures and mini books for each kid.
The lapbook is not the only project you'll work on in this curriculum. There are all sorts of fun hands on projects like this Anatomy of a Ship reference, knot tying, paper staining, and so many more!
We made layover maps and charted each explorer's route to the new world.
My crafty girls love Home School in the Woods history curriculum so much they talk about it with their friends 🙂
Learn Beyond The Textbook & Experience History
One of the absolute best parts of Home School in the Woods curriculum is that you get to learn what life was like during the time period you’re studying. Instead of just trying to memorize facts and figures, you’re learning what kids would wear then, what life was really like stuck on a boat for months at a time, what types of beds people slept in, etc. These details about real life had my kids hooked as they imagined themselves in the time period.
Sorry to say, that classic method of read a chapter, answer questions, just doesn’t work well for my family. When we do projects and create when learning, my kids retain so much more of the information they learn. We also end up having fun and memorable experiences together during history and this helps everyone enjoy a subject that I really didn’t like when I was in school.
My kids loved writing about the events they were studying and creating their own fun advertisements.
We loved how there was always a creative activity to go along with what we were learning with the history lessons.
How can you teach history when it’s not your favorite subject?
Many homeschool moms struggle with teaching history because the dreaded it themselves when they were in school. If history isn’t your favorite subject, choose an alternative style history curriculum like the craft focused Home School in the Woods. By creating hands on history projects and learning what life was really like living at different times during history, you and your kids may find history becoming your #1 favorite school subject.
Hands-On History Projects You’ll Want To Keep Forever
The only big downside to Home School in the Woods is that you’ll never want to throw away your kids’ finished homeschool history projects! That can be a good thing because you’ll find yourself pulling them out to reference. The lapbooks in particular are a big accomplishment that your kids finish at the end of the year that shows all their hard work.
A Variety of Activities & Projects Will Make This Your Kids’ New Favorite History Curriculum
All the units from Home School in the Woods have a variety of activities that go with the lessons. The great thing is that you can pick and choose which projects you want to work on based on what you feel will work best for your family.
“Kids remember what they experience. Bring your homeschool lessons to life by choosing a curriculum that uses crafts, projects, and lots of activities like all the wonderful units from Home School in the Woods.” -Christy, pk1kids.com
We absolutely loved the file folder games included in our New World Explorers homeschool history curriculum.
A Homeschool History Curriculum You’ll Instantly Fall In Love With
Home School in the Woods curriculum is a wonderful blend of captivating stories and history context, and time at the kitchen table with scissors and glue. So many days of fun and interesting conversations amid flying scraps of paper make me think of this curriculum so fondly. I’d take a moment to look at the serious crafting going on around me and listen to my kids talk about what it was like to be on a boat for months in the middle of the ocean and think to myself, “this is what homeschooling is all about.”
I think that’s why I really do love Home School in the Woods so much. Not only are my kids really learning about history and enjoying it, our lessons have given me those picture perfect homeschool moments of laughing together and working on projects. I will always have a special place in my heart for Home School in the Woods.
The history lapbooks are a fun way to showcase the many projects your kids have done throughout the year.
This was a really fun game where we got to spend our doubloons and acquire items. Games make homeschool history really fun!
How to help your child love history:
- Immerse Yourselves In Stories – Read and listen to stories about real life at different times throughout history.
- Embrace The Crafts – When kids craft and create, they remember more about what they learn.
- Get Into Cooking – Build connections to different times and cultures by cooking related food dishes.
- Explore Lapbooks – Create a hands on history lapbook project that helps your kids connect to all aspects of historical life.
- Create History Projects – Working on larger projects is a wonderful way to solidify all your kids have learned about a time period.
- Use Home School in the Woods – Accomplish all this easily by choosing a hands on history unit from Home School in the Woods
My kids loved making these captains logs! We stained paper and dried it, then covered some cardstock with fabric and bound the books together. The wrote in these notebooks and described some voyages.
One of the many fun printable projects that go in the student binder - a core component of this history curriculum.
Each history lesson starts with a couple pages of text to read together as a family. Then you'll work through the projects on the Projects page however it best fits into your schedule. There's also suggested pacing guide that really helps.
Take a look at two great series from Home School in the Woods:
Time Travelers U.S. History Studies:
- New World Explorers
- Colonial Life
- The American Revolution
- The Early 19th Century
- The Civil War
- The Industrial Revolution through the Great Depression
- World War II
Project Passport World History Studies:
- Ancient Egypt
- Ancient Greece
- Ancient Rome
- The Middle Ages
- Renaissance & Reformation
Begin to Love History Again With Home School in the Woods
I hope you’ll take a look at these wonderful history curriculum units from Home School in the Woods. I know you’ll have such wonderful times crafting with your kids and taking delightful adventures. You’ll play games together, and build an amazing lapbook project that will remind you of all those great memories.
If you want some more encouragement and ideas for teaching history to your kids, take a look at these helpful articles from Home School in the Woods:
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I hope you enjoyed this review of Home School in the Woods.
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Blessings,
Christy
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