If you love learning American History, then you will want to try out the History Through the Ages: Time Travelers American series by Home School in the Woods.

Home School In the Woods Publishing produces creative “hands on” Curriculum and Historical Timelines.  They specialize in teaching history with fun projects that will interest your kids and keep their interest by involving all their senses in the learning adventure.  We are currently reviewing Industrial Revolution through Great Depression in the Time Travelers American series.

HISTORY Through the Ages
Time Travelers American History Study: The Industrial Revolution through the Great Depression

25 Hands On History Lessons

Covering 70 years of American History

From The Industrial Revolution through the Great Depression.

Suggested grades: 3-8

For individual family use.

Format: CD or Download (Mac & PC Compatible)

Download $27.95

CD $28.95

This curriculum is loaded with printable lessons, printable activity masters, a sample schedule, teacher tips, photos of every projects, resource lists, teacher keys, a “guide-at-a-glance”, and more.

Choose the curriculum format, either CD or Download, that best meets your needs. You will need a computer and printer to use this curriculum.  You will also need a 3-ring binder for the parent/teacher, and a 3-ring binder for each of your students to store everything.

Other items needed include folders, printing / copy paper, card stock paper, colored pencils, glue, tape, scissors, plus a few other items for various projects.

25 HANDS ON HISTORY LESSONS!

The Industrial Revolution through the Great Depression contains 25 History Lessons filled with fun hands on activities .

The lessons and activities cover many changes in American history that occurred from the end of the 1800’s to the early 1900’s (approximately 1869 to 1939) as America became a modern industrialized country.

Topics include:

• The Transcontinental Railroad
• Growth & Expansion of the Nation
• The Indian Wars
• The Gilded Age
• The Spanish-American War
• WWI
• Innovations & Inventors
• Immigration
• Orphans
• Woman’s Suffrage Movement
• People of Interest who Made America Great
• Business Tycoons
• Working Conditions
• The Progressive Era
• The Roaring 20s
• The Stock Market Crash
• The Dust Bowl
• and much more!

The lessons are very organized and easy to follow.  Each lesson can be completed in an hour if projects are pared down, or can be stretched out over a few days to include all the projects suggested for that lesson. Pages and projects are coded so that you always know what lesson and what projects go together.  There are printable lessons, project pages, project masters, information sheets, photos of completed projects, teacher helps, and more. There is a sample lesson plan schedule that you can use, or you can skip around and mix up the lessons if it suits your needs.

These History Studies are presented in a cross curricular Unit Study method. They include History, Art, Science, Engineering, Music, Creative Writing, Penmanship, Clothing, Cooking, Research, and more.  The lessons are flexible and can be adapted to the needs of various skill levels and age ranges.  In addition to the lessons, and activities provided, there are lists of materials needed, a section with additional resources and suggestions for books to read, videos to watch, and internet subjects to explore.  You can choose to do as many of the suggested hands on activities and projects for each lesson as you wish.

Depending on how many activities you want to do, and how often you do a lesson, will determine how long this curriculum will take to complete.  For example, you can do 1 lesson a week and the suggested activities and this study should last 25 weeks, or you could go faster and complete 3 lessons a week and finish in about 8 weeks or so.  Or go super fast and complete 1 lessen per day and finish in as little as 5 weeks.  It is up to you how fast or slow you wish to go, and how many of the activities you wish to do, to learn the materials covering this period in history. Over 50 activities and projects are included.

Project & Activities

Here are just a few of the 50+ suggested activities and projects:

• Suspension Bridge
• Wright Brothers “Flyer”
• Train & Railroad Booklet
• America Grows: Mapping the New States
• Penny Rug
• Yo-Yo Quilt
• Paper Tole Craft
• Flip Book
• WWI Silk Postcards
• Creative Writing
• Fact File Cards
• Trade Cards
• Penmanship Pages
• Turn of the Centuries Scenes Game
• File Folder Games
• Notebooking Activities
• Timeline of History
• Experiments
• Depression Era Recipes
• Depression-Era Dinner
• A Lap Book with 12 Lap Book Projects

A really cool aspect of this curriculum, is that in addition to all of the hands on projects your kids will get to create, and learning about historical events and wars that helped shaped the nation, they also learn several things about the culture of America during these years.  They learn about the impact of industry and the making and selling of goods and services and also how disasters (natural and man-made) shaped the culture.

The early American culture was made up of hard working immigrants from around the world and native Americans, and in this curriculum you learn about their influence in music, clothing, art, theater / early movies, and also learn about “American” food during this time in history.

Kids get the opportunity to make recipes in several of the lessons.  They also create a recipe box for their final Lap Book to store the recipes in.   At the end of the course they can throw a dinner party for guests or family members.  For this party they decorate from the era, recreate the recipes for a special meal, and play games from this period in history as a final project pulling together all the fun they have had learning about this time in America’s history.

Recipes and corresponding lessons include:

• Chipped Beef on Toast (Lesson 5)
• Poor Man’s Meal (Lesson 5)
• Buttered Noodles with Cracker Crumble (Lesson 10)
• Meatless Loaf (Lesson 10)
• Corned Beef Hash (Lesson 15)
• Shepherd’s Pie (Lesson 15)
• Chocolate and Rice Pudding (Lesson 20)
• Depression Cake (Lesson 20)
• Tuna, Mac, & Cheese Casserole (Lesson 23)
• Brown Betty (Lesson 23)

Time Travelers American History Study Series

There are currently 7 titles in the Time Travelers American History Study Series:

• New World Explorers
• Colonial Life
• The American Revolution
• The Early 19th Century
• The Civil War
• Industrial Revolution through Great Depression
• World War II

To learn more about this wonderful History curriculum, check out this video put together by Home School In The Woods about their Time Travelers History Studies Series:

Our Experience:

When I received my product via download, I read through the introduction and printed off the suggested lesson plan.  This curriculum is jam packed with fun hands on learning opportunities! I couldn’t wait to dive into this experience with my kids.

As you can see at first glance in this lesson plan, there is a lot of great learning opportunities with these lessons.  Rather than try to go to fast, we decided to take it slow and do 1 lesson a week.  There are at least two hands on activity projects with each lesson.  It can be overwhelming at first when you see all the projects listed and printable material included.  Taking it slow will help mom’s plan ahead and have time read through this material a few days in advance before you plan to start so you can get prepared.

After I looked over the first couple of lessons, I printed out a few and the corresponding activity instructions and masters and put these into a three ring binder to keep them organized. There is a printable notebook cover that you can use for your 3-ring binder.

The parent/teacher’s binder will house the lesson reading text, direction pages of projects, the “Guide-at-a-Glance,” teacher keys, and teacher helps. There is also a cover for the student binder and you can choose to print in color or in black and white for the student to color in and personalize. The student binder houses all the stuff the kids do in their lessons such as Timelines, Newspaper, Penmanship and Creative Writing activities, etc.

HANDS ON ACTIVITIES:

Here are a few pictures of some of the hands on activities from our learning adventures with this curriculum:

The Wright Brother’s Flyer:

Brooklyn Bridge Project:

Learning about bridge construction was one of the historical projects the older boys really enjoyed.  They learned about the construction of the first suspension bridge in America. The curriculum suggested making a bridge with the cardboard from milk cartons and string.

However, we don’t have milk cartons to use (we buy raw milk in 1 gallon jugs), so we brainstormed some ideas.  We made one version with a granola bar box.

Then my older sons came up with their own version of suspension bridges with craft sticks, hot glue, cordage, etc. and then explored more ideas on other kinds of bridges from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s too.

They made several models, took them apart, refigured their plans, and built them again.

WWI Soldier’s Journal:

Another project they really enjoyed was creating a WWI Soldier’s Journal with real pictures of what life was like for a soldier.  This journal will contain photos and letters.

One of my son’s wanted these photos to feel sturdy so he went an additional step with these printed pictures (and several other paper crafts) and he cut and glued file folder onto the back to make them stronger.  The other boys didn’t reinforce their journal photos.  You could also laminate these projects to keep them nice, water proof them, and help them last longer.

WWI Ammo Belt:

Inside the pockets are various items such as a paper map, ID cards, a mini Soldier’s New Testament, mini timeline of the war, etc. and there are additional facts about the WWI in the flaps when you open the pouches.

This project is supposed to be mounted on a paper base, but one of my son’s wanted to actually wear the WWI ammo belt.

After reinforcing the printed and cut out project with manila folder and glue, (he really enjoy’s doing this by the way), he then made belt loops for the back and was able to put the ammo belt project on his belt and wear it around.

He is quite creative and likes to role play and this gave him a military gear costume piece he is quite proud of.

He also turned some of the other projects into wearable pieces as well. The cool thing is all these pieced he reinforced can also go back into his notebook or Lap Book when he is done playing with them.

Field Trips:

Part of the beauty of homeschooling that you can lay down the books and worksheets and get outside and go somewhere and relate what you have been studying to the real world.  If you can’t make it outside for a field trip, you can always view a virtual field trip online.   Check out videos on “youtube” for lots of ideas / suggestions for virtual field trips related to the time period or a specific topic, it is easy to find.  Field trips are not required in this curriculum, but we try to include field trips in every unit study adventure we do.

We love field trips!  We try to keep our expenses as low as possible for activities because we have a large family and things add up quickly.  We usually look for free field trips / things to see and do that go along with our studies.  Usually that also means it has to be a “day trip”, somewhere within a 3 hour drive or less so we can make it back home before dark.  We actually started this habit before we had kids.  Our local town advertised a booklet called “One Tank Trips” and it kind of became our method for travel and seeing new things and learning history of the area.  We are fortunate that for most of the time we have been married, we have lived within a short drive of a lot of history that we could see in 1 day or 1 tank trips.  So we have tried to keep up this tradition with our kids.

During this study we went to see several really cool things.  We saw a navy battle ship in Wilmington, NC and a suspension bridge near Charleston, SC, and a shipping canal that was made and used during this time period for shipping goods on the Catabwa SC river.

There is a pedestrian suspended bridge in Greenville, SC at Falls Creek Park that we have been to see a few years ago.  We used to spend some of our Sunday afternoons after church there and play with the kids and explore the history.  There is a foundation of an old mill there too.   We didn’t make it back out to see it for this learning project, but hope to go see it again soon. But we did drive out to see a suspension bridge that you can drive on near Charleston, SC.

This one is on Highway 17 in South Carolina along the Atlantic Ocean.  The kids were amazed going across this bridge suspended over the open waters between mainland and islands on the SC border.

In the recent past we have also visited other sights related to this time in American history and would go great with this unit study. I will mention them here because it might give other families some ideas of things to go and visit.   Some of the places we have been related to this period in history are a mill, we visited the Wright Brother’s Museum in Modoc Indiana, and the Historical Museum of Flight in Hendersonville, NC and both lay claim to the Wright Brother’s fame.  They both have life size Wright Brother’s air planes and the Hendersonville one also shows planes from different wars. There are also models the kids can climb in and explore.  We have also been to the Air Force base in Dayton Ohio where the kids have seen planes from all throughout history and they have a huge room full of WWI planes.  We took a ferry ride on the Atlantic ocean of the coast of the Carolina’s where big ships come in with goods on barges.  Before suspension bridges were made across rivers and ocean bays, transport ferries and boats were the only method across these waterways.  We have also visited and rode the historic trains at the train museums in Statesville, NC and Knights Town, Indiana. We on a boat in the canal at Metamora, and took the train at Metamora Indiana, the train at Knights Town Indiana, the train at Branson, Missouri, that goes across a huge tall wooden bridge overlooking an incredible gorge in the Ozark Mountains. Our kids have really enjoyed these adventures.

We will be working through this curriculum for quite some time, and my kids are loving all the activities.  We like to take it slow and tweak as we go, see and do as much as we can, and this curriculum is perfect for that.  With so many lessons and projects, it will probably last us until the end of this year.

One of the next to last projects is to create a Lap Book with all of the wonderful projects your kids have made.  A Lap Book is kind of like a scrapbook to store all your memories of the learning adventure.  The outer cover is made from a file folder(s).  We are looking forward to creating our Lap Books.  We have added in a couple of items a head of schedule because we were doing this as a review post, but we have a long way to before we are actually ready to put it all together.  These Lab Books will look really neat when they are finished.

My advice to other homeschool families (especially if you have lots of kids using this curriculum) is to “plan a head”, read a head, print out everything you need for one or two lessons at a time. Collect whatever additional materials for the lesson you will need.  There is a lot of material to print and suggested projects covered in this curriculum. That fact alone equals a ton of fun for the kids!  Remember, you don’t have to print or do every activity listed, these are suggestions and you can tweak this curriculum how ever it best fits for you.  Just take it at a pace that is comfortable for your family and have loads of fun with it!

We love this curriculum and highly recommend it to everyone!

Home School In The Woods

Home School In The Woods is a “hands-on history” curriculum company. They carry a huge variety of projects.  I have only told you about the Time Traveler Series.  Check out their huge range of products and various title series they have to offer, and the free lessons and timeline samples they give away.  I am sure you and your kids will have a blast with these hands on learning adventures.

Timeline Materials
Map Sets
Time Travelers
Project Passport
Activity-Paks
Lap-Paks
Activity Studies
À-La-Carte

Be sure to get your free Erie Canal lesson from their newest product A-La-Carte when you use the code “alacarte” at checkout.  This is a great time to study about the Erie Canal because it is the 200th anniversary of the beginning of the canal.

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Homeschool Review Crew

Be sure to check out what other families on the Homeschool Review Crew had to say about using these products with their kids.