Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.
We’re studying ancient history this year, from Creation to the time of Jesus. Therefore, when we were offered a product from Home School in the Woods to use and review, I chose one of the Project Passport World History Studies—the one about Ancient Egypt. We’ve never used a Project Passport study before. They looked too big and involved to me, the other times we were offered products from this company. I’m finding it fun, though, and fairly easy, although it will take us awhile to get through it. Because we’re using it as a supplement to the other history we’re doing (two courses simultaneously—yes, I’m a bit of a curriculum junkie!), we are doing no more than one “stop” a week, and last week we didn’t get anything done on it, due to Mom being sick, a first aid course one day, and dental appointments another day. We have made it through the first five stops, though, and I’m hoping to continue doing one a week. Mr. Sweetie (age 11), Mr. Imagination (9), and Little Miss (6) are doing this study, and I’m doing each project with them.
Each “stop” on our “itinerary” through Ancient Egypt has a few standard activities. We have been adding place names to our map on most stops, and pictures to our timeline. We often get to read and decorate a postcard, and many stops include an audio tour of something (once it was a trip on a boat down the Nile, and yesterday we listened to a man talking about how they were embalming the Pharoah). We also add to a newspaper we’re writing, with a news article or a couple of advertisements each time. Mr. Imagination loves that—he likes to draw! Each stop also includes some sort of craft and a few pages of text that I read aloud.
Some of our projects get hole punched and put into the ring binder 
we’re each filling up. We spent an entire week working on clothing for an Egyptian man and woman! Some of the pieces of clothing needed to be colored on cardstock, cut out and either put into slits in the person we were clothing, and we also cut out a few pieces of cloth for other items. Another project we really had fun with was the Game of Senet, based on board games found in the tombs. We spent our history time one morning assembling the game from the PDFs I downloaded, and playing it. It’s a two-player game, so we divided into two teams, since three children and I are working on this project together.
We’re also making items in most lessons to eventually assemble into a lap book. So far, we’ve made a mini-book about about the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, a wheel that turns with information on it about jobs in Egypt, a cookbook (which we plan to use!) and a mini book about mummies, coffins, and sarcophagi. Each of these items is very informative. They are also fairly easy, since the instructions in the Itinerary are so detailed.
There are also craft projects that won’t fit in the books! We skipped the first one, since noone was interested in actually dressing like an Egyptian, but Mr. Imagination and Little Miss are working on the second. They are making a mummy and a sarcophagus, from foil, newspaper, masking tape, strips of white cloth whenever I find them some, glue, and a shoe box—and lots of paint! We are given craft cards to print and store in the notebooks about these projects.
I am very impressed with this course. A lot of work went into making it! It has been organized very well, and I’ve found it easy to use. To prepare for a “stop”, I simply open and print the PDFs for the text and itinerary for that stop, and then read through the itinerary to see what needs to be printed for that stop. All the pages we’ll need for the crafts, lapbook, etc, are in one folder, and labeled by the lesson number, which makes it very easy to find the right ones. The instructions tell whether to print the pages on white or colored paper, or white or colored card stock. (I’m thankful that Esther has found a place we can order the card stock and colored paper online—I can’t get it locally!) We’re learning a lot about Egypt from this project, and I will certainly request more of these projects in the future if they’re offered (I would even buy these!). And, the children are enjoying doing this. Little Miss is the most enthusiastic. Mr. Imagination hates cutting and gluing, but he loves drawing pictures. Mr. Sweetie isn’t overly excited, but I don’t hear any grumbling from him. The variety of projects helps to keep up interest.
Home School in the Woods has downloadable timeline sets that look great! They include pictures of many people and events from various eras of history. The Creation to Christ one looks like it would be great for the study we’re doing right now. Click on the image below to read other people’s reviews of great products from this company.
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