Starting back after break can be hard
Picture it! Monday, January 9th, 2017, 6 am in a quiet little house in rural Indiana and all the lights were on. Our first day of school in the new year. Starting back after a break can be hard, but I had a secret weapon this year. We were taking a break from our current studies to dive into a HISTORY Through the Ages Project Passport World History Study: Renaissance & Reformation. We were still covering the same time period but with a fun twist; we were embarking on an adventure! The Project Passport activity-based studies from Home School in the Woods are something each of my children were excited for. From the 7 year old to the 16 year old; the hands-on learner to the auditory learner, there was something for everyone.
Easier if you Print Ahead of Time
When you open your files (begin with the file titled start) you will be taken through all the steps to print and assemble the resources you will need before jumping in. This can be tedious because of how the pages are set up. Each page is accessed and printed individually. When printing a many paged item, double sided, you quickly learn the right way to insert the sheet to print the second side correctly. That term quickly is very subjective. I spent a sunny afternoon while nearly everyone else was outside. It is easier than answering the 1.7 million questions that would be asked at the sight of the interesting pages and beautiful illustrations that were spilling out of the printer.
There are many sections you can choose not to print and instead read from the screen. This is what I chose for most of the teacher’s sections. I did print the pages of additional resources to bring with us to the library. I think better with a piece of paper in my hand. The study will be easier if you print ahead of time. But I wouldn’t print everything ahead of time. As we went, I allowed the children to pick and choose what we did. Some of the activities that we skipped, we did not need to print everything. The page to add to our Scrapbook of Sights (souvenirs, crafts made, post cards, etc.) for projects we did not complete, we did print and add to the Scrapbook. This lets this binder serve as a great review tool as well.
Digging Deeper into the Music, Inventions, and Science of the Era
The history curricula we set aside covers history chronologically. We thoroughly enjoyed the break from this while using HISTORY Through the Ages Project Passport World History Study: Renaissance & Reformation. The Stops were covering topics rather then chronological events. We also enjoyed digging deeper into the music, inventions, and science of the era. Covering these topics across the whole of this time period in a lesson or two was a richer experience than merely touching upon it as it came up in the timeline. I especially like this approach for our younger learners. They physical timeline served well to “order” things and let us see the big picture of all the happenings.
Just the Thing to Fight the Winter Doldrums
I decided to use the Project Passport in a bit shorter time than the recommended 8-12 weeks. Following a 12 week plan for the study would allow for three Project Passport studies to be completed in a typical school year. There are 25 stops (or lessons) in the Project Passport. You can devote however much time you wish to each. We do school four days a week and covered a stop a day. By condensing our time of study to six weeks, we were able to complete our PP within one six week term. This has proved to be just the thing to fight the winter doldrums and keep us enjoying while learning.
We worked on our Project Passport family-style. We did not have each child completing each project. As a family we completed most of the project possibilities. If you wish to complete them all, the longer time frame would be needed. By allowing each child to pick and choose the activities they wanted to complete, their learning styles were best met. The hands-on daughter wasn’t required to only fill out notebook pages. The auditory learner was delighted by the Dramatized Audio Tour. We made delicious things to eat, we immersed ourselves in the art, practicing many techniques ourselves. We also completed a timeline, helped write a newspaper (notebook pages in disguise), did some mapwork. Other pages we completed came together lapbook style. In other words, we had fun and the learning was incidental.
