As a part of the TOS review crew, we were blessed to try out our first Home School in the Woods product! I have heard many great things about this company, but had never tried any of it before. Because we have been in American history for our 2nd year now, the Hands-On History Lap-Pak: 20th Century in America was perfect for us!!
We have enjoyed many lapbooks over the years. I know they aren’t for everyone, but my crafty girls have loved them. We don’t do them every week of every year, or I think they probably would grow tired of them. But, when I see a fabulous one that goes with something we are learning about, I love to add them in! You can see many of the lapbooks we have done here.
These lapbooks from Homeschool in the Woods take lapbooks up a notch, in my opinion. They are perfect for the upper elementary and middle school age, with lots of deeper questions, topics and writing to go along with the folding, cutting and pasting. I found that my girls, 5th and 4th grade, seemed to be at the perfect age to work on these! The website suggests using this with grade 3-8 and my girls are right in the middle of that age span and did beautifully with this lap-pak.
Another thing that is different about these from other lapbooks we have done is that they are in depth and FULL of information and research topics. These lap books are not going to be done in one week, in my opinion. In fact, we have had this lapbook in our possession for nearly a month and we’ve only completed several pieces! That is because we are reading other books along with the reading material {32-page file you can print or just read on the computer} that came with our Homeschool in the Woods project pak.
The lapbook contains 22 projects and the 32-page reading material to go along with these projects. The reading material consisted of generally 1 paragraph about each “topic” that will give you and your children an overview of that event or person. Because we are in the middle of American History already and because so much happened in the 20th century in our country, I felt like we needed to dive in a bit more than just a paragraph on some of these topics! That is why we were able to use this lap-pak (lapbook with projects) for nearly 2 months!
When you purchase the lap-pak/lapbook for $21.95 from Home School in the Woods, you receive the files to download on your computer, or you can purchase a CD for $22.95. I, personally, would not be able to purchase many of these in my school year at this price and wish the printable version could cost a little less, because you still do a lot of printing for this and that adds to your cost! However, on the other hand, you get a LOT of files/documents and I know a lot of time went into creating these products!!
I say that it must have taken a lot of time to create because I was immediately overwhelmed when I opened the documents and saw how many files and lapbook pieces and topics were covered!! It is truly amazing all that is included! These are elaborate lap books, compared to what we have done in the past!
Some of the topics covered in the 20th century lap-pak are both World Wars, Temperance, Women’s Suffrage, the Great Depression, art movements and medicinal advancement of the 20th century, and many more.
Overall, we were very, very pleased with this lap-pak. I’m very impressed with ALL that you get in this one project pak. It is very well thought out, very well put together and covers so much for your students to dig in and study!
Here is a collage of some of my girls work on this lap-pak:
Please go check out the TOS crew blog if you’d like to read what other families are doing with Homeschool in the Woods products!
Leave a Reply