I’m sure you guys know by now that Home School in the Woods is one of our FAVORITE vendors. I get so excited when I see them listed for review. We absolutely love the materials they’ve created for us to use, including the one we used for this review, History of Holidays from their Hands-On History Activity Studies. They are hands-on history at it’s best!
I really wanted something different to review this time around since we’ve done a great many studies for Home School in the Woods already. I’ve been looking for a study on Holidays that I could do with the kids at home. Something that wasn’t extensively hard to use but was fun! History of Holidays fit what I was looking for.
History of Holidays is a study of American Holidays which can be used throughout the year. It contains over a dozen American Holidays for you to learn about. It provides over 30 projects for your students to create in order to learn more about the Holidays it covers.
The Holidays this study covers are:
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
Valentine’s Day
President’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day
Passover
Easter
Memorial Day
Flag Day
Independence Day
Labor Day
Columbus Day
Thanksgiving Day
Christmas Day
Each of these Holidays are interesting and unique in their own ways. They are the most common Holidays to study and represent a variety of events and people. They are a great place to start learning more about the reasons behind these events.
This study is designed to be used to cover all these holidays, working for a few days on each. You can expand your lessons simply by researching more information on each Holiday online or creating additional activities for each Holiday you cover. This is an Elementary course but you can use it with older kids and simply expand the lessons through more research.
Now I did look over the lessons in this course thoroughly but I did not want to use this course in it’s entirety as a study. I was looking for a course that I could use to teach my children about these Holidays as they happened, so that we learned about them as we celebrated them. That was easy to do with this course from Home School in the Woods. Though it’s suggested to complete the course as a Unit Study type lesson plan, it is adaptable to be able to be covered just at each Holiday through the year as well.
The thing I like about these studies is that they are simple to print and put together. The projects are really interesting and fun, like all of the Home School in the Woods studies are. They really bring hands-on learning to the forefront of the learning process.
Each study has a project to print out and create. Each also has an information page that shares pertinent information about the Holiday itself, the date it falls upon, the history of the Holiday, and why it is that we celebrate it each year. This is the main part of the study.
Then there is a Projects and Activities sheet which tells you how to put together and use the projects that are specifically for the Holiday you’re learning about. This sheet is thorough in it’s directions and expectations. Here you will find links to learn more about the Holiday and additional activities to complete as well. A recipe is also included for a little extra fun.
For our review, we went over Labor Day as a study since it’s the next Holiday to come up. We discussed the meaning of Labor Day and why we have it. It falls near Jackson’s birthday so it’s special to us for that reason as well.
Labor Day is always the first Monday in September. It’s the last Summer celebration we do. It begins the tearing down of our Summer decor and starts our preparations for Fall and our Holiday seasons beginnings.
The project for this Holiday included making a kind of bookmark with flaps that featured Famous Labor Leaders. We had to print it, cut it out and fold it. The flaps created a door so the name was on the outside and information about that person could be written on the inside.
The other project for this Holiday was to make an Illustrated Book of Occupations. A list of occupations is included in the study to help you choose which you’d like to learn more about. There is a series of pages to print for this project which allow you to create the booklet. Then you can write more about the occupations on the booklet pages as you explore them more. Both of these projects were very simple and easy to create. The suggested recipe was a one pot dish of something similar to Spaghetti. Instead of making the dish, we simply had spaghetti for this one.
I also printed out the work for Columbus Day since it’s the next Holiday on the list. This study contains information on Christopher Columbus and some fun projects for it as well. The projects for this unit are simple enough but they do require me to grab a few things I don’t have on hand.
One is a yard stick for the Quadrant we are to make. I think Jack will greatly enjoy making this soon. I’ve thought about grabbing a plastic protractor from the store to use instead of the paper printed one it calls for in the project. I think that will last longer for Jack to play with.
The other material I need to grab is Acetate or something similar to create the map overlay project for the lesson. I think Jack will also really enjoy putting that together as well. He’s really into learning about sailing right now, especially Pirates.
The Columbus Day study is set up the same as the Labor Day study. There are more projects for this study: those mentioned above and a Spice Collage project which I think Laycie is going to love since she’s very into cooking right now. This study also features two recipes for both a Spanish and an Italian cookie to make… yum, cookies! Those are always a huge hit!
The other units in this study are equally intriguing and we really look forward to diving in to them all and learning more! I want to just add that I’m really looking forward to using the Thanksgiving portion of this study where we will make corn husk dolls! And Christmas is going to be a lot of fun as well!! This study is really making learning about the Holidays fun for all of us and the projects are completely unique and fun to complete. The kids LOVE it, just as they have all the Home School in the Woods projects we have completed over the years.
You can purchase History of Holidays online $18.95 for the Family license to print at home.
Be sure to check out the newest product, Project Passport: Ancient Rome as well. This is a great study you will not want to miss! It’s part of their Project Passport Collection as well.
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