Review: Homeschool Legacy–Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims(TOS Review) #hsreviews #unitstudies #historyunitstudies

We used Homeschool Legacy, Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims Once-a-week unit study for this review. 

We have used Homeschool Legacy before and LOVED it!  See our previous review of Lewis and Clark unit study!

This particular unit study is labeled a ‘micro-study’ because it is only 6 lessons (6 weeks) and they lessons are pretty short.

One of the great things about Homeschool Legacy units, including Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims, is that it consists of one lesson a week.  We typically take off Friday for swimming, but could easily fit in these lessons afterwards.

Each unit consists of 6 lessons, one less a week, for 6 weeks.  There are recommended read aloud books for the course of the units.  Each daily lesson consists of History lessons.  The lessons are laid out, and read directly from the text.  There are sometimes hyperlinks within the text to more information on the topic, for example in this unit, there was a link to read about the First Amendment.  Other links lead to recipes, video clips and virtual tours.

I was able to easily give the lessons from my iPad, and show the video clips as well, sometimes we would use the laptop and cast the videos to the TV to more easily see them. (But that also required going downstairs, and we do most of our schooling upstairs).

There was some map work involved and vocabulary (looking up definitions) also.

I found the unit quite interesting, as we have a distant ancestor that came across on the Mayflower!  I feel like most of it was more geared towards older kids, at least in my families case.  It is recommended for grades 1-8, but might be more suited for 3rd grade and up.  There are opportunities for research and report writing, as well as oral presentations, so it could be easily adapted for older students.  For younger kids, in most cases they could just really listen, which didn’t always interest them.

This unit leads up to Christmas, so would be best used starting Mid October to Early November, as activities toward the end include Christmas Caroling and making garland decorations.

There is a yummy wassail recipe that we drank after Trick-or-Treating, that is recommended for after Caroling!  (But since we were using it early….that would not have worked).

This unit was not as hands on as the previous one we reviewed.  It did have some game activities and crafting, but nothing that really grasped my children’s interest (ages 3-10). 

The lessons were fairly short, which was nice.  They were also very informative.  I feel like a lot was learned in those short lessons.  This unit would probably go well with Christmas Comes to America, a 4 week unit study for the month of December! You can find reviews on this one and other Unit Studies by clicking on the image at the bottom of this post!

There are a lot of great unit studies available from Homeschool Legacy, it’s a great way to mix things up a bit in your schooling, without changing up the routine too much! 

Although this one was not one of our favorites, I still recommend them to others often!

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Milton Hershey Printable Preschool and Kindergarten Pack

We are working on a TOS Review for YWAM Publishing of Heroes of History- Milton Hershey.  We will be visiting the Hershey Story Museum and Hershey’s Chocolate World soon too.  The book includes activities for older kids (which I’ll talk about more in my upcoming review post), so I wanted to make my younger children activities to go along with it as well.  They are enjoying the book and I thought these would be a great addition to it.   Of course, I also wanted to share these freebies with all of you too!

You can find this and other printables at my Teachers Pay Teachers Store 

See what other FREE Printables my CREW MATES have:

This Blog Cruise goes live at 9am on the 15th of April 2106

My Favorite Resources for Unit Studies/Lap Books

I posted earlier this week about Homeschooling when you are BORED with the curriculum….

Unit Studies are not something we do a lot of, I typically use them as a way to mix it up and put some excitmenet back into our homeschooling.  While I LOVE planning my own unit studies, it’s sometimes too time consuming and defeats the purpose.  Plus, why reinvent the wheel?  So here are a few of my GO-TO easy to follow, little prep required unit studies.  They have a wide arange of topics, some are longer than others, just depends what you are looking for!

Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett – These unit studies are called Download N Go and they aren’t kidding!  It is super simple, and many can be done from your tablet, though some printing is required for the lapbooking portion, you don’t have to type.  There are several links with youtube videos to go with the lessons (my kids like these a lot).  Here are two reviews we have done on her unit:  United Kingdom and Hoppin’ Popcorn

Homeschool Legacy – This is a great Unit Study that is based on doing one day a week.  You can make it less streched out, but that makes the reading materials difficult to cover.  I love this because it gives you one really FUN day a week, and helps with burn out too.  We did this awesome unit on Lewis and Clark, and the kids LOVED it!  We are hoping to do another unit this year!

Moving Beyond the Page – These units are project based, and are a little more pricey than the others listed here.  However, they are lots of fun!  They are literature based, and a great way to break up the monotony of the ‘regular’ studies.  We have used a few of their units, but you can read about HOLES/Rocks and Minerals and Tornado/Amazing Weather

Hands of a Child – These are great lapbooks!  They are are easy to navigate!  It has the reading material and the items to print organized very easily!  They have a wide range of topics, they have ones for a wide variety of ages.  Their prices are VERY affordable and they constantly have sales! $5 units anyone?  Check out our review of the Ships and Submarines Unit

Of course there are lots of great resources out there, but these are a few of the ones we have triend and LOVED!  Hope you find something that can work for you as well!

See Other Posts:

OnlineFree  Math Games - Living Life and Learning

10 Free Online Homeschool Resources - Simple At Home

Resources for Homeschooling With Google Play Book - Maria Magdalena Living Ideas

Kid-Friendly Resources for Learning to Code - Schooling a Monkey

Online Reading Tutoring Resources- Mrs. Karle’s Sight and Sound Reading

11 Awesome Homeschool Sites That Are Free - Embark on the Journey

Home Occupational Therapy Program -Our Crazy Adventures In Autismland

Resources We Recommend for Middle and High School -Classes By Beth

100 Free Homeschool Resources - Stephanie Rose Knows

Websites That Encourage Creativity in Kids - Amy’s Wandering

My Favorite Online  Homeschool Resources- A Sip of Southern Sunshine

8 Fun and Educational Websites for Preschoolers - Homeschool Preschool

Elections 2016 Homeschool Resources - Ben and Me

A Few of My Favorite {Homeschool} Things - Embracing Destiny

Posting the FIRST FRIDAY of each month

January Posts

Review: Progeny Press, Stone Fox Study Guide (TOS Review)

For this review we used Stone Fox Study Guide by Progeny Press.

This product is a digital download, it comes as two files; the interactive guide and the answer key.  Both are PDF files.  The guide can be typed into on the computer (this is what makes it interactive).  My son is not proficient at typing, therefore we printed the pages and he wrote on them with pencil.

I used this product with my 9 year old (4th grade) son.  He loved the book and read through it rather quickly.  He does not like to read a chapter or two at a time in a book he is interested in, and for this reason we sometimes struggle with unit guides like this one.  This was the case with this read as well.  He read it all in two sittings, would have read it in one, but I tried to discourage that (which I hate doing). 

Even though he finished the book quickly, we still worked through the guide.  There were discussion questions that were chapter specific, we mostly did these orally.  He doesn’t like to write, and well, I pick my battles.  (I did sometimes choose one or two that I wanted him to write the answers too though.)

There were also some geography, vocabulary exercises, fact v/s opinion,  and other language arts type activities that were short answer that I had him do by hand.  I really liked the activities and the questions that went along with the chapters.  My son reads at a high level, but sometimes I wonder if he is reading properly, or even understanding all he reads.  This is a book that was on his grade level (though he can read higher).  It was a good way to check his understanding of the book, and get him talking about it.  He didn’t love the exercises really, but he did have fun with the thesaurus and some of the other vocabulary related exercises.  As long as he didn’t have to write a lot, he didn’t mind doing them.

There are religious references in the guides; typically scripture versus are given to look up, they are related to lessons taught in the story.  If you are a secular homeschooler, they could be skipped over. 

Progeny Press has several study guides to choose from, for a wide variety of reading levels (K-High School).  The guides are versatile, as you see, you can type, write or do them orally; all depending on your child’s needs. This is what I loved about them! 

The price varies by grade level, studies for Upper Elementary, like this one are $17.99.  As previously mentioned, they are downloadable and the book is not included.

Although these types of studies are not my son’s favorite, I do feel they bring a lot to the table.  I will be looking at a few more that coincide with some books we plan to read this year and giving them a try as well.  Such as, The Door in the Wall and The Sword in the Tree.

Social Media:
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Review: Homeschool Legacy (TOS Review)

We just finished up Lewis & Clark: From Sea to Shining Sea by Homeschool Legacy. This was a fun 7 week unit study, with only one day spent each week (so 7 days total).  It is recommended for grades 2-12.  However, I was able to easily adapt it for my PreK and Kinder as well.

Each week includes reading suggestions, devotional, history/language, geography, science, field trip, documentary, stump your dad trivia (my kids liked this). 

My kids loved these lessons and wanted to do them every day!  (Sometimes I would spread out a few of the activities over the week).  The Read Aloud is designed to be read every day for the week.  This is the one aspect that didn’t work well for us, mostly b/c it can take us awhile to get through a read aloud, so we only used TWO books as a read aloud.  

The unit is very versatile, and as I mentioned previously, easily adaptable for younger kids.  If I couldn’t find the exact books listed (my library didn’t have a lot of them), I was able to find others of the same topic and they suited well!  I was able to substitute some materials for what I already had on hand, and it worked out fine!  I even substituted a few films for those I found on streaming, instead of checking out at the library!

My kids loved the animal lessons!  Each week there is also a field trip suggestion.  Always lots of fun stuff to learn about through all the senses!  It is very hands on and multi-sensory!

My kids loved their journals that were made the first week!  They enjoyed adding things to it each week!

Above: Many of the things we added to their journals each week

Above:  Many of the hands on projects:  Making a salt dough map, making a bird feeder, making a mud hut, building a fort out of Lincoln Logs, making Shrimp Etouffee.

If you wanted to, you could condense the units into one a day for one week (instead of one lesson a week) by picking just one read aloud for the week, and spread the field trips out.  It would make for lots of activities that week, but it is possible.  I will say that 7 weeks of covering the same topic seemed a tad dragged out (for me, I get bored easy), but the kids just loved it!  And even though it’s the same topic for 7 weeks, it is divided up so you cover something different each lesson.

I love that the materials needed were almost all common household items, I didn’t have to purchase much at all, and what I did need was not expensive. 

The unit study lists Boy Scout and American Heritage Girls qualifications, I also found that the unit meets these Cub Scout Qualifications – Wolf elective 1d American Indian Sign Language,10f American Indian word pictures, 13 a-f Birds
Wildlife Conservation Belt Loop – Requirement #2 – Food Chain

There are many other Once-A-Week Unit Studies to choose from, you can read about other units used by other crew members.

I wish I had found these sooner as we recently covered several of the topics and would have loved to have used these studies to do so! We loved this unit and will be doing more in the future!  I have my eyes set on Westward HO! next!

Units are available in ebook or paperback.  This unit is $17.00 for ebook or $21.95 for paperback.  Prices vary per unit.

You can see how I adapted this unit to Prek and K HERE.

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Lewis and Clark Unit for Younger Kids

These items are meant to coincide with the Homeschool Legacy Unit of Lewis and Clark.  You can find my review HERE.

These are all FREE things I found to adapt the lessons to younger children or to supplement for books/videos I didn’t find at the library.  These items do not REPLACE this unit study in anyway, they are all complements to the study!  I did print off a few other things, as suggested in the units that I did not link too b/c they are geographically specific, for example a picture of an endangered species (plant or animal) in your state or area, your state tree or animal, etc…

Week 1

Lewis and Clark Cover for TimeLine

Beaver Coloring Page

Netflix: Leave it to Beavers

Audio Book on HooplaDigital – Seaman (Our Read Aloud)

Week 2

Napoleon Coloring Page

Crustaceans and Mollusks Printout

Shells 3 part cards FREE

Amazon Prime Zyeco Music

Louisiana Purchase YOU TUBE

Week 3

Netflix – Lewis and Clark

Prairie dog color page

Week 4

Amazon Prime: The Song of Sacagawea

Bird watching printable

Week 5

Netflix – Bears

Coloring pages – Bears, Rattlesnake, Buffalo, Mountain lion

Week 6

Sea otter coloring page

Netflix – Sea Otters

Week 7

Gray wolf color page

Yellowstone on Netflix

AP Yellowstone Wolves: Territoriality & Clan Behavior-

Flower cards

Roller Coaster Unit

We took a break after finish up some reviews and our normal studies to do a fun unit on roller coasters! 

This unit is filled with lots of fun video clips and links to learn all about roller coasters around the world!  Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett include a wide variety of subjects all based on the topic at hand.  Simply download and go!  Typically we just talk through the unit, but this time I printed it off, and my son did the writing that went along with it.  We did not complete the lapbook this time, as we were doing this unit in the afternoons (they were at camp this week in the mornings). 

In addition to this unit we watched Popular Mechanics for Kids on Amazon Prime, Season 1, Episode 6

Other fun videos on the web -

Engineering & Construction – Roller Coasters

How Stuff Works – Build it Bigger – Roller Coasters, Roller Coaster Seats and How Roller Coasters Work

News 9 – Behind the scenes where roller coasters are made

National Geographic:  I didn’t know that – roller coaster testing

YouTube:  Backyard Roller Coasters (I have not watched all of these, please , as with all videos, preview beforehand to determine if they are appropriate for you family)

Here are some fun books we found at our local library:

And we ended our unit with K'NEX Amazin' 8 Coaster Building Set

 

This was our first time using K’Nex.  My almost 8yo (and very avid Lego player) needed quite a bit of assistance with this.  Just an FYI. 

Our final event – FIELD TRIP – to King’s Dominion!!

Review–Moving Beyond the Page (TOS Review)

 

We were truly blessed to be able to review Moving Beyond the Page.  We received the Language Arts Online Package for Holes and the Science Package for Rocks and Minerals.   These two units can be used independently of one another, but are designed to go together.

The Language Arts Package included the book Holes and online access to the curriculum guide.  The Science Package included the curriculum guide, the book Geology Rocks!, Dig A Dino T-Rex Kit and Minerals, Crystals and Fossils Science Kit.

Moving Beyond the Page is an all-encompassing unit study (with the exception of math).  These units are used simultaneously and take about 3 weeks (15 days) to complete.  The Language Art Unit includes grammar, geography, writing, etc..  There are questions about the book to review daily (a few chapters are assigned reading each day), and journal entries to make.  Each unit has a final project at the end that takes 2-3 days.  It’s a great way to wrap up all that was learned over the course of the unit.  My son enjoyed the book a lot, however, he doesn’t like to read it in small sections as assigned by the unit.  Writing is a challenge for him, but he was able to complete most of the tasks without too much trouble (others were easily adapted).  His favorite part of this unit probably was watching the movie at the end and making spiced peaches. There were several other activities he enjoyed, but Language Arts is not his favorite subject (by far).  This unit did, however, make many of the assignments a lot more enjoyable for him.  The unit was a bit long for his attention span though, 15 days of working and talking about the same book got old for him.  This is most likely because he read the book in the first few days, as opposed to stretching it out over the unit as suggested. 

The Language Arts Unit was the online option.  I don’t really like the online guide, I prefer a PDF or in hands option.  The online option is accessible via internet and is only available for a limited amount of time after activating the purchase.  .  This unit is designed for ages 8-10, it is recommended that they read and comprehend at a 4th-5th grade level.  My son is a few months shy of 8 year old, but reads on the suggested level. The online package costs $19.92, the physical package costs $23.98.  In my opinion, it is worth the few extra bucks to purchase the in hand copy.   

The Science Unit contained a lot of really fun HANDS-ON activities.  Science is one of my son’s favorite subjects, and this unit did not disappoint!  The unit is jam packed with lots of fun experiments and projects.  There wasn’t a single activity that my son didn’t enjoy, and he always wanted to start each day with science! 

There was chip mining, gemstone coloring, fossil making, rock testing, volcano making, geode crushing, crystal growing and dinosaur digging (to name a few)!  With the exception of a few items, everything you need is included in the package. My younger kids even enjoyed participating and/or observing with the projects.  This unit was just A LOT of fun, my son didn’t get bored or tired of it at all. 

I much preferred the in hands curriculum guide that came with this unit.  The science kits that came with it were also great!  We use a workbox system, and he was excited each day to see what the Science box held. 

The suggested age and reading levels are the same for this unit as for the Language Arts unit.  The cost of this unit is $64.89, with the online option costing $60.83.

To sum it up, these are really great units!  My son could really take or leave the Language Arts unit, but I think if he had more patience and enjoyed writing more it would have been more enjoyable.  He didn’t dislike the unit, but it wasn’t his favorite.  He did enjoy several activities and loved the book and movie.  The Science Unit was by far his favorite!  It had so many fun things to go along with it.  The fact that it tied into the book was nice.  In the future I think it is best to stick to the reading schedule for the Language Arts unit (might be a good lesson in patience for him).  I just find it hard to ‘discourage’ them reading ahead when they want to read. 

Add in a math curriculum and these units could make up your entire homeschool.  We like unit studies more for occasional fun, as opposed to an all the time thing.  But that is the beauty of these units.  You can purchase all of them and have your entire school year set up, or just pick and choose the ones of interest to use through out the year as part of an eclectic approach. 

I’m eyeing the Ben and Me unit next – since we are studying US History!

Find them on Facebook – www.facebook.com/movingbeyondthepage