You know we love Home School in the Woods, and you may be familiar with their larger projects, but now they are also making some of the smaller elements of those packages available in the Home School In The Woods Á La Carte selection. We have been given the opportunity to review three of these products to share. Which is your favourite?
Home School In The Woods Á La Carte Projects
All of the Á La Carte items are downloadable products that you can start working on right away. You may already have the supplies for most of them in your closet, as we did. All we needed to purchase was a quilling tool; but perhaps I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Which products did we receive?
- High & Dry File Folder Game
- The Art of Quilling
- Composers Through History Timeline
High & Dry
We started off with the High & Dry File Folder Game to get us going. It’s a game where children become familiar with parts of a ship, sea terminology, and sayings such as, “Ship shape and Bristol Fashion.”
The children coloured the game board while I cut out the playing cards. Then they put it all together. Because they weren’t too familiar with sailor-speak and naval terminology they were a little frustrated, which is understandable. How did we overcome this? They took about a dozen cards out of the deck and reviewed them first. Then they used them at the dinner table, quizzing the whole family and trying to stump us ‘old folks.’ This made learning the terms more fun for them, and I learned that I know as much (or as little) about sea life as Phil who grew up near the sea. Interesting.
Then the children set up the board again and started off using just those cards that they were familiar with and worked their way around the board. The better your answer is, the further ahead you can move! Each time the children play, they now add in more cards to expand their knowledge further.
They enjoy working in some of the sayings into everyday life; at the moment with spring cleaning underway, we’re using “ship shape and Crystal fashion” to remind everyone that their efforts must make my grade of cleanliness!
This game is set for 2-4 players between grades 3 to 8 and is part of the Time Travelers: New World Explorers project.
Composers Through History Timeline
My children quite enjoy listening to all varieties of music, and have a love for classical. But, even what we think of as classical is broken down into more specific genres such as baroque, romantic, impressionistic, etc. With the Composers Through History Timeline they were able to learn more about different periods of music while cutting, colouring, and gluing 42 figures onto the timeline.
Because just cutting and gluing itself doesn’t teach much, what I did was have the kids choose at least one composer from each time period and we looked him up to find out a little more about him. Then we moved over to YouTube and found a selection of music to listen to for the week by that composer. I created a private grouping in YouTube to keep all of the music the children listened to for this so that they can go back in and listen to it while working on math, English, or just relaxing.
For a couple of the more modern composers, we were even able to find old interviews that were done with them, which was interesting!
The children took turns colouring a section of composers and gluing them onto the timeline. They are going to keep this in their music binder for reference.
We all enjoyed this product and learning that some of the music we hear at events, on advertisements, and elsewhere are by these famous composers; when they realise that, their faces light up.
Click here for more Homeschool Art Classes For All Ages
This product is aimed at those in grades 3-12 and can be used in innumerable ways according to each situation and the level of depth that you want to go. It is a part of the larger Activity-Pak: Composers.
The Art of Quilling
Quilling was popular during the Renaissance period and it has made a resurgence again recently. We love paper crafts, and after having received a beautiful quilled picture from a friend who travelled to Vietnam and my children wondering how it was made, I knew they’d enjoy learning The Art Of Quilling themselves.
The download comes with a template for this forget me not picture, as well as instructions on how to quill not only the shapes needed for this project, but also others so that once you complete this picture you can use the information to move on to other projects or create your own.
For this project, we did purchase a quilling tool, but we also learned that we could simply wind paper around the end of a thin paint brush as well. This is what I tended to do so that we could all work on the pictures at the same time. We didn’t have official ‘quilling paper’ but we happened to have some paper strips from another project that worked great. They were only coloured on one side, but in a pinch, they did okay.
Although we all followed the same template, you can see that each of our projects are a little different. This makes them unique, which is something we happen to like in our home.
I think the kids did very well for their ages (10 & 7), and perhaps did a better job than me! They were a little frustrated at first, so I reminded them that this was a new skill and it takes time and patience to learn something new. It didn’t take them long to catch on and once they did, they really enjoyed it. This project took them two or three afternoon sessions to complete and was a great way to enjoy time together.
This project is aimed at children in grades 3-8 (I also enjoyed it), and is one of the elements included in Time Travelers: Colonial Life.
Final Thoughts
I’m really loving the Home School In The Woods Á La Carte menu, and every time I look, they’ve added even more items. Sometimes you may not be looking for an entire large project, but just want something quick and fun for the kids to do to enhance an area they are currently learning about. The Á La Carte items are a great way to do just that. They are affordable and there’s so much choice! I will be going back and making a couple of purchases for the kids. They’ve already used Pirate Panopoly, and I have my eye on WWII: On the Home Front Lap Book/Notebook Project.
To read more reviews about Home School in the Woods by the Homeschool Review Crew, click on the graphic below and follow the instructions. You will find 100 honest reviews by the Crew on this project, as well as several more. If you’d like to know more or would like to follow Home School In The Woods, you can connect with them through their website, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube.
