Hands On History With Project Passport World History Study: The Middle Ages - Review
We had so much fun with this middle ages unit study! If you’re looking for an easy to use middle ages study for your homeschool check this out.
I love learning about history it has always been one of my favorite subjects. I love finding ways to share this with my children.
Disclosure: I received a free copy of this product for review, all opinions are 100% my own.
I was really excited to have the opportunity to review Project Passport World History Study: The Middle Ages from Home School in the Woods.
I reviewed their Great Empires Activity Study a few years ago and it was a big hit in our home!
Who Is Home School in the Woods?
Home School in the Woods is a homeschool company run by the Pak family. Amy Pak mother of 6 began homeschooling in 1996 and dreaded teaching history to her children. History was not a subject that she found enjoyable as a child herself.
In time she found her way using living books, drama, and writing and fell in love with history! In 2002 they published their popular set of timeline figures and their product line of wonderful history units and aids has grown from there.
Project Passport World History Study: The Middle Ages
Project Passport World History Study: The Middle Ages is a digital product available on CD-ROM or by download. Its target age range is from grade 3 to 8 but is easily adapted for younger and older children.
I received the downloadable version. Your download arrives as a ZIP file with a large number of files inside. I extracted these into my Documents folder so I could find them easily.
After extracting there is a file named Start, you click on this to open it in your browser. This is your master menu for all areas of the program.
I LOVE how they are organized! This is so much easier than having to flip back and forth through multiple file folders and PDFs.
The middle ages study is made up of 25 lessons called stops that focus on different topics of the middle ages. It includes detailed instructions, timeline, lapbook, notebooking, audio lessons, and craft projects.
The first lessons focus on getting your student ready to travel back in time. They prepare their passports and get their scrapbook ready. Students even make a cool little suitcase folder!
As they work through the lessons each one has a few pages of text that teaches about the topic of that lesson. Then they have things to do such as adding to their timeline, creating postcards to send back home, making a lapbook, and writing newspaper articles.
There is also a great selection of activities from crafts to recipes from the middle ages time period.
Middle ages sample pages
Lessons covered are:
Laying the Foundations – Introduction
Laying the Foundation – Barbarians in the South & East
Laying the Foundation – Barbarians in the North & West
Everyday Life – Family
Everyday Life – Clothing and Food
Everyday Life – Community
Everyday Life – Crime, Punishment, and Entertainment
Business – Towns and Guilds
Business – Merchants, Trade, and Exploration
Science and Invention
Education
The Arts
Medicine and Disease
The Church – History
The Church – Church and Other Religious events
The Church- Monastic Life
The Crusades – The Big Four
The Crusades – Other Crusades
Knights and Chivalry
The Vikings – Viking Life
The Vikings – Era of the Viking
Battles, wars, & Conflicts – The Muslim Invasions
Battles, Wars, & Conflicts – Eastern Europe
Battles, wars, & Conflicts – England
Packing up!
What I Think Of This Middle Ages Unit Study
When I first opened the middle ages unit I was very overwhelmed! There is just so much wonderful information included in this study, but it is not an open-and-go program. I did find it really easy to navigate after I had a look around.
What I spent the most time on was the printing. There is a huge amount of printing to get everything set up.
I don’t mind doing this but I did find some of the printing was really complicated. Many of the parts had two sides that needed to be printed in the right order. There are directions on what to print where but I had a hard time getting my printer to do this.
Our printer is a bottom feeder so after EVERY page I had to take it out flip it over and put the paper tray back in. This was for the student timeline, notebook, etc.
I was printing this for my 3 older children so that was a lot of work. I really wish there was an easier way to print off some of the items. If you don’t care that the backs of the pages would be blank you probably could just print the files normally.
The lessons are so well organized it makes teaching a dream! You can start the lessons from the beginning or start on any subject you like. We decided to start at the beginning and have been slowly working through the stops/lessons.
This unit study is suggested to take 8 to 12 weeks however it will take us longer than that to work through it all. There are many extra resources suggested and we are using many of these books to expand our study.
Some stops we can move through in a day or two others really get our children's interest going so we rabbit trail on that topic for a few weeks.
One thing I really, really love about Project Passport World History Study: Middle Ages is that it is not ALL about war. Yes, wars are covered but children also learn so much about how people actually lived during the middle ages.
What their town systems were like, the clothes and food of the time. This has become a big interest to our children. Our oldest especially does not like reading about the darker sides of history so to have a great unit study that focused on day-to-day life is something that she loves.
I think that this unit study is a great short study and also makes a wonderful base for a longer and deeper unit study on the middle ages.
Despite my little frustrations with the printing I love using the Project Passport and I’m planning to get the Renaissance study to use later in the year.
I would recommend Project Passport World History Study: The Middle Ages to anyone looking for a fun hands-on study of the middle ages time period!
