As the primaries heat up, so do my boys’ questions about the electoral process. Usually, it happens on a car ride. They ask a question about politics and I have to try to answer to the best of my ability while navigating traffic. Needless to say, I’m not sure they’re getting all the details they need through these makeshift lessons. Because of this, I thought it might be a good idea to jump on the opportunity to review HISTORY Through the Ages Hands-on History Lap-Pak: U.S. Elections from Home School in the Woods.
This U.S. Elections unit study and lap book is full of information and a great, thorough introduction into our government and elections. By the time we finished, my kids knew more about politics than many adults I know. The unit included lessons like:
- Definition of “Election”
- Different Forms of Government
- The Three Branches of Government
- Suffrage
- Caucuses & Primaries
- The Presidential Campaign (this one is actually broken down into multiple lessons)
- Statistics
- The Electoral College
…and more!
There are twenty one lessons in all. Each comes with a short summary to read about it and a hands-on project to complete. The lessons are pretty short, so sometimes we would do two or three in a day while other times we would stop at one. The way it worked for us was, I would read the reading portion of the lesson aloud to them, as they began coloring and cutting for the project. At the end, all the projects will be combined onto one lap book. We have never done too many lap books in our homeschool, mostly because I am not the most visually creative person in the world and I’ve always worried I just wouldn’t be good at it. Home School in the Woods really shut down those fears because everything is so well laid out for you. The instructions are very detailed and, basically, there’s no way I could screw this up.
My boys (ages 8 and 10) really enjoyed all the hands-on activities involved in this project. Often when we learn about something, it involves a lot of reading and not much else. I’ll admit, that gets boring, and I’m sure it’s even more boring when you’re eight. So having just a little bit of reading and a lot of coloring, cutting, gluing, and summarizing, was A LOT more fun. And I feel like they retained more information by really working WITH it instead of just listening to me read about it. My Big Boy (10) still loves reading and taking in all of the information he can on a subject, so he appreciated the big stack of library books we had based on the Lap-Pak’s “Suggestions for Other Resources.” This was a full page of book and website suggestions to expand on the subjects discussed in the unit. Little Man (8) flipped through a couple of the picture books on the list, but he wasn’t as interested in digging in any deeper yet. That’s fine with me, because I still feel like, even with just the short lessons in the unit study, he has a great basic understanding of politics.
I feel like Big Boy is a great age for this project. He’s capable of doing all of the activities on his own and he could really get a lot from all of it. Little Man is still a little young. I think it would have been a bit overwhelming for him to have done it all on his own. So I’d say, obviously depending on your own child and their abilities, around third grade is the earliest this unit would work for. It can go much older, especially as you add in the suggested resources for additional learning. Even as an adult, I learned new information that I either didn’t know before or had forgotten in the years since learning. I think this product is perfect for upper-elementary and middle school students. And while the company is faith-based, this particular project would also work well in a secular setting.
The U.S. Elections Lap-Pak comes on CD or digital download (we received the digital download for the purpose of this review). It comes with all of the instructions, reading, and activities, plus extra photos and an audio version of the text. I sent everything to the copy center, because it was A LOT to print off, and I paid maybe $5 to have everything printed. The supplies needed for the activities are minimal, and everything we didn’t already have at home we were able to purchase from the dollar store. Overall it was a very affordable project, especially considering how much we learned from it!
