Unofficial Reviews: History Pockets

This has probably been one of my favorite curriculum “finds” of the year!  If you followed my blog last school year, you’ll know we’ve done several lapbooks.  I still love lapbooks, but I think after a year and a half of doing them, we were a bit tired of them.  While reading another blog (if I happen to ever remember which one, I’ll tell you), I saw that this blogger’s family was going to be using History Pockets (Evan-Moor) to supplement their history curriculum.  Out of curiosity, I looked it up and immediately liked what I saw.  I didn’t order just one to supplement our American History…I ordered five!

After starting American History, we eventually got to a discussion of Colonial America.  Enter our first History Pockets, the one on Colonial America of course.  Each book includes several units of study for that topic.  Each unit contains information and projects, usually enough to last a week.  This one History Pockets book took us several weeks to finish.  Because of this, we are NOT going to finish my American History plan this year!  However, I don’t really care because Isaac is learning about each time period in more detail, and he’s enjoying it.  Yes, he really likes History Pockets!

This is his completed “book” of pockets:

For American History this year, my main curriculum is The Light and the Glory for Children series, which is a set of 3 books covering American History up TO the Civil War.  The history is told in a story format, rather than a textbook format.  I supplement that with good historical fiction and some interesting nonfiction (such as the …If You series).  I also have Isaac watch some Animated Hero Classics DVDs.  We have the ones on Christopher Columbus, William Bradford, Pocohontas, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Harriet Tubman, and Abraham Lincoln.  History Pockets, however, has taken up most of our time.  They’re so good, though, that I’ve decided just to follow my planned schedule as far as I can (I only allowed 1-2 weeks for each History Pockets book, which is crazy.  It takes more like 1-2 months per book) and then continue next year.  We probably will not reach the Civil War this year, but so far Isaac has spent a lot of time learning about Colonial America.  I mean he’s learned a LOT, not just a brief mention of that time period.  The readings and the projects together have made history so much fun this year, so I’m not going to feel pressured to try to get to a particular point in history this year.  We’re just going to enjoy it as we go…as far as we go.

I’ve always liked the idea of hands-on learning, especially for History.  I mean, you could make American History come alive by making costumes, making your own real handicrafts like they did in those days, visiting actual historical locations.  I’ve seen pictures of homeschoolers doing those sorts of things, and I think that is awesome for them.  However, my family doesn’t have the money for those types of real-life projects, and we don’t live in America at the moment and couldn’t afford to travel to those places if we did.  So for us, History Pockets is the next best thing.  All you need is lots of construction paper (including 12x18 size), a copy machine, a stapler, a hole punch, and yarn.  If you and your child like hands-on history without requiring a lot of money, materials and time, then I highly recommend History Pockets.

Here are some of Isaac’s finished pockets:  

And here are a few individual projects that are stored in the pockets:

History Pockets has titles for Grades 1-3 and different ones for Grades 4-6.  Most of ours are in the Grades 4-6 range, although I chose to get one on Native Americans, which is for Grades 1-3.  They also have several books on Ancient History, one on the Pilgrims (which I didn’t get because they’re covered in the Colonial America book), and one on Explorers of North America. 

I think these books also could be used for lapbooks or notebooks if you preferred to do that.  We didn’t do every project in the book, and we didn’t always follow directions exactly, but we had great fun and used nearly every part of the book.  If you have any questions about History Pockets, feel free to ask me.

As always, this has been an unofficial review. These reviews are neither requested, nor do I receive anything for doing them. I just like to share what we use in our homeschool for the benefit of interested readers.