HISTORY Through the Ages World History Study Project Passport: Renaissance and Reformation {Review}

I love the Home School in the Woods company so I was very excited to be able to review this hands-on history product for them as part of the TOS Home School Review Crew.

HISTORY Through the Ages Project Passport World History Study is a history curriculum that teaches history by allowing your kids to travel back in time and experience history in the making.  Project Passport includes a travel plan with itineraries for what you will find at each stop along your trip, a project to make your own passport and luggage folder to use throughout your travels, audio tours, corresponding lapbooks, recipes, timeline, maps, crafts, and more.  

Kids aren't just learning by reading and memorizing.  They are learning by doing and experiencing too.

We have already been studying the Renaissance and the Reformation with our regular history curriculum so we used the Project Passport: Renaissance and Reformation as a supplement to what we are already using.  It is suggested for grades 3-8.

However, there are also three other Project Passport products covering Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, as well as The Middle Ages.  Another Project Passport covering Ancient Rome is scheduled for release sometime in 2018.

My kids love hands-on projects because they bring learning to life for them.  With Project Passport we read about our "stop" on the itinerary and learn about the events happening there.  Then my children complete some activities.  Sometimes it is a recipe like Springerle Cookies or an art technique project like learning about linear perspective.


My daughter especially likes projects with cutting and gluing.  Here she is preparing match book style cards describing the different classes of society during the Renaissance.
In minutes she was able to create this wonderful page with pictures and explanations for the different classes.  She is young so I let her use the text box explanations as provided with the material but older children could be challenged to fill in the information on their own as a review.


We learned about the battle of the theories of planetary motion.  Ptolemy first theorized that the Earth was the center of the solar system and the sun and planets orbited around the Earth.  The kids made a fun little card where the sun and planets actually spin around a brad which represents the Earth.


Then many years later Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong and correctly declared that the Sun is at the center of the solar system and it is orbited by the planets.  The children added another spinning page to their card to demonstrate this theory.

We also learned about Galileo Galilei and his invention of the sliding telescope.  Both kids loved the way these turned out!  I asked my daughter to hold hers so I could take a picture of it and she pretended to look at stars through it!

We used the download version of Project Passport which costs $33.95 or you can purchase a CD for $34.95.  Either way you will have to have a printer and paper, preferably colored card stock, in order to print the itineraries and activity pages so make sure to include time for this in your teacher planning time.

We have thoroughly enjoyed the HISTORY Through the Ages Project Passport World History Study: Renaissance and Reformation.  I only wish we had know about them earlier when we were studying the Egypt and the Middle Ages.  Home School in the Woods recently added Ancient Greek to the Project Passport lineup and they are scheduled to release the Project Passport: Ancient Rome edition in 2018.

Want to learn more about Home School in the Woods? Follow them on the social media contacts below:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/homeschoolinthewoods
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/hsinthewoods/
Google+: https://plus.google.com/b/109711152019235885312/+Homeschoolinthewoods
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HSintheWoods @HSintheWoods

Would you like to read some more TOS Home School Review Crew reviews on History Through the Ages World History Study Project Passport including some from the other editions like Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, and the Middle Ages?  Click on the banner below:

VBS Family Night

Vacation Bible School is always a highlight of summer for my kids, especially the Family Fun Night!  Our church sets up tons of bounce houses, obstacle courses, water slides, pony rides, a petting zoo, and yummy food!  As soon as we got there, Nicholas met up with some of his friends and they were off!  

Rachel was brave and tried this amazing giant ball.  She rolled it up and down the track while inside it!

She loved the petting zoo and went in it a few times through the night.  Such cute little baby animals!

She was brave and did a lot of rides and obstacle courses that she wouldn't have done last year.  I'm so proud of her.  And look how much fun she was having!

It was fun having Stuart hang out with us.  Usually he goes with Nicholas and I hang out with Rachel.  But this year Nicholas was kind of on his own with his little pack of friends so it was neat that Rachel and I got some fun time with Daddy.

What a fun night it was spending time having fun and hanging out with friends.  As the sun went down I couldn't help but snap a shot of the beautiful sunset over our church.

What an Amazing VBS!

My kids always love going to VBS in the summer.  They have fun with friends, play games, have yummy snacks all while learning about and worship our great God.  

But this year, Nicholas is too old to go to VBS.  I was devastated when I went to register him and it said Kindergarten through 5th grade.  He is entering 6th grade this year.  But as I looked around the website a little more I realized that in 6th grade he can volunteer at VBS!  Woo hoo!  Not only would he still get to be there for all the fun but he would actually be a part of sharing that love with younger kids.  Amazing!

For the week before VBS actually started, Nicholas went to church every day for about 4 hours at a time to help them turn the whole inside of the church into a magical place of wonder for "The Great Voyage" theme this year.

He worked on turning a hall into the inside of Jonah's whale.  See the back bone and rib cage?

Another hall was a boat on the ocean.  I love the waves made of blue vinyl tablecloths and the tops cut off of white plastic drinking cups.  So creative!

And how can you save money on decorative life saving rings?  Buy white stryofoam rings and paint red stripes on them!

Nicholas also got to make and custom decorate lots of paper fish to swim in the ocean.  He had lots of themed ones....a school fish, Iron Man fish, Captain America fish, Hulk fish, Pokemon fish, popcorn fish, smiley face fish, etc.  He definitely had fun with this part.

The kids are divided up into groups and Nicholas would be one of two leaders for a group of kids.  There are several different animal characters in the program so the kids are first assigned an animal then they are subdivided by colors.  Nicholas had just said that he hoped that he didn't get put in the Zoe group and just minutes later I got an email from the church saying he was in charge of the Zoe Brown group.  I asked him why he didn't want to be in Zoe and he said because Zoe is a girl character and she is a very pink flamingo.  But he handled it well and even came up with some good responses if he had younger boys in his group who complained about being in the pink flamingo group.

Monday rolled around and he was excited to see how his first day as a VBS volunteer would go.

Rachel was attending as a participant and she just loved that the hallway into the main sanctuary was made to feel like you are in the ocean.  There was blue fabric and fish hanging from the ceiling, bubbles galore, and fun music playing!

Inside the sanctuary, the energy was bubbling over.  How exciting for these kids. God will do amazing things here this week!

Rachel was in Bo Orange group.  Her leaders gave them orange bandanas to wear and painted blue on their faces to look like Bo the shark.

When I picked her up, she asked for some coins to donate to the VBS mission outreach.  She was so excited to add her coins to the big jar on stage.

Rachel has been carrying around some post card invitations to VBS and she cut one of them up to make it into a puzzle.

Bubbles, bubbles, everyday!  How could you not be excited to walk through this many bubbles each morning!

The main lobby held a giant 15-20 foot ark for Noah with each of the animal characters aboard.  

Nicholas asked to go to Party City to get some spirit items for his team.  We found this awesome pink flamingo which I thought for sure he would refuse to hold because it is pink.  But I was wrong.  He wanted to be a good leader and get his team excited and that was more important than his dislike of the color pink so he got it.

He also got some brown bandanas for his team, some crosses that we made into necklaces, and some whistles for them.

I noticed that they had decorated the outside of the Jonah's whale hallway to show that you are going inside the whale's mouth.  So cute!

And inside the whale was complete and lit with a black light that gave it an awesome glow.

I just love our church's Children's Ministry and how to go above and beyond to reach the next generation.  It has been so much fun watching all these kids each day.  They are excited about the Lord, making Godly friendships, and having fun together the whole week!  Here is one of the songs that our church wrote for this VBS.  There are even some little dance moves that go with it.  It was amazing to be in the room watching 600 kids and 1200 volunteers singing and jumping to the music!  You can get a glimpse of the excitement from this video below:

Rachel and her leaders.  

Tomorrow night we all come back together for a big fun family night outside with bounce houses, water slide, a petting zoo, and more!  We can't wait!

Children's Check-In at Church

Every week when we go to church we go to the kiosk and check the kids into their rooms.  Nicholas enters the info and Rachel hits the print button.  The computer generates a name tag for each of them with codes on the tags and it also prints parents tickets with the matching codes on them.  When we pick up the kids after service, the children's ministry workers match up our codes with the codes on our kids' name tags.  

Well, this weekend was Promotion Weekend at church so kids move up to the room of the next grade level they will be entering in the fall.  Rachel will be in 1st grade and Nicholas will be in 6th.  He is a big Middle Schooler now so the computer didn't let us check him in to his room.  As a 6th grader, he just goes to the room and checks himself in.  He was a little startled and somewhat nervous about his newly found independence.

Rachel enjoyed getting to take over all of the check-in process herself and hers is the only name tag printed.

Wow!  We are entering the world of middle school and I'm excited and nervous all at the same time!