Home School in the Woods-Make-a-State Activity Review

This time we are reviewing the Make-a-State Activity and Activity-Pak by

Home School in the Woods. Home School in the Woods is a hands-on history company. We have reviewed for Home School in the Woods before and they never fail to impress me. This pack is a digital download cost is around $18.95. You can use this pack with any history program you are already using. It is geared toward grades 3-8 and everything is printable. It has around 20 projects and I believe it has a little something for all 50 states. Projects incorporate things like research, mapping, creative writing, drawing, elections etc. It is designed to be used as a Lap Book.  In case you are un familiar with what a Lap Book is you can see a picture to the right. A Lap Book is basically a couple of creatively taped file folders that you will glue and tape all these bits of information that your child learns about. Ideally your child will be doing all the taping, gluing, coloring and filling out. If you thinking this looks complicated have no fear Home School In The Woods includes some great instructions that are easy to follow so you can assemble your Lap Book with ease. These are a nice way to keep all the information on a unit together in one place. They are also a handy dandy way for your child to review what they learned when it comes test time.

We mainly focused on doing the state of Missouri, since that is our home state. Each state pack will have a variety of cut out with information to help you study about that state. As you can see in the example above their is a good amount of information on each state. We tried out some of the other features that were included in our download. My favorite part was the State Pages. We recently did a cross country field trip and we used these pages to go back and learn some additional information about each state that we visited. It tells you a brief history about the state then down at the bottom it gives you some information like state flower, bird, fish, tree etc. We printed and put all of these fact pages in a little binder so we can use them as reference guide during the school year. 

Our next favorite part was the Recipes. This pack provides a recipe for each state. It is designed so that you can print the recipe and put it in a little pocket in the Lap Book. Since cooking is a big deal in out house and we sampled a good chunk of these recipes. The girls chose to affix these in their cook books. I printed each recipe and laminated it and we glued the pockets in each of the girls cook books. By the way the Missouri Gooey Butter Cake recipe is yum!

Their is a bonus item included in this Pak. It is called "Name That State". This is a file folder game, I am sure most of you know what a file folder game is, I played them in school as a kid. It is designed for both younger and older students and my girls has some fun with this game. It basically teaches your child to recognize each state by its shape and placement within the U.S. It also help with learning the state capitals. If you plan to use this long term I recommend printing the pieces on card stock or laminating them. Don't forget to do any coloring before you laminate. The girls had fun with this game we actually took it on a camping trip with us recently and played it when we were stuck in side on a rainy day. I was surprised to find that I could place most stats in their correct location. How ever I was found to be a little lacking on identifying the correct capitals.  

I wanted to mention that Home School In The Woods has some new products available. They have 50 new a la carte projects. These are smaller bit sized projects like file folder games and file folder projects. These are reasonably priced from $2.95 to around $7.95. So if you are looking for something special take a look around they just might have what you need http://homeschoolinthewoods.com/alacarte.html.

If you click the link below you can read about some of the other products the Crew is reviewing like the U.S. Elections Lap-Pak or the Benjamin Franklin Lap-Pak.

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