Having used a variety of products from Home School in the Woods in the past, we were entirely familiar with downloading the digital files, decompressing them, and use the “Start” file to navigate our way through the printable lesson files. I started out by printing off the text for the first 10 lessons, making a binder cover, and placing the lessons behind weekly tabs so I would have a nice teacher’s binder to work from. This also doubled as our student notebook, giving us a place to store the hole-punched keepsake pages that we created during the lessons. I usually print off the activity/lapbook materials needed ahead of time to avoid interruptions during our lessons, as Holden has ADHD and gets distracted if we have to stop and start. But this time around, we would only be choosing one or sometimes two of the suggested activities for each lesson to do together, so after we read the lesson text, we looked through the activity choices and selected the one we wanted to do. Then I would print off and assemble the materials later that night for use the next day, thereby still avoiding any disruptions to our time together. This seemed to work well.
Lesson 1: America’s Colonies Begin…
This lesson began with a discussion of the European expansion into the New World with the formation of what would become The Lost Colony and Jamestown settlements. The Lost Colony was an interesting story, and we got to toss around ideas of what might have happened to the settlers who mysteriously disappeared while awaiting supply ships that would return years later. We knew all about the Jamestown settlement already, as my kids spent most of their lives in VA, where we had a membership to Jamestown Settlement and the Yorktown Victory Center and visited many, many times. We also learned about the first 13 colonies and the lives of indentured servants and slaves who worked the land to make the colonies prosperous. Indentured servants worked by choice in exchange for their passage to the new land, but slaves were either sold as property or taken by force to do labor for free. This was an excellent opportunity for us to discuss what’s wrong with that and why slavery would later be abolished.
For our lesson project, we could choose to create an mini 
archaeological dig and document our finds in a journal, do a printable matching activity using a description and photos of a dig done at Ferry Farm (George Washington’s Boyhood Home), create a Town Crier newspaper we would fill with our own hand-written articles, or do a penmanship activity on “The Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.” We chose to work on the Ferry Farm archaeological dig activity. We read each artifact description, and Holden had to match the photos to each one and glue them on the page, which we would keep in our binder.
Lesson 2: The Colonial Home – Part 1 (The New Settler and the Farm)
Here, we learned that each settler’s first concern was to build a temporary shelter so they could have protection from the weather while they worked to clear the land, plant their fields, and prepare themselves for winter. Animals were left outdoors until a barn could be constructed. Children were an integral part of completing the work and were given regular chores to do at about 6-7 years of age.
Our ch
oices of lesson projects were to create a lapbook element that showed what kinds of things you would find on a colonial farm, add a classified ads to the newspaper from the previous lesson, do a penmanship activity on Rules of Civility/Scripture, or take a nature walk to find a cut tree or log and identify its age by counting the rings inside. We chose to create the lapbook element, and after looking at the pictures of all the many things we would find on a Colonial farm, we set this aside to be included in a lapbook at the end of our study.
Lesson 3: The Colonial Home – Part 2 (The House)
Once the initial homestead has been established, a colonial family had to think about building a more permanent home before the onset of winter. This lesson gets into the various types of houses settlers built based on their origin, location, wealth, and available materials.
For the activity, we got to choose from creating pop-up cards detailing 4 styles of houses that were used, creating a shoe box diorama, or doing a penmanship page on civility/scripture. We chose to create the pop
-up cards, which will be saved and added to the lapbook at the end of the study. Holden loved these 3-dimensional displays and thought they were super cool. We both thought the diorama would be a fun project, too, if we could get our hands on some Colonial figurines, so if we can do that, we may come back and revisit that as an additional project before we’re through.
Lesson 4: The Colonial Home – Part 3 (Inside the Home)
In this lesson, we learned about some of the details of the inside of the Colonial homes, like what kinds of rooms were included, what people used for beds, and how bathroom needs were accommodated in the “necessary” or outhouse. (As a side note, this was the part where I got to explain to Holden how when I visited my grandparents in the early 1980’s in England, they still used chamber pots in the upstairs bedrooms, didn’t own a refrigerator but used a cool cupboard under the stairs, and didn’t have a traditional washing machine, but still used an old washboard and wringer! They were born in the 1890’s and still kept to a lot of their old-fashioned ways.) We also learned that many settlers wanted to decorate their walls but couldn’t afford fancy wallpaper. As an alternative, they often decorated their walls to look like wallpaper by using stencils and stencil paint.
For our project, we could choose between making a miniature replica of a rope bed with a straw tick mattress like the ones the settlers would have slept on, working with Colonial stencils by either printing out a stencil coloring page to decorate for the notebook or by stenciling a sample or a box, or doing another penmanship page. We decided to do the stencil coloring page for our notebook.
Holden really wanted to see what the rope bed with the straw tick mattress would look like, but it took some time and a few trips to different stores for me to gather the necessary materials. I was finally able to get my hands on the muslin fabric and clean straw for the straw tick mattress and the ball of string for the rope bed, so we’ll be coming back to complete that project shortly.
Lesson 5: Project Day – 1
These “project days” are presented every 5th day as an opportunity to catch up on any previous lesson projects you were unable to complete as you wen
t along, or to add additional ones you’d like to do. You can also use it as a time to do additional research on your own, as there is no lesson text on project days. We were caught up already, so we printed the first set of Fact-File cards and made the envelopes that would eventually store all of the sets for the study. We adhered the envelopes to a 3-hole punched page to store in our notebook. The fact-file cards can be printed and used in different ways as you desire. You can use them for matching games between the terms and their definitions or as flash cards for drills. This first set shown here includes Colonial diseases and cooking terms. There are also blank ones you can print optionally to add terms from your own research.
Lesson 6: Colonial Clothing
In this lesson, we learned all about the different types of clothing that men, women, and children wore in this time period. Apparently, most settlers owned just 2 sets of clothes each…one for everyday use and one set of Sunday clothes made of finer material than the homespun fabric used for work and leisure activities as well as for sleeping. We also learned about all that went into the making of the wool and linen fabric used to sew their clothing. Each family made their own sets of clothing, and spinning the wool and flax fibers into strands that could be used for weaving into fabric took a lot of time, so women generally spent much of their leisure time working on this task.
For our activity, 
we got to choose between making a panel booklet that shows all the steps to transform flax into linen fabric for later display in our lapbook, gather clothing to play dress-up as a colonial settler, create a cardboard loom to weave on with yarn, or create an interactive lapbook demonstration of the clothing the colonists wore using transparency overlays. We chose to make the linen panel booklet for our lapbook.
Lesson 7: Colonial Food
In this lesson, we learned that garnering and preparing food was a big part of daily life for the colonists. Everything was made from scratch, and availability was limited for things to use to flavor foods. We learned about their methods of preserving foods for daily use as well as long-term preservation for winter storage when fresh food would be scarce. We also learned about the introduction of spices from various traders and how sweetening was done with honey and maple syrup. We discussed a lot about how cooking was done in the fireplace, but some were fortunate enough to have a built-in oven (without electricity, of course). Many ate their food on trenchers, but others simply used stale bread as a plate, which also softened the bread so it could be eaten at the end of the meal. Soups and stews were commonplace, allowing overripe vegetables and leftover meats to be used up in a new dish. Bread and corn used as flour were staple foods in the colonial diet. A sweet food for young children consisted of mashed squash sweetened with maple syrup or molasses, and babies often had a little flour mixed with milk, called pap, as their first solid food. The text also explained how pease porridge was commonly used because the leftovers could be eaten hot or cold and could be reconstituted and used over and over again for several days. We both thought that sounded gross! We learned that water, cider, mead, beer, and tea were popular beverages until taxes became too high on tea, which was then replaced with coffee. I’m from England myself and drink tea, both hot and cold, all day long, so I can understand their desire for tea!
For our project
, we could choose between making a colonial cookbook, doing a penmanship page, or creating a pie book of “bees.” We chose the cookbook so we could see some of the recipes that seem so unusual to us like egg pie and old-peas soup. One thing I really do want to make from the cookbook, though, is bread pudding! It’s one of my favorite British favorites to go with my tea. What a treat!
Lesson 8: Family Life
This lesson was a little different, as we got to read the story of every life for a Massachusetts farm family. In their story, we learned how they all rise early before daybreak to get started on their chores, the details of the daily chores that each family member is responsible for doing, how the animals are cared for, how the father reads scripture before the family meals and how they apply it to their daily lives by sacrificing of themselves to do good for others, what kinds of foods might be in their meals, what kinds of treats they prepared, and in what kinds of leisure activities they engaged in the evenings. One thing that stood out to us was that there was so much work to do at all hours of the day! I would imagine they slept well at night from pure exhaustion.
For our activity, we co
uld choose to make a story book telling the story that we read, do another penmanship page, learn about name selection from a printable chart of names used in this era, or make an apple head doll. We chose to make the storybook. But we are interested in maybe revisiting this lesson for the What’s In a Name activity on one of the extra project days.
Lesson 9: The Colonial School
In this lesson, we learned about how the prevalence of illiteracy in parents perpetuated the same in their children for many years, which limited work opportunities and success for future generations. By 1647, laws were passed that were designed to remedy this problem, requiring towns of 50 or more families to employ a teacher to teach the children. Towns of 100 or more had to set up a grammar school to prepare children for University. For others, there was a dame school run by an older woman who would instruct children in her home and teach them to recite scriptures, although they could not read the Bible for themselves. Schools took scheduled breaks during harvest season to allow children to help with the harvesting, as you would expect in such a chore-driven society. But while in school, they learned reading, writing, and arithmetic. Spelling was not a strong-suit for many children, and many people of this time wrote words phonetically. Children learned their alphabet and numbers from a horn book. Otherwise, actual books were few and far between. Usually, the only books they had access to were books the teacher herself had acquired on her own and shared in school. Discipline was rather harsh by today’s standards, labeling students with signs that identified their offenses for all to see, whipping them with leather straps on the buttocks, or rapping their hands or the soles of their feet with a rod! Manners were strongly encouraged at all times.
For our activity, we could c
hoose from making a replica of a hornbook to mount and keep in our notebook, doing a penmanship page, creating an embroidery sampler, or completing a rebus puzzle that demonstrated the use of pictures to create words, which many colonists incorporated into their writing. We actually chose two here…the hornbook, complete with a clear overlay to protect the printed letters and numbers…and we couldn’t resist doing the rebus puzzles just for fun! Holden got a kick out of doing those. Some of them were hard to figure out, like the picture of a man scratching that was supposed to represent the “itch” in pitchfork. 
Lesson 10: Project Day – 2
For th
is second Project Day, we could work on previous projects, add more Fact-File cards, or cook something colonial from the cookbook we made in an earlier lesson. There was also a recipe for Indian Pudding we could make. We decided to make the final sets of Fact-File cards to fill up the envelopes we’d made previously. We added cards for artisans and general vocabulary from Colonial times.
At the end of our 10 lessons, Holden told me he had really enjoyed all the little activities and the variety of projects we had done. He liked that the lessons were just enough without being overly long, and we learned lots of new things along the way. It was a great supplement to our learning and did not overly lengthen our school day when we added it to our regular studies. And I think it really enriched what we were covering at the time. We definitely look forward to continuing the lessons to round out our study, and I can’t wait to complete the lapbook at the end to keep as a summary of everything we learned!
Other Products We’ve Reviewed
In the past, we’ve reviewed many products from other series:
Project Passport series:
Ancient Rome, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece,
Hands-On History Lap-Paks:
Wonders of the World
20th Century in America
Elections
A La Carte Products:
The War to End All Wars File Folder Game & The Art of Quilling (3D)
Hands-On History Activity Paks:
Make-A-State
And there are other Home School in the Woods products I’ve purchased and used during my 18 years of homeschooling, as well. There are just so many to choose from to match whatever you might be studying for history, whether you want an intensive study or just a single item to add some hands-on fun. And since this is a presidential election year, you’ll definitely want to check out the U.S. Elections Lap-Pak, which is also in my list of past reviews that I mentioned above.
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