Little Homeschool Blessings: Home School in the Woods: Project Passport World History Study: Ancient Egypt {Review} With an Update!!!

First Thoughts
Home School in the Woods sent us Project Passport World History Study: Ancient Egypt to review. The Project Password World History Study is a series of studies. They cover the topics: Ancient Egypt, The Middle Ages, and Renaissance and Reformation. There are more planned. If all of the sections of this series are like Ancient Egypt, this is a series not to be missed!

What do you get?
You receive a digital download that needs to be printed, but you decide what to print and if you want it printed in color or black and white. Some folks choose to print everything ahead of the study and store it in binders. We chose to do a few weeks in advance. There are audio components, text, trip itineraries, activity directions, handouts, lap book pieces, teacher keys, and more.

Each lesson is called a “Stop.” There are 25 stops which include: laying the foundation, everyday life, agriculture, trade, transportation, education, literature, writing, sciences, medicine, disease, arts, great builders, religion, "gods," governing, dynasties and kingdoms, pharaohs and famous women, Ancient Egypt and the Bible, and more.

This series starts at the beginning of creation and moves through the present time to provide a continuation of past events through to our current age.

Getting Started
The Travel Itineraries are a great place to start. It tells what the child will be doing with numbered projects, what materials and masters are required, and directions. We printed these off and used them to follow along with each stop.

Once we printed the itineraries, I would determine what was necessary to complete the activities in the stop and what masters I needed to print.

There is a Travel Tips section that breaks the project down for you as well. It includes a list of general materials and gives an overview of the lessons.

At the very first stop, you make the several things that are used throughout the project. In the remaining stops you delve into your specific topic.

There are also suggestions for additional study materials that include: books, audio, audio books, videos, and dvds.

We printed off the itineraries for each stop, then the masters. We gathered the materials (some we needed to purchase, some we adapted with what we had on hand, and others we already had available), we pulled up the text, and then Ceesa got busy. I would read the text to her, but then she did the projects on her own. She could have read the text, but it was a great opportunity for us to do part of the study together.

The project study is expected to take 8-12 weeks to complete (although we found that it was best for us to complete one stop a week, with 25 stops, we would need 25 weeks). Each stop can have several options and can take anywhere from 3 hours to several days to gather materials and complete the projects.

Our Experience

Can I start by saying, "Wow!" This study is absolutely wonderful! Ceesa loved every minute of it. It was exactly what we want in a study.

The reading was a living text. It provided very interesting information and was very conversational in its presentation. The audio provided was a fun addition, too.

We don't generally complete lap books, because the ones we have used have been a lot of coloring pages that took too much time to cut and paste and not a lot of time learning new information or gaining new experiences. But this project does not require tremendous amounts of time on busy skills; instead, Ceesa was genuinely engaged in learning about the time.

There were lots of hands on activities. And this is what we can't get enough of and what really made our project study wonderful.

She made mud bricks and conducted some experiments with them.

She made a game board for us to play. (She was feeling awful in this picture, she ended up with a fever and was in bed the whole rest of the day, but she wouldn't lay down until we played together.)

She created an Egyptian costume all on her own (although we didn't have the right colors -gold paint and white cloth- she made due).

She made us 4 Egyptian meals.

And she made a reed boat (although we didn't have reeds, so she made it from the boughs of our weeping cherry tree).

She's currently working on making a mummy and canopic jars.

She says, "I really like it because I get to do activities and make things from Ancient Egypt. I like writing the newspaper and drawing pictures on the postcards. Making dinner and dressing up as an Egyptian was really great!"

Future
We can't wait to try out more of these studies! Ceesa is going to work throughout the rest of summer to complete Ancient Egypt.

Update
This is a wonderful project! Have I mentioned that? Ceesa is still working away on it, but I wanted to give you a glimpse of some of the other things she has done since we posted this review...