Customer Reviews

History Pockets: The American Revolution

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a homeschool Mom I have been looking and looking for a hands on history lesson book for my 5th grader and found nothing till now. This book teaches great, simple history lessons while being completely hands on and I don't have to figure it out on my own. If you've ever attempted to create your own lap books, they are not easy and you pretty much have to figure it out yourself. This book does it all for you. It tells you exactly what page to photo copy from the book, exactly what size and color paper and any other simple supplies you may need. As the Mom teaching, I love this book, but more important, my son is really learning history and for the first time in his life he is enjoying and retaining it! I loved this book so much I purchased every title written!

At a homeschool convention, a speaker mentioned making scapbooks to reflect what the students are learning. History Pockets area a great way to do that for us who are artistically challenged! There are plenty of hands-on activities that fit nicely into a portfolio/scrapbook. I would not use this book as a stand alone though and feel that my child had adequately covered the American Revolution. It needs plenty of books to fill out the information. My daughter has especially enjoyed the Jean Fritz books and History Makers series.

This resource is wonderful for either a large classroom or home-school setup, as a supplement to the study of the American War for Independence. It is intended for reproduction, and you can make copies of whatever parts you like. My students especially enjoyed the parts on the spies and coded letters and such. As a teacher, I believe it's important for students to interact with the material as much as possible for it to really sink in and have an impact. These materials are just the ticket.

We use many styles of learning, hands on being one of them. This resource was an excellent supplement while we were doing American History. My kids really enjoyed it! History Pockets gets addicting to homeschoolers!

I've been impressed by the content of all the various "History Pockets" books we've used in our homeschool. They are especially helpful for visual and tactile learners. However, they have been rather hit-or-miss with my children. My 2nd child absolutely *LOVES* working on the activities. However, my oldest hates all the cutting & pasting involved and finds it to be busywork.

I would recommend the "History Pockets" to students who don't mind all the prep work involved in making the folders/lapbook.

I used this with kids ranging from four to twelve. Wonderfully done and worth twice as much as I paid.

I just started homeschooling this winter and someone told me to check out History Pockets. I figured I'd give one a try after seeing good reviews for it here. It was a big help in saving me time in researching and making out lessons plans. My daughter enjoyed it as well.

You will need to get a pad of construction paper that is 12" x 18". You also need 12" x 9" paper so you can just easily cut the 12x18 in half. We used this construction paper for all the pocket projects. However, for making the actual book (made up of seven pockets with a front cover) I got thick, sturdy 16" x 16" scrap-booking paper since the construction paper is a bit flimsy. We just cut some of the scrapbook paper in half and stapled with a mini stapler to make the pocket parts.

Each pocket has info on a specific topic and things for the kids to cut and color. The term "arts and crafts projects" in the product description had me thinking there'd be some fun artsy-craftsy ideas in the book, but there really aren't. Mostly cutting and pasting photocopied pictures. They have you fold paper in a few different ways to make little booklets. The Spy chapter was my daughter's favorite. You get to make invisible ink (very easy and inexpensive, using baking soda and grape juice). And it had other types of secret messages and codes. (If we hadn't run out of time for the school year we could have added a science project, experimenting with different ingredients to try and make other types of invisible inks and whether grape juice is the only item that can reveal the secret message.)

There is definitely plenty of info and items to work on in the book, but my daughter wanted some challenge and asked me to make a quiz after each pocket, so I created them just by reading the info provided in each pocket and made up bonus questions as well. She loved the bonus question for the spy and traitor chapter where I had her think up her own way of sending a secret message.

I went through pretty much an entire black ink cartridge for all the photo copying needed (about $13 for my printer). Since I am not a teacher needing to copy for a whole class, I would have loved if I could have just torn the pages straight out of the book to use, but you can't do that since there is needed info on both sides of the pages. It would have been worth the book costing a dollar to two more to have project pages blank on the other side. And if each pocket had a quiz that would have been nice.

I got a pad of patriotic stickers at the store for a dollar and my daughter used them to decorate the pockets. Between that and coloring with color pencil it really came out to a nice finished product in which your kids will feel proud.

So as for the "missing" artsy projects I thought it might have had in it, I taught my daughter to do embroidery for art to go along with the time period and made a pattern with the Liberty Bell and fireworks for her. She loved making that and we have it hanging up now as we are getting close to 4th of July decorating around the house. We also looked up recipes common during the Revolutionary War era and made homemade cornbread and homemade butter. We looked up songs from this time period and artwork. But the History Pockets did the main chunk of research and work for me on all the basic info. I don't think I'll jump right into another pocket right off in the fall. Doing one pocket after another, after another, I think could get monotonous (I'm assuming they all have lots of cutting, coloring, and pasting for the majority of the book). But we definitely will be using them again, probably at least one a year. It's a great help and a great way to make sure you are covering the basics.