Customer Reviews

History Pockets: Life in Plymouth Colony, Grades 1-3

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

 

 

While the History Pocket books are great for making a book, they are a little boring by themselves. There is too much coloring and not enough learning. We have learned more by reading library books, the encyclopedia, watching an educational show, or talking about the subjects.

When we purchased these, I liked the idea. But, after wasting a lot of our homeschool day with the children coloring (by day 3, coloring had turned into scribbles) I decided to use these as supplemental activities. We read and do art projects. We talk about the subjects.

My kids liked their pilgrim puppets, the diorama of the room... and that is about it...

We have several of the HP products. Now, we let the kids chose which ones looked "fun", and skip the rest.

While it is nice to have a book to look at afterwards, I feel they do not serve a great purpose. (And they are a waste of printer paper and ink.) They are nice if you need a "work sample" for school, but I feel they are just "busy work". History can be learned in much more interesting ways.

I used this with my children, ages 7 and 9, to supplement our study of the colonies. It is a fun, hands on way to learn about the different aspects of colonial life. There are eight chapters with simple projects to do in each, and a pocket to store the things in for each chapter. The eight chapters are Voyage to the New World, The New World, Building a Village, Home Sweet Home, The Family, Working in Plymouth Colony, Going to School, What Did the Pilgrims Give Us? The projects involve paper, cutting and pasting, some writing, coloring, diaramas, and a vocabulary page for each chapter/pocket. My only complaint is that some of the projects get pretty repetitive, lots of cutting and glueing. I have other History Pockets books and we will probably only use parts of them, rather than do all the projects in all the pockets.

We loved this product. We use it as an addition to our current curriculum, My Father's World. We liked the books and the word cards in addition to the other projects. I would recommend this product to anyone. 12x18 construction paper can be found at Millers Pads and Paper on line. Great hands on project with easy to follow instructions.

I love the history books. They are a lot of fun to go through with your children. I am a home schooler and these books are very educational

I teach a multiage 2/3 classroom and my students are loving this project and we are learning a lot about Pilgrim life. I like this product because there are a lot of activities and you don't necessarily need to do everyone if you don't have the time. This does take a while, I would plan all 3 weeks before Thanksgiving to get it all done on time. This is listed as 1st-3rd grade but it is probably more appropriate for 2nd-4th grade.

When I got this activity book I was thrilled!!!!! I have been using the activities as written in my self contained special ed classroom. My students don't read or write so I am having to do a bit of adaptation but the kids LOVE every bit of it! It takes a lot of printing but the activities aren't just writing and answering questions. My kids can really get into the activities and I am able to teach a lot of history while we create models. They have adopted "pilgrim" names and they are excited to come to class. I will be ordering more history pockets!

I agree with all of teachingmytwo's comments, so I'll try not to repeat her points. I would add that while the projects have too much coloring, we minimalized this by just not coloring everything. The projects still look good not fully colored.

I do feel that if History Pockets are one's only hands-on supplement for your history/social studies program year after year (from one grade to the next), the projects from the various books do start to feel repetative. However, as each book stands on it's own, I think they're very well done, including this one, Life in Plymouth. The authors seem to choose just the right things in terms of subject matter to highlight from one's history study. So while one is, of course, reading text, real books, viewing videos, etc., Life in Plymouth will provide each child a way to walk away with a "scrap book" of the topics typically touched on.

By the way, the projects could actually be done as a family or in small groups in a classroom with each child doing one of the several projects per pocket. It would just depend on how independently your kids can work and what pace you'd like.