A Stable Beginning: Home School in the Woods : Á La Carte ~ a TOS review

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Home School in the Woods : Á La Carte ~ a TOS review

Way back in 2011 I attended my very first homeschool convention. We battled the summer storm weather and made the nearly 2 hour drive to the Convention center. I tell you it was glorious! While there I stumbled upon a company called Home School in the Woods as I browsed the Vendor Hall. I hit the jackpot that day with this company and We have been making history fun ever since.

Homeschool in the Woods has transformed the way we tackle hands-on history learning ever since. Did you know the company now offers many of their hands-on history projects Á La Carte? We were blessed to receive three Á La Carte items for this review including:

Greek Life!

New Figures of the 20th and 21st Century

The Art of Quilling

The Á La Carte products are smaller projects from within the bigger complete history products sold on the site. Everything from the Project Passports, Time Line series, Activity-Paks, and Time Travelers U.S. History Studies is available to choose from. Each individual product is available as a PDF download straight to your inbox. With the sheer variety of categories, games, newspapers, and lapbooks, on several topics you are sure to be able to find a project to suit your current needs.

Greek Life!

Home School in the Woods Á La Carte products

This file folder game puts you, the player, right into the everyday realities of ancient Greece! Be prepared to experience the blessings and perils of what an average Greece citizen would have faced during this time period. Whether you are rich or poor, this game incorporates famines, debts, and natural disasters that can throw a wrench into even the happiest of lives.
To begin playing, quick and easy set-up of the game board is required. Detailed instructions are provided for printing. To play simply choose a player piece, who happen to be all men because that was the custom of the time, and randomly pick career card. Women were not able to pursue careers and stayed at home. The career cards are divided into upper and lower classes and the class you belong to affects your game play. Jobs available to each class are as follows:

Lower Class: ~ Farmer

~ Craftsman

~ Teacher

Upper Class: ~ Aristocrat

~ Politician

~ Merchant

~ Professional Soldier

Each player takes a turn by answering a question from the question card pile. Record your correct or incorrect answers on the tally sheet. The questions all pertain to Greece life. As you make your way around the game board you will collect wages based off your career or you may have to pay money for your family to eat.

Real life situations like marriages, debts, famine, earthquake, and war are all intertwined with game play. Running out of money during game play is a real life problem to have so be sure to watch your money supply or you will pay for it at the end of the game when questions are tallied.

To win the game, simply add up the points you received for correct questions, points for cash and the points you have for your children. Point spread can be all over the place so don’t worry too much about that because each time you play the game the scenarios will be different. The person with the highest final total is the winner!

New Figures of the 20th and 21st Century

This set includes 24 newly created modern timeline figures from the 20th and 21st centuries. The figures in this set are the same quality you can expect from the orgianal set, HISTORY Through the Ages Complete Collection of Timeline Figures on CD. With the purchase of this set you get figures in both wall and notebook size, with the option to have text descriptions or not. Figures included in this set are:

Tunguska Event - June 30, 1908 A.D. 

Pope John Paul II - 1920-2005 A.D. 

Margaret Thatcher - October 13, 1925 - April 8, 2013 A.D.

Queen Elizabeth II - 1926- A.D. 

Desmond Mpilo Tutu - 1931- A.D. 

Norwegian Heavy Water Sabotage - February 28, 1943 

The Invention of the Laser - May 16, 1960 A.D. 

Barack Obama - 1961- A.D. 

Mars Exploration - Began c. 1965 A.D.

Computer Data Storage Grows Exponentially - Data storage on floppy disk begins c. 1970 A.D. 

The 24-Hour (24/7) News Cycle - Began June 1, 1980 A.D.

Operation Restore Hope - Began December 1992 A.D.

Britain Transfers Hong Kong to China “The Handover” - July 1, 1997 A.D.

The Growth of Social Media - 2000s A.D. 

Hurricane Katrina - August 29, 2005 A.D. 

The Tsunami of 2004 - December 26, 2004 A.D.

The World’s First Space Tourist - April 28, 2001 A.D. 

Chilean Miners Rescued - August 5 – October 13, 2010 A.D. 

The Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011 - March 11, 2011 A.D.

Gravitational Waves Detected for the First Time (Two Black Holes Collide) - September 14, 2015 A.D. 

Earthquake in Haiti - January 12, 2010 A.D. 

Pluto is Demoted to Dwarf Planet Status - August 2006 A.D. 

The Great Recession of 2008 - 2008 A.D. 

The World Population Reaches 7 Billion - c. October 31, 2011 / March 12, 2012 A.D.

The Art of Quilling

Have you ever heard of Quilling? I hadn’t until I was searching through the Á La Carte items and discovered that it is the art of “paper rolling” that dates back to Ancient Egypt! This elegant craft was widely used during the 16th and 17th centuries in the Stuart, Georgian, and Regency periods and brought to the New World by settlers.

The act of “Quilling” involves cutting thin strips of paper and winding it into a form and shaping that form. There are many different types of shapes you can accomplish with like the ones shown above. A special quilling tool is available at most craft stores or you can make your own tool out of a toothpick. You’ll need a dab of clear glue to hold your quilled paper into place.

This set includes all the directions and necessary steps to create your masterpiece including a pattern, minus the colored paper strips and quilling tool. Detailed instructions are given with picture examples so you can be sure you are doing each step correctly.

I have used each of these three Á La Carte items with my children over the last few weeks. My oldest daughter at home just wrote an essay of the Earthquake in Haiti and used the text information from the timeline figure to help her during her research. The file folder game was played by my 9th and 5th graders. We are just finishing up our Greek studies in our history program and this hands-on game really tested their knowledge and they had fun playing and trying to be the winner in the end. My 5th grader also took a shot at Quilling. She thought it was tedious and time consuming rolling the strips of paper but overall had fun completing the project.

If you have hands-on learners, I wholeheartedly recommend you check out the Á La Carte items that Home School in the Woods offers. They have many great products that we use for hands-on learning along with our regular History curriculum. Again I can’t say enough about Home School in the Woods or these products! But don’t just take my word for it, see what my CrewMates thought about the different products being offered by clicking the banner below!