Wednesday’s is our history day and I have come to really look forward to this day! We took our time working through the Evan Moor History Pockets Colonial America Grades 4-6 curriculum. We just finished last week and now are on to another Evan Moor History Pockets book of the American Revolution. My son (who just turned 9) and I have learned a lot from this history unit and really enjoyed all the hands-on activities. I have SO much planned for our American Revolution study now that I know what to expect and how best to incorporate these history pockets into our weekly homeschool rhythm. We loved this study so much, I thought I would share our experience!
How we use the Colonial America history pockets
Something to take note of- this book is meant to be photocopied and not to take the pages directly from the book. This works great for anyone using this for multiple children. You can buy one book and photocopy all the activities and worksheets. I plan to use this same curriculum someday for my younger son Theodore.
For this unit, you will make 8 pockets, with each pocket a different topic. We used 12×12 scrapbook paper to make the pockets and cover of the book. There are detailed instructions on how to make these pockets in the book. Then we punched two holes in each pocket to tie a piece of twine through and bind the pockets together.
The pocket topics in this unit :
- Introduction to Colonial America
- The First Settlements
- The Native Americans
- Homes and Villages
- Daily Life
- School
- Work
- Memorable People
We also used the Our American Heritage book when learning about Memorable People to learn a bit more about each person. I had picked this book up from a local thrift store for a whole $2! It was a perfect addition to this unit. I will be using that book alongside the American Revolution History Pocket unit as well. This book goes further into the lives of memorable people during this time.
Each pocket took us a different amount of time to complete. Some had a lot of coloring, others a bit more writing, and some a lot of cutting and gluing. I did help cut a lot of the pages for my son while he was working on the writing or coloring. Some days we spent quite a bit of time on the activities for that pocket and would skip our other core subjects (especially for language arts if there was a lot of writing that day). Other pockets he finished fairly quickly. If my son was losing interest, I would just wait until the next Wednesday to finish that pocket. It was only the days that he stayed very interested that we would complete an entire pocket of activities and lessons in one day.
We did skip just a few of the activities suggested because we didn’t have the materials on-hand. A DIY Jacob’s ladder toy and a sewing activity were the two we skipped, along with one of the writing activities that my son was a bit overwhelmed with and a bit too lengthy for a 3rd grader.
My son’s favorite activity from this study was when we made a feather quill and he wrote the abc’s out with a quill and ink. So fun! He also enjoyed learning about the daily schedule of colonial children and how different his own daily schedule is to the early-bird wakeup time of 4:30 AM! He couldn’t believe how much time was spent doing chores and how little time they had for any play.
Additional history resources
In addition to the history pockest and Our American Heritage, we did watch several videos on YouTube of what life was like in early colonial America. We listened to music from that era on Spotify while coloring and cutting. I always love to add music as background noise to our studies, especially when it is from that time period or region of the world that we are studying. We also read The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh. This was a perfect and quick read-aloud to accompany our lessons. I read a chapter a day until it was finished. The chapters are short and with only 64 pages, the book itself is a quick read. My son is the same age as the main character (Sarah Noble) so he really liked this story and could connect with the character. This book is set in 1707 where a young girl named Sarah Noble travels with her father through the wilderness to build a new home for their family. She encounters Native Americans and many times where she needs to be brave.
Flip-through of the Colonial America History Pockets
Pros:
Easy to use and not too much prep work- just copying the activity pages
Lots of coloring (my son loves art)
More hands-on than just filling out worksheets
The book is very affordable at only $11
The writing activities are creative and tries to get the student to imagine life in that era
Your child will have a finished project to look back on. This is definitely a homeschool project we will be keeping
Cons:
If you are using this to teach more than one child at the same time, I think the cutting and prepping could take quite a bit of time.
If your child doesn’t enjoy coloring, they may not like this unit.
If you do not want to copy and print your pages out, this curriculum would not be a good fit. I use my printer almost every day, so making copies is no bother at all for me.
I love teaching history and hope my son enjoys learning with me. I really do look forward to our Wednesday history days and I am excited to slowly work our way through American history over the next couple of years. Homeschooling isn’t always sunshine and rainbows, but history has been one subject both my son and I seem to really enjoy learning together.
If you’d like to see all of our 3rd grade curriculum choices for this year, head to THIS post.
I hope this review helps you make up your mind if you are on the fence with this curriculum. We really enjoyed it and will be using several of the Evan Moor history pockets over the next few years of homecshooling.
