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May 9, 2024 13 mins

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Ever dreamt of a history class that felt more like time travel and less like memorization? Katie Berry, our curriculum connoisseur, returns to share her experiences with Homeschool in the Woods, an immersive program that makes the past come alive. As Katie recounts the joys of discovering this gem, you'll learn how it can ignite a passion for history in your child, and perhaps, rekindle your own love for the subject. Our conversation delves into adapting the curriculum for different ages, with an emphasis on family-style learning that brings everyone together for a shared educational adventure.

The episode unfolds the practicalities of integrating Homeschool in the Woods into your weekly routine, ensuring that the rich content remains both manageable and enjoyable. Katie walks us through the day-to-day application, giving us a glimpse into how to transform a single lesson into a week's worth of engaging educational experiences. If you're on the hunt for a curriculum that's comprehensive yet flexible enough to fit your family's unique homeschooling voyage, Katie's insights might just be the compass you need. Join us, and let's chart a course through history that's as educational as it is enthralling with the help of Homeschool in the Woods.

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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the Homeschool How-To Find my
Curriculum, a series where wetalk all about curriculum.
I've been interviewinghomeschooling families for over
a year now on my main podcast,the Homeschool How-To, but I
really wanted to zero in oncurriculum.
There's so much out there.
How do I know what would workbest for me and my child?
How do I know what works forone child would work for the
other?
I might like the curriculum I'musing now, but how do I know

(00:25):
there's not a better one outthere, especially if I don't
know all the curriculums?
And what about supplementalcurriculum?
Should I be using that too?
This series is to help youdecide just that.
I'm going to interview parentswho are using all the
curriculums so that you candecide the absolute best way to
unfold your homeschoolingjourney.
The absolute best way to unfoldyour homeschooling journey.

(00:48):
Welcome.
And with us today we have KatieBerry.
She is my curriculum expertfrom episode four, which about
1500 of you listened to becauseshe had so much insight into
curriculum, and she is going totalk with us today about
Homeschool in the Woods.
So, katie, thank you so muchfor being here.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm excited to talk aboutHomeschool in the Woods.
It is a lesser known historyprogram and one that we have
used in the past and I have veryfond memories of.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
So what made you even pick this curriculum?

Speaker 2 (01:20):
So I mentioned in my Mother's Day book suggestion
episode that I did with you thathistory and social studies is
my favorite subject to learnabout and, as a mother, if I'm
excited about it, then I hopethat my kids are too Right, and
so for me.
I love history so much that Iwant to be immersed in it Like I

(01:42):
want.
I want to time travel and gothrough history and meet the
people and and see what itreally felt like and live those
experiences.
I really wish that I had thatability and in my search when I
probably two or three years intohomeschooling, I was searching
for a history that would give methat and I found homeschool in

(02:03):
the woods give me that, and Ifound homeschool in the woods
Awesome.
So what is what are the agesthat you can use this with?
The ages they put on their sitesay that it's best for third
through eighth graders, but whenwe used it, I had a child that
was in first or second grade andwe just adapted down.
So I think that it really couldbe.

(02:24):
I think that you wouldn't wantto do it unless you had at least
one child that was third gradeor older.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
And you had a back on episode four introduced me to
the concept of family stylelearning.
So, versus like something morelike a math that you do
one-on-one, this family stylelearning is that you get all the
kids together and you do thecurriculum and you kind of just
like level up, level down forwhat you are going to ask them

(02:51):
as far as their participation inat their level.
So is this one of those familystyle learning curriculums?
Yes, Awesome.
And what does the day-to-daylook like with this?

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Oh it's.
It's really depends on how muchyou want to do.
So the unit that we did wasearly 19th century, so it was
kind of like a westwardexpansion and and so it was a
time one of their time travelerscurricula.
So they have the time travelerseries, which is american
history, and they have projectpassport, which is world history

(03:22):
.
Okay, so we used one of an early19th century unit from the time
travelers, early, uh, americanhistory, and in it it's
structured into 25 lessons, butthere's so much in that lesson
that we actually did 25 weeks.
We did one lesson a week.
Uh, you could do it in 25 days,but if I, if you did that, I

(03:46):
would highly suggest not doinganything else, like you would
just do your math and thenhomeschool in the woods, nothing
else that day, because if youdo everything as written, your
day could be up to three to fivehours of homeschool in the
woods per lesson okay, so itsounds like one lesson a week is
much more manageable andwouldn't tire you out, so that

(04:08):
makes more sense about an hour aday or whatever.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
Or you could just be more selective and not do
everything in the lesson,because each lesson had anywhere
from three to five activitiesper lesson, and so you could
just decide to only do one ortwo of the activities, and then
you could go at a faster pace.
We wanted to do everything thatwas offered, and so that's why
we spread ours out one lesson aweek, but if you didn't want to

(04:34):
take that much time, you couldjust cut some things out.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, my OCD kind of leads me to doing it all because
I feel like, well, if you payfor it, I want to get the most
out of it.
But also, you know you justthis sense of completion and I
don't think 25 weeks long isreally that long, for I mean,
it's pretty much your a lot ofhomeschoolers homeschool year
round anyway, so it just ispretty much half of of your year

(05:03):
, and then you got time to doother stuff as well.
So what would a week, let's saya week look like if you were
planning it out one lesson forthe week?

Speaker 2 (05:13):
So I, like I said, we've only done the one unit
from them, so I can't say everyunit is designed this way, but
the one we did had, um, it hadhandwriting practice, um, we did
had, um, it had handwritingpractice, um, and it had, uh,
folk songs.
I'm trying to think what else.
Oh, there was a timeline andthen a lap booking project every
day, and if you don't know whata lap book is, that's basically

(05:35):
an interactive notebook thatyou build over the unit and at
the end you have this reallycool keepsake of what you did,
that that unit, um.
And then there was, uh, usuallysome sort of hands-on craft or
activity, so, uh, that wasusually in one lesson, Okay.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
And like how would it kind of teach them if you were
doing the westward expansion?
Like, is it giving them a story?
Is it putting them right in thestory?
Is it just talking about namesand dates?
What did that look like?

Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yeah, so each lesson has two to three pages of text
that goes with the lesson.
That is just a basic overviewof that lesson.
That was probably the one thingthat I didn't love about it was
that those two or three pagesof written stuff wasn't very
engaging that those two or threepages of written stuff wasn't
very engaging.
If I were to do it again, Iwould supplement with picture

(06:28):
books or living books ratherthan the text.
They did give some booksuggestions at the beginning of
the unit, but they were a seriesthat is out of print and I
didn't want to go source allthose and pay for all those
myself, so I just read the textthat was provided.
But if I were to do it again, Iprobably would search and find

(06:49):
books that I could read insteadof the text.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
Okay, maybe like a children's book set in that time
period.
Yeah, okay, all right, thatmakes sense, and so did your
kids enjoy doing this.
Did they look forward to itwhen it was time for history?

Speaker 2 (07:06):
Yes.
So let me just tell you some ofthe cool things we did.
So, um, when we studied aboutmountain men, we actually made
coonskin hats.
So we we took a whole day offschool.
We went up to my mom's house.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
I went to Hobby Lobby and got fur, faux fur fabric
and we made coonskin hats, soyou did not go out into your
yard and shoot a raccoon I meanI think you're skipping.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
You didn't quite do everything, but I'll accept it
yeah, yes yeah it would be waymore authentic and cooler if we
would have shot her a realraccoon.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
But no, so night we were driving home last night we
saw a raccoon, so I guess Icould have potentially completed
that exercise for you.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yes, and then when we studied the Mexican-American
war, we made a poncho out of, uh, just fleece fabric.
There was a weaving project wedid to make I think it was no,
it was a quilt, a quilt block.
We made a quilt block and thenwe made a little.
It was like a little cardstockwith brads, like a jumping jack

(08:09):
thing.
We made corn husk dolls.
There was like a cool littlelog cabin that you print out on
cardstock but it's 3D and youput a tea light in it so it
looks like the light'sflickering in the little log
cabin and then at the end of theunit you do, you plan a big
celebration in it.
So every week you're learninglike they give you recipes that
are authentic recipes you cantry.

(08:30):
And the very last day, the likelesson 25, we did like a hoedown
.
So my dad has horses.
We went out to my dad's, weused hay bales for seating.
We made all these authenticrecipes we had like we played
horseshoes.
I did a little like in a kiddiepool.
We did like a mining for goldthing and you did like

(08:50):
three-legged races and it wasjust like a hoedown and we play
it.
I had a playlist of the folksongs that we had learned and we
played the folk songs in thebackground while we were doing
our hoedown my kids got to see,like they brought their lab
books and timelines for andtheir notebooks that they had
made over the unit for, like thegrandparents, to go and see
what they had learned about, andthat was probably like the

(09:12):
coolest thing was that bighoedown party at the end.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
That is so cute.
And then I'm just thinking oflike, not necessarily co-ops,
but just like different friendswe have in the area that
homeschool, that you couldinvite them to that part and
like just to have a little makeit really like for the people
that are like, oh, my kid won'tbe in a classroom, they're going
to be missing out.
It's like no, you invite afriend or two to join you on
that.
How much fun is that you'rehaving a three-legged race.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
That's so cool yeah, invite all your public school
friends so you can show them thecool things that you're doing.
That that's one of the things,too is I'm like we're like we'll
invite our public schoolfriends and so they can see how
awesome homeschooling can be.
And I also think, and weinvited like their parents too,
and I think that helps dispelthe myths that are surrounding

(09:59):
homeschooling as far as they'renot learning anything.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Oh, that's so fun.
Okay, so this one was calledhomeschool in the woods and are
they calling it that likebecause it's more learning, like
survival stuff in the woods,how people survived back then?
Like where do you think it gotits name from?

Speaker 2 (10:15):
so they were a homeschooling family that
started this, and I believe thattheir home is in the woods okay
, cute.
So, um, it's very affordable.
It's all pdf downloads.
I think they used to offermaybe like a CD-ROM for your
computer I don't know if theystill do that, I just do the PDF
downloads and very inexpensive.

(10:35):
I think my unit was less than$40.
The one thing, though, is thatif you do all the stuff, like if
you're doing all the activities, then there is some material
cost, right, like we had to buythe fur for this coonskin hats,
for example, and you have to buycardstock, and there's some
supplies they recommend youinvest in.
So the curricula itself is veryinexpensive, depending on the
activities you choose to do.

(10:55):
The materials can add price tothat, so just be aware of that.
Yeah, the other thing is theyoffer a lot of a la carte things
on their page.
So if you don't want to do likethe entire unit like, for
example, they have like a littlegame that you, if you buy the
whole unit, this game isincluded in one of the days, but
maybe you're doing anothercurricula and you just want the

(11:15):
game you can buy that a la cartefor a couple dollars.
Uh, the other thing is they havea couple resources that aren't
full curricula that we are goingto use this fall.
They have an elections notebooknot notebook, what is it?
Lap book?
They have an elections lap bookpack where they learn about
elections, presidentialelections, and then make a lap

(11:37):
book.
So it's not a full year, butwe're doing that for the
presidential election cycle thisyear.
And then they also have like aUS president's curricula.
They have like history ofholidays, so they also have some
things that are not fullcurricula.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Oh, nice Little supplemental things.
And that makes sense too,because when you're looking at
the timeline of 25 weeks, if youspend 25 weeks doing that, well
then if your supplemental isthree weeks here, four weeks
there, 10 weeks there, you cankind of measure it into how many
weeks you want to dohomeschooling a year.
Like I said, a lot of people doit through the summer.

(12:18):
So whether you take a week offhere or there for some breaks,
if you're left with like 45weeks, you know you've got 20
extra weeks of supplementalsthat you can add in throughout
the year.
So that that is fun, that'scool, Nice option.
Anything else you want to letus know about homeschool in the
woods?

Speaker 2 (12:36):
No, I just think that , like I said, it's been one of
our favorite curricula we'veused.
I have a very fond I havereally fond memories of that
unit that we did together.
I like how affordable it is andI like that we're supporting a
smaller homeschool business.
It's a homeschool family thatcreated this and so I like
supporting them as well.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
Awesome.
Well, thank you so much fortalking to us today about
homeschool in the woods, katie.
Yeah, absolutely, it was apleasure.
I hope you enjoyed this episode.
Thank you so much for listening.
Please consider sharing thispodcast, or my main podcast, the
Homeschool how To with friends,family on Instagram or in your
favorite homeschool groupFacebook page.
The more this podcast is shared, the longer we can keep it

(13:19):
going and the more hope we havefor the future.
Thank you for your love of thenext generation.
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