Home School in the Woods - A Homeschool Review

Did you know that learning about history can actually be pretty fun?

Well it can! We have been playing some of the file folder games from Home School in the Woods. They now offer many of their hands-on history projects Á La Carte.

We chose two different file folder games to review: Mercenary Madness! and Journey Through the Middle Ages, both at a very reasonable price of $4.95. They are both geared toward children in grades 3 to 8. We used them with my 2nd grader and 5th grader as they are both studying this time period in our homeschool right now!

Journey Through the Middle Ages

The first game we used was Journey Through the Middle Ages. It comes as a neatly organized pdf file with full instructions on what supplies will be needed, how to print the pages (some are better to print on card stock) and how to assemble them.

Then we set off cutting out, gluing and coloring all the different components. This is a really neat part about these file folder games. Not only do you end up with a fun game to play together, but the kids get to actually make and put it together themselves (with a little help from mom).

After getting it all put together we read through the game instructions and started playing. Some of the questions were a bit tough for my 2nd and 5th graders as we haven’t covered all of the material in our personal studies yet. I went through the question cards and picked out ones they would know, or at least had a better chance of guessing at. We also threw in a couple of the harder ones for fun, and I just gave hints as needed.

The players move around the map, making their way to the different castles. At each castle, they collect a castle card. The first one to collect all the different castle cards wins!

The more we played the game, the more they started to remember the answers. It’s a really neat way to learn history trivia while feeling like play!

Both children asked to play again and again. They enjoyed the friendly competition between the two of them, and I enjoyed that they were learning something!

Mercenary Madness!

The next item we chose was Mercenary Madness! It is also a file folder style game, with the setup instructions being fairly similar to the first game. Print, color, cut and paste.

The questions in this one were a bit more challenging, as we haven’t quite gotten that far in our studies yet. But I was still able to find a good number of the questions that they have learned about, and gave hints for the others.

In this game they collect coins as they move around the board. There are Spoils and Spoilers squares, and depending on how they answer the trivia questions, they can collect or lose coins. They had a lot of fun with this game too!

The game ends when both players make it to the battlefield. The winner is determined by who has the most coins at the end. My daughter was so excited that she beat her big brother by just two coins!

More fun while learning about history!

Home School in the Woods has many other Á La Carte items available on their website. They range in price from $1.95 to $9.95, which is quite an affordable way to add a little fun to your studies if you ask me.

Of course we weren’t able to try them all for this review, but there are a couple of other ones that look really fun that I might like to try out in the future.

The Jamestown Replica would be so much fun for any young builder in your family.