Review: Homeschool in the Woods

Last year, I had the pleasure of doing a review of a lapbook from Home School in the Woods. If you use lapbooks in your homeschool or are interested in learning more, you can read that review here. This year, Home School in the Woods sent the Crew two new products in their line, Olde World Style World Maps and Olde World Style United States Maps.


Both of these products were created in response to requests from customers to make available a product that contained the Olde World Style maps from their popular Record of Time timeline notebook. Not only did Home School in the Woods comply with the requests, but they added more maps and supplemental pages to the existing collection.

Olde World Style World Maps includes over 130 maps, both ancient and modern. The ancient maps show physical characteristics (e.g. mountain ranges), but no political borders. The modern maps show political boundaries representative of today.

The maps are available in three formats: with labels, without labels, and without labels and title.
While all of the modern maps, with distinct time periods, have a labeled option, some of the ancient maps instead have numerous maps that span an empire.

The Olde World Style World Maps also includes 40 bonus notebooking pages. There is quite a variety, from report and essay, fill-in-the blank, and fact pages to creative writing, recipe card and newsletter pages.

Olde World Style United States Maps includes over 180 maps. The maps formats are similar to the Olde World Style World Maps set, with several map versions for each state and a set of bonus maps. Maps that show the growth of the U.S. over time, the division of Confederate and Union states and location of Native American Tribes are all included in the bonus section.

Two notebook pages for each state are included in the package. Students can fill in various facts about the state, such as the capital city, date of entry to the union and state bird, or they can print a fact sheet that already has the answers.

If you would like to see a sampler of each set, please click on the links below.

World Maps Sampler

United States Maps Sampler

With the variety of map formats and notebooking pages, this really is a versatile set of maps. In addition to history studies, this map collection would be an excellent addition as part of a research project, state unit study, or geography learning. I have to say, being a visual person, I really like the style of the maps and the extra detail put in them. Our history studies have been rather sporadic the last few years, unfortunately. In the past when we've been more focused, I tended to pull out maps a bit more. Next year we are going to have a more focused study on U.S. History and I'm looking forward to putting these maps to use in our studies. Though I'm not a notebooker, I especially liked some of the creative notebooking pages included with the World Map set. Some of these pages, such as the travel brochure template, would have been great when my homeschooling support group had a geography fair that required the kids to set up a display and present to the other kids.

Both the Olde World Style World Maps and the United States Maps are available as a download for $18.95 or on CD for $19.95. You can also get both sets as a combo pack for $28.95 as a download or $29.95 on CD. Visit Homeschool in the Woods to purchase or browse the many other history products available.

Visit the TOS Homeschool Crew's blog to read more reviews on this product and others.

Disclaimer: This review was provided as a result in my participation in The Old Schoolhouse Magazine Crew. I was provided the product free of charge in exchange for my honest review. I strive to give a balanced overview of each product, detailing my opinion of both pros and cons and how the product worked for my family. What works for one family may not work for another. I encourage you to read reviews of other Crew members and research sufficiently to determine if any product will be a benefit to your homeschool.