History Pockets: Ancient Greece

I love most of the Evan Moor workbooks, and have been using them for a few years. I feel no differently about their pocket history books, of which we've used four, so far. They are not a complete lesson on their own, IMO, but they are great for introducing the main points. (Especially for the age that they're geared toward!) It's always easy to pick up other books for more depth, but the hands-on activities in these books are really enjoyable and not very difficult to prepare. My son enjoys working on them while I sometimes read the "deeper history" from our other books, or he works on them while I get to toss the dishes in the dishwasher, LOL! The activities are also a nice way to show progress for homeschooling, if that's the route you take. (Also a nice little "academic scrapbook" to look back on one day!) Some people have said they feel some of the projects are just "busy work." If expressing a bit of art/creativity into a history course is "busy work," then you might agree. I personally enjoy teaching my son about something in as many ways as possible! The only activity I do pass on are the paper dolls (one activity amongst many!), but you could even use those to glue onto construction paper, and have your child write about their clothing, or the "jobs" of the women/men. Use your imagination! :-) I think this book pairs really well with Tools of the Ancient Greeks by Kris Bordessa, of which I have NOT done those activities (too involved and time consuming), but good info. Both books are broken down into family life, warfare, architecture, etc. TAG gives the right amount of info for an upper elementary-aged student, possibly even into middle school. I hope this review helps!! I'm getting ready to buy Ancient Rome Pockets now...

I love the History Pockets books! I teach 6th grade Ancient Civilizations to heterogenous classes. These books are fantastic at getting the kids interested in the content. I haven't used many of the activities from the books, but I've used some of the ideas for the activities to create my own. I've used the readings themselves for stations and other activities and they are perfect for struggling readers, but not too simplified for the on grade level and higher kids. The readings also touch on many of the important aspects of the content and are great for introducing the information. I can't write enough to say how much I love these books even if you don't use them to make "pockets." :)

I procrastinated months before buying this product, saying, "I can do this myself, I don't need everything planned out for me." Yes you CAN search the Internet and photocopy pages from library books and make your own lapbooks/history pockets, but most teachers/homeschoolers have very full plates and it is MUCH easier to use these history pockets as the basis for your project and then supplement with other stuff. After I relented and purchased the Ancient Greece history pockets, I couldn't believe how easily the project fell into place, after weeks of neglect. You - and your kids - will be very pleased with the informative and interesting results. I also purchased the Greek Myths literature pockets and am very pleased with those too. Also, for what it's worth, my kids are in 1st & 2nd grade, more or less, not the 4-6 that is recommended for these pockets. So the pockets have appeal for a broad range of ages. On the other hand, I did find it necessary to do a fair amount of prep work for them - photocopying the pages and cutting out some of the projects. If they were a couple of years older, the history pockets could have been done independently.

We homeschool and my 10 year old daughter wanted to study Ancient Greece and Greek Myths this year. I bought this for some good activities, and she's really enjoying herself. I'm not a huge fan of the lapbooks that so many homeschoolers like to make (just preference), but these history pockets work for us.

I've done different ones of these with my son. We wanted to learn this next. It's so much fun, and to know he's learning at the same time is great.

These history pockets are fantastic. They teach the subject material in about 8-10 units breaking the subject material down into packets of info that the kids and process. Each "pocket" has activities that make kids use process skills. Each :pocket is a little different but all seem to have a "fact " sheet that kids cut out and clue onto construction paper, an intro sheet for that pocket, that can also be glue to construction paper and a reiforcing activity. Scattered in the pockets (units) you may find a diary that has to be assembled, compare and contrast articles on people or events with a venn diagram; booklets that need to be complete, a recipe that can be used...for example we just did a history pocket on the westward movement and one of the pockets/units was on the "Alamo" it had a fact sheet, a info sheet that had key players introduced, a venn diagram activity and a recipie for home made tortillas that had to be cut out in the shape of a tortilla. At the end of the history pocket book is an evaluation...the student performs a self evaluation ranking themselves on completeness of assignments, following instructions, creativity, neatness, etc. Their is a peer review and the teacher review. the three review add up to give you points that give you a grade. Its usaully about 140 points which you can figure into a "grade" for the unit. The History pockets work best doing one pocket/unit per week. I would recommend reading a book about the history period to supplement the history pocket. For example...with this this pocket on ancient greece, being targeted for 4th-6th graders, reading Percy Jackson might be completely appropriate for 30- minutes say on Tuesday and Thursdays and M-W-F are spend working on the pocket.

I did this book with my eight-year-old daughter as part of our year-long study of Ancient Greece. She loves arts and crafts, note booking and scrapbooks. This was perfect for how she likes to learn. It gives a good overview of Greek civilization, which we accompanied with reading Famous Men of Greece, The Story of the Greeks, adaptations of the Iliad and Odyssey, and children's historical fiction. Even though the description says that this is for grades 4-8, my daughter did fine with it. It could be easily adapted for younger children and would work well for multiple grade level instruction. I plan to use other resources in this series as we study Rome and the Middle Ages next year.

I love history pockets. Everything is well done and it's so easy to just pull out the next pocket and do it with my children. Adds great hands-on to our curriculum.