History Pockets: Explorers of North America, Grades 4-6+

I wasn’t sure about buying the history pockets books for my home library but I am soooo glad I did!! I have 4 kids from 1-10 years old and wanted to create a school library at home to supplement their school work. History was not a strong subject for me and my oldest loves history. So I wanted to make it fun and continue to fuel her interest. We just started one of our history pocket books and my school age children absolutely love it! Even my son who isn’t as thrilled with history is having fun! I find it a valuable addition to history text books for activities that keep them engaged and excited to learn more! Excellent projects. You do need to backfill with a text book, but when coupled together it is an excellent tool! Thank you! Would recommend!!!

I love this set and highly recommend it. I just started homeschooling my son. This can encompass Writing, Reading, Art, History, Geography and Science if you follow what we have done. I bought this with the Native american History pockets. I made a poster size pencil drawing of North America. I decided to have my son discover North America with the explorers. We do it in chronological order as each explorer lands on North America we look at the people they came across, the land (climate, flora, and fauna), land marks (Estuaries, Rivers, mountains and deserts), and we make food (Explorers ate hard tack,which is in the Explorers book and Native foods). As each explorer lands on our map he color the state in and labels rivers, lakes and mountains. I supplement with books in the library, state parks, and wild life websites with the science. I have added a few explores that are not mentioned in the book (De Soto, Coronado and Marquet) I also added real leather moccasin, real feather headdress, dream cater, real cross stitch, and making a log cabin from sticks and pebbles. But the books have paper art if you are not as ambitious. I have found that I love the History pockets so much that I bought the Colonial and I am planing to buy the others as they come up in our time line. Hope you enjoy them as much as we have.

Review from a Homeschooling Mom: We love History Pockets and highly recommend them. We make photocopies of the pages we need, and put our projects in a 1 inch binder with sheet protectors. Most of the projects are writing projects, or art projects. There are also few recipes, or even homemade games. There is a lot of coloring, cutting and gluing involved, which can be time consuming, so while we do that, we also watch YouTube videos about the explorer that we are learning about. Very easy to learn information and doesn't feel overwhelming or difficult. Probably would be interesting for any child over the age of 6.

I got history pockets for my 6yr old homeschooler who is currently doing 3rd and 4th grade work and LOVES history. We are working on this now. There are maps and information sheets about each explorer, and some kind of activity such as making a list of things you'd bring on a long journey, or making a model of a compass. I also have my son write about each project on the back, by simply gluing on a piece of lined paper - this makes the activities less busy work and more educational. We also have found "lapbook" elements online to print and add to the pockets, as well as other printables. We also get lots of library books to supplement. So its a good starting point to use. I can see where this would be more of a pain to use in a classroom where many copies of each thing would be needed, but for homeschooling its great! My son's friend's teacher has used the 1-3rd grade literature pockets in her 1st grade classroom before, and said her kids enjoyed them as well.

We LOVE Evan-Moor brand, so when I saw these History Pockets, I had to nab every.single.one. of them. I love that they are reproducible, that they give something for my kids to work on quietly with their hands when they are listening to me reading the lesson, and gives them easy yet fun projects to work on to bring the lesson to life. My kids always learn better when they have something they are creating to really bring home the lesson. They love these and can't wait to do the next book too! My kids are 2nd and 4th grade and these are easily their favorite lessons for homeschool.

I purchased this for my class of 7-9 year olds and realized once it arrived that it might be too advanced for most of them. But most activities can be adapted for younger grades. However, I think that the grade recommendation for 4-6 on the cover is correct. It would be too hard for younger kids unless they are advanced, and might be too boring for kids in 7/8th. But it's very thorough!

I bought this for my daughter's homeschooling project. She's been learning about early American explorers. This is a cool way of reinforcing what she's learned. It's fun and gives her a break from just doing worksheets or reading books. I would buy the different categories they have on for history pockets.

My kids love History Pockets and Explorers are a wonderful addition to the History Pockets we have already done. Definitely, a good base book for our homeschool history unit on Explorers. Create a book, have hands on projects and make a pocket for each explorer studying. Overall, this is wonderful.