I love craft kits! I like having all the supplies I need right there, ready to use. I’m the same way with school projects. Having everything I need all in one place guarantees success. On the other hand, having to shop for supplies, organizing and prepping materials in advance only adds to my load and chances are, we’ll never even get started.
I was drawn to lapbooking, but I was put off by the amount of extra time that I would need to put into them. I tried them with my children for a little while, but I was frustrated at having to remember to prepare materials in advance. We tried notebooking as well, but again, the extra prep work plus the execution of the projects added too much time to our school day.
Then recently I heard about History Portfolios. They seemed to be something of a cross between notebooking and lapbooking. And everything you need to complete the projects is included! Hurray! (well, you still have to provide your own glue, crayons or markers)
History Portfolios are available for the Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern time periods. Junior Portfolios for ages 5-8 are also available for the Ancient and Medieval periods, and when I asked about a Junior Portfolio for the Renaissance, I was told that one will be available soon.
I purchased the Medieval History Portfolio Junior for my children who were 7 and 9 at the time. In comparing the regular and junior versions online, I thought the projects in the junior portfolio were better suited to both my children. They both really enjoyed everything we worked on and were excited on the days when I pulled out the portfolios to work on.
They were particularly enthusiastic about creating their own coat of arms using the graphics included in the portfolio, right down to a cadence mark designating their birth order. The one shown below was created by my oldest.
Here, my daughter colored an illuminated letter, using a warm color in the background and mostly cool colors for the letter.
Another favorite project was creating a pop-up castle.
One of the greatest strengths to the junior portfolios is that for every topic, there are three projects to choose from. The easiest project may be coloring a picture or an matching game, but will require very little writing for the child to do on their own. The medium level might be a short copywork selection and the harder level would be a longer copywork or narration. Generally, my children completed the harder levels, except occassionally when I thought they’d like one of the easier projects better.
The Junior Portfolios are designed to work specifically with Story of the World, or Kingfisher World History, but will work with any history spine. I had no problem at all matching the topics to the ones we covered in Child’s History of the World and Usborne World History.
In a few years, we will be covering World History again and I look forward to using History Portfolios to enhance our studies, and History Portfolios Junior with my youngest child.
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When Lorri isn’t teaching history to her children or making crafts from a kit, you can find her blogging at The Mac and Cheese Chronicles.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Do you buy 2 junior portfolios for both children, or just buy 1 and make copies for the other child? I’m interested in using this.
Thanks.
I bought a junior portfolio for each of my children. The pages are cardstock, so making a copy of the same quality would get expensive. Plus, the binders have the rings on the short end of the page, not the 11 inch side like regular binders.
Thank you!