Drive Thru History Adventures Review

My family loves history and was excited to get started with Drive Thru History Adventures! Drive Thru History has always been a favorite homeschool history curriculum in our home. This year we are studying ancient history and decided we would put most of our focus on the Ancient History curricula. I received a one year subscription of Drive Thru History Adventures for my entire family. The curriculum intended for older kids 12 and up. Younger kids will learn a lot from watching the videos.

After you have signed up for Drive Thru History Adventures you have access to all the content on the website. The website is easy to navigate. You have tabs at the top that take you where you need to go. 

The Dashboard is the main hub that shows you some of the latest resources. It looks like many articles are still being added. There is always new archeological discovers and history uncovered. You see the current social media feeds, several videos to watch. There is also a video on how to use the Dashboard.

The Curriculum tab takes you directly to the three areas to explore in history.

Resource tab has all the articles, expert papers, and all the goodies that are in each of the areas of history.Within the Resource tab there is a welcome page and a getting started page. I suggest that you click over there first to before you utilize the rest of the website.

The Community is the private Facebook page for subscribers. I’m not on Facebook so I can’t tell you much about this section.

Account tab gives you access to your subscription information.

Adventures TV tab is included in your subscription. This is all the videos all packed in one place. The videos are streaming. You can watch Bible History, American History, and Ancient History on your computer or on your devices. 

 All the videos are available like Digging Deeper, Side Roads, Dave’s Adventures, topics on current events, and much more are there. If you’re wondering what’s the difference is? I like to think of it as videos only. You don’t have all the worksheets, expert papers, and readable material on the Adventures TV area. My daughter has enjoyed watching the videos from my iPhone when we are out at appointments and at home.

You have three areas to explore three in history:

Bible History ~ this adventure has 18 weeks that cover the Gospels. Your journey begins in Jerusalem investigating the coming of our Messiah. You will venture into Bethlehem to the birth of Jesus and then to Nazareth. Learn about the people and the many places from the 4 Gospels. Get ready to explore the archeological places in the land. The adventure doesn't stop there.

  

American History ~12 weeks on early American history where you start out with the birthplace of Christopher Columbus and the monarchy. You will journey to the discovery of the New World across the sea. Meet the Pilgrims in their homeland. The Mayflower, Plymouth Rock and learn about the first Thanksgiving. You will get acquainted with our forefathers, battles, constitution, and places that birthed our country. You will visit many incredible places.

Ancient History~ I will explore more in detail as my family spent the majority of our time on our adventure.

Drive Thru History Adventures ~ Ancient History has 12 weeks of content. The format is basically the same in each series. Each series starts out with a video. The videos are slightly over 45 minutes(the other series run around 30 minutes). Dave Stotts is the host and focuses on the critical points in history in each episode. Dave Stotts isn’t your basic host. He’s very energetic and humorous while he is taking you through the facts of history.

After you watch your video if you have older kids and want to expand the studies you scroll down the page where you will see photographs of paintings depicting that time period from various artists. They mention the name of the artist and the date. This is great if you like to add a bit of art history into your studies. Next, is a “Brief Summary” of the contents of the video along with a few of the images of the portion you just watched from the video.

 Next is a “Suggested Reading” which could be written source from that time period, short story, or a famous literary work of the time. Example: excerpt from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar or an excerpt from Virgil’s Aeneid. You can read these online or download load it to print off in a PDF format.

Next, is the “Side Road”. An example on Episode 1: talks about Mark Antony which expands from the video in a paragraph giving you a little more detail on a topic.

You have the options to go even deeper with the “Discussion Questions”. This portion gives you a set of questions that you can ask your scholar. 

If you would rather have them write the answers on paper you scroll down to the next section and you can print off the “Worksheets and the Answer Guide” for this section. The sheets are in the PDF format, Usually there is another excerpt for further study.

The last section is “Dig Deeper” Not all the episodes have something in this section. This could be an article written about this subject or a post that will give you information to enhance the topic.

If you’re curious about the episodes for Ancient History here is a basic synopsis:

Episode 1: The Rise of Western Civilization

Episode 2: The Age of Conflict

Episode 3: Times of Challenges

Episode 4: Roots of Democracy

Episode 5: Challenges of a New Religion

Episode 6: The Spread of Christianity

Episode 7: East Meets West

Episode 8: Ruins and Romans

Episode 9: The Advancements of Knowledge

Episode 10: Heart of Stone

Episode 11:  Constantine and Constantinople

Episode 12: The Best of the Ancient World

To put Ancient History in a nut shell- I love that the gospel is being taught about of our Lord and Savior is throughout all the pagan culture you are going to learn about. You travel to Rome and learn about the beginning of the culture to the emperors. You visit all the amazing archeological sites from the Colosseum in Rome to Jerusalem. You see some of the amazing engineer wonders of the ancient world. You learn about the fall of the Roman Empire, gladiators, and much more. You travel to Greece to see more interesting sites. You travel along the route of Alexander the Great. You will learn about some of the Greek philosophers and see how the Greek and Roman culture are prevalent even in the modern era.

I had my son work on the worksheets. I would print them off prior to the video. We typically split the videos into two days much to my kid’s dismay. My daughter who is 15 with special needs just watched the videos with her brother. My son had the worksheet in front of him and when it came across the topic on the worksheet he would mark it on the paper where it was found on the video. That way if my son needed help with the worksheets and remembering the facts he could easily go back and preview it to complete the worksheet if he needed. I’m grateful for the answer sheets as some of the questions are challenging. Typically we would do a video lesson a week. My son would spend two days on the worksheets and other extras. I felt that a week was a good pace to schedule if your doing all the extras.

 We received a surprise package in the mail. My son was really excited as he thinks Dave Stotts is awesome!  I ironed the patch on his jacket!

My 12 year old son and my 15 year old daughter begged me to do Drive Thru History Adventures on a day that I don’t even have it scheduled! I love that my kids are learning about history from a Biblical Worldview. I love that they are seeing the actual places in history while they are learning about it.

Drive Thru History Adventures has an amazing special going on. They are currently offering the set of The Gospels DVD with an annual subscription. You can read my review of The Gospels DVD. 

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