U.S. Elections Lap-Pak from Home School in the Woods Review

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.

 

It’s an election year and what a great time to teach our kids about the election process in the United States. Home School in the Woods has a wonderful resource with their U.S. Elections Lap-Pak that will help.

I received the U.S. Elections Lap-Pak as a digital download. This license is for use for my family only. If you need this in a classroom or school format you will need to purchase the appropriate license to do so. 

This came as a ZIP file that needed to be extracted first. After this was done I started with the file that says, START. This will give you all the directions, printed activities, text, and other materials needed to complete your Lap-Pak. Some basic supplies you will need are cardstock, printing paper, folders, and other list. There is a complete list of supplies to complete the projects.  You can also order it on a CD if that is your preference.  The suggested grade range is 3^rd through 5^th grade.

U.S. Elections Lap-Pak (A Lap-Pak is basically a lapbook) has 21 activities to teach your kids about the election process.  This is nice in-depth study with a hands-on component to teach about the US elections.

There is an overview of assembling the lapbook and more detailed on each of the 21 activities. 

Your base is a file folder and three sheets of different colored cardstock. You have step-by-step assembly instructions to put this together.

Your activities are like mini booklets. Each one covers a different topic or activity. You print either on white paper or colored paper. The direction is easy to follow with concise steps. On the projects papers it tells you precisely where to fold and cut. You have templates that are like pockets, mini envelope styles, books that are fancy, wheels that spin, brads to move arms, and other creative templates. The illustrations are provided and show you what you need to do for each one along with an illustration of the completed activity. This is a nice feature if you need a visual to complete the project.

Some of the activities have pre-printed information to add into your booklets. Other ones have lines for your kid to write down their own information. You can add your own flair to the booklets by coloring them. Some suggest using colored cardstock.

Reading Text to print out. There are 3 ways to print it out

You can just click the link in your files to listen to the audio. You can also follow along in a schedule with each of the mini-booklets

Don’t worry if you don’t know how to explain the election process either. The information is provided in the Reading Text which can be printed in varying sizes to read. This walks you through the election process. You also have the option to listen to from 2-audio MP3 files. Each one is slightly over 30 minutes long. You can have your child follow along in the Reading Text or just have them listen. The audio has a order that you can follow if you want more of a schedule to follow with the audio version.

Below you have several photos showing you some of the activity booklets.

The study or learning portion starts out explaining the US elections and the different forms of government throughout history. It weaves its way up the constitutional republic.  Then it gets in more specific details about the elections with the main focus being on the US presidents. Topics include: 3 branches of government, the electoral race, campaign advertising, electoral process, and all the forms of political parties, caucuses and primaries, running a campaign, Election Day, Inauguration Day, and much more. 

There is also a nice vocabulary sections within the booklets. This was my favorite part. I love it when vocabulary is touched on in lessons.

The activities can be enhanced from the suggested reading books. Older kids could do research papers and creative writing papers. There is coloring for each of the activities too and much more.

How Did I use U.S. Elections Lap-Pak in my homeschool?

Last school year my 17 year old daughter learned about our government and the constitution. My daughter has some significant learning issues I felt with the grade level and hands on approach that this would be a good way to solidify the concepts she learned last year.

After I extracted the files and looked them over I printed off all the papers needed to complete the lapbook. I didn’t have any cardstock and printed everything on white paper. I assembled the base for my daughter. I let my daughter decide how she wanted to do the lapbook. She wanted to attach all 21 activities to the lapbook base after she colored them and then go over the information.

It took her almost 2 weeks to cut, color, and put this together and she was excited to finish it

To my surprise my daughter cut out the majority of the papers with little help from me. She has arthritis and I assumed I would be cutting it all! She was also pretty independent putting them together. She made a few mistakes with the folds and cuts but it wasn’t anything we couldn’t fix or make it work. She had a few stragglers she cut after she put the majority of the lapbook together. She was too excited to see what it would look like finished.

Below is several photos of the lapbook put together. She liked coloring and seeing all the different learning topics.

Due to my daughters reading abilities and dysgraphia I let her put in the pre-printed information and she listened to the MP3 files as we went over the completed lapbook. I figured after all the coloring and cutting I wasn’t going to worry too much about her writing.

She is pretty proud of her completed lapbook that she worked so hard on

 She was pretty proud of all the work she did with her completed U.S. Elections Lap-Pak. She told me, “Why didn’t you have this last year when I was learning about elections mom?” I had to laugh at her observation and she told me that she really liked this and that she can look back over this anytime she has a question about elections.

 When my kids where younger we did a lot of lapbooks some that I bought and others I made. One thing that I appreciate about Home School in the Woods projects is the quality of them. They have good information for teaching the topics. The instructions and ease of their products is top notch. They make learning fun.

To find out more about U.S. Elections Lap-Pak you can read this blog post or look at other reviews from the Homeschool Review Crew.

Giveaway Alert- Home School in the Woods is graciously giving away for their Greek Life! File Folder Game when you use this unique code at checkout TOSGameNight at checkout. No additional purchase either. This will be available throughout August.

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