In the Hands of a Child (Schoolhouse Review)

Emily recently spent a week working through a notebooking pack by In the Hands of a Child. She’s done a variety of lapbooks in the past and enjoyed them but has gotten rather tired of the cutting and pasting aspect of lapbooks. I was happy to see that Hands of a Child provides a “notebooking pack” option for many of their studies for children who would rather present the information in a notebook format.

The study we chose, Law and Government, teaches 4th-8th graders about the role of governments in society, how laws are made, different types of laws (civil law, public law, common laws, etc.), trial by jury, and careers in law.

The 20 page guide includes 3 1/2 pages of informational text, 15 notebook pages, instructions, and an answer key. There is also a list of suggested additional reading. Additional reading is not required to complete the pages.

I chose this study because Emily has asked to study about government, but frankly, I was a bit underwhelmed. I knew it would not be comprehensive, since it is a one-week study, but I expected a bit more. With only 3 1/2 pages of text—much of it in the form of lists or definitions, there really wasn’t a lot of meat to fill 5 days of assignments. Just about everything in the text needed to be copied into the notebook pages to answer the questions, so I didn’t feel that Emily even had to look hard to find the answers or even to comprehend what she was reading. I did use a few supplementary books to flesh out the study. We have a middle school level government text that I pulled a specific chapter from for her to read each day to correspond with the daily topic and to make the study deeper.

The notebooking pages were simple, but the interesting text box shapes, supplemented by clip-art graphics did make a more interesting way to present what Emily was learning than an ordinary notebook would have done. The questions included such topics as

• naming the branches of public law
• listing examples of civil law cases
• defining government and listing the roles of government
• describing various careers in the area of law

 

The Law and Government pack is currently on sale for $5.00 (reg. $10.00).

To read what my fellow Review Crew members have to say about this and MANY other “In the Hands of a Child” products, please click the link below.