Homeschool in the Woods

Homeschool in the Woods is a family-run publisher whose history catalog is built around one editorial premise, that children learn historical periods best by making things from them. The catalog is illustrated, written, and shipped by the Pak family out of a small upstate-New-York operation, and among hands-on history publishers it is the most comprehensive in the homeschool market.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Unit studies; literature-based; hands-on projects
Worldview	Christian-evangelical (broadly Protestant; Scripture references woven into sample lessons)
Grades	K-8 (strongest fit 3-8)
Formats	Digital download (PDF); CD; some printed bundles
Cost tier	Budget
Parent intensity	3 (projects require parent coordination; reading is modest)
ESA-common	Yes (where Christian materials are approved)
Accredited	No
Established	Family business led by Amy Pak, an early homeschool parent; current retail operation predates 2010 with the full catalog expansion through the 2010s
Website	homeschoolinthewoods.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	3	Strong at exposure and retention; not a substitute for chronological textbook depth
Ease of teaching	3	Projects are satisfying but require parent prep the night before
Content quality	4	Illustrations, printables, and project design show genuine craft
Flexibility	5	Units, Time Travelers episodes, Activity-Paks, Lap-Paks all mix freely
Value for money	4	A $35-$50 download stretches into a six-to-twelve-week unit for multiple children
Worldview scope	3	Evangelical Christian framing present in content and scriptural asides; easily used by most Christian families, adaptable for secular use
Visual/design	4	Amy Pak's signature illustration style is warm, consistent, and distinctive
Support resources	3	Detailed tutorials in each pack; small customer service team

Who the publisher is

Homeschool in the Woods is a family business. The company is led by Amy Pak, a longtime homeschool parent who began designing timeline figures and history projects for her own children and built, gradually, a catalog of history and social-studies resources sold through her own retail site. Son Jaron Pak serves as chief researcher and writes much of the curriculum text; son Jonah Pak handles web and technology; son Sam Pak runs fulfillment; daughter Hayley Baker runs customer service. The entire operation is family-staffed, and the catalog reflects the consistency of a single editorial voice, warm, Christian, hands-on, and illustrated throughout in Amy Pak's distinctive style.

The catalog is organized into parallel product lines, each covering different territory in history and enrichment. Project Passport World History Studies covers Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance and Reformation in long-form 25-stop units. Time Travelers U.S. History gives shorter period units on New World Explorers, Colonial Life, the Revolution, the Early 19th Century, the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, and the Great Depression through World War II. Hands-on History Activity-Paks provide shorter topical studies on subjects like ancient civilizations, the Olympics, and state history. Lap-Paks assemble a study's work into lap-book form. Timeline products, the Record of Time three-ring binder system and the À La Carte Timeline CDs, span the entire sweep of human history as reference resources that run parallel to whatever core curriculum a family is using.

The publisher reads as evangelical Christian in its editorial orientation. Scripture references appear in sample prompts, biblical figures are treated as historical, and biblical chronology is referenced alongside secular chronology in timeline products. Families within the evangelical, Reformed, and broadly conservative Protestant spectrum use the materials comfortably; Catholic families adapt occasionally (particularly around Reformation-era content); secular families use the materials with modest substitution of the scriptural asides.

The core pedagogy

The central claim is that children retain historical content best when they do something with it. A unit on Ancient Egypt has the student building a model sarcophagus, writing names in hieroglyphics on cartouches, cooking an Egyptian recipe, assembling a scroll of a Pharaoh's achievements, and maintaining a timeline that places the pyramid builders alongside contemporaneous figures. A unit on the American Revolution has the student printing a period newspaper, sewing a simple reproduction flag, building a model fortification, and composing a letter in the voice of a colonial figure. The reading is modest; the making is the load-bearing pedagogical act.

A typical Project Passport unit is organized as a 25-stop "journey" through a historical period. Per the publisher's product pages in April 2026, each Project Passport includes Guide Book text (the readings, organized by stop), a Travel Itinerary (directions for the activities at each stop), over 50 projects and activities (lapbooks, crafts, notebooking pages, file-folder games), a Dining Out Guide with period recipes, dramatized audio tours for several of the stops, a passport-and-luggage folder, and teacher keys. The unit is designed to spread across 8-12 weeks with suggested daily or every-other-day cadence. Grade range is 3-8, with activities scalable across that range by parent adjustment.

Signature mechanics: (1) Travel-themed framing, the Project Passport units use passport stamps, itineraries, and "stops" as organizing metaphors that sustain a child's engagement across a long unit. (2) Pak-family illustration throughout, the printables, timeline figures, and activity art are all illustrated in a consistent style that carries across the entire catalog. (3) Parallel product lines for different ages and depths. Time Travelers for shorter US-history units, Activity-Paks for quick topical work, Lap-Paks for portfolio assembly, Timelines as a reference spine. (4) Digital delivery with reproduction rights for family, materials are licensed for a single family's use across all children, which is decisive for multi-child families.

A day in the life

A sixth-grader and a third-grader working through Project Passport: The Middle Ages together spend roughly forty-five minutes a day on it, three to four days a week, across ten weeks. Monday: parent has pre-printed the current stop's reading and project pages. Children read the Guide Book text together (about twenty minutes at the sixth-grade level; parent reads aloud to the younger child). Children complete the stop's notebooking pages individually. Tuesday or Wednesday: project day. Today that's constructing a coat-of-arms scrapbook entry, which involves printing, cutting, and assembly with approximately thirty minutes of parent-supervised work. Thursday: short audio tour listening and discussion; family logs progress on the timeline scrapbook. Across the full unit, children complete twenty-five stops, assemble a substantial notebooking portfolio, and have physical projects and artifacts that represent medieval life.

Families running Project Passport as a history spine typically pair it with age-appropriate reading, a Marshall or Guerber biography, a Rosemary Sutcliff historical novel, a Genevieve Foster narrative, and treat the publisher's materials as the activity-and-portfolio layer on top of the readings. Families using Project Passport as a supplement to another primary history program run the activities at a lighter cadence, perhaps twice a week rather than daily.

What they do exceptionally well

Hands-on projects that actually get done. Many hands-on history programs describe projects that families never actually execute because the materials are hard to gather or the instructions are unclear. Homeschool in the Woods solves this by providing the printable components in the download, the period newspaper template, the coat-of-arms frame, the map outline, the recipe cards, so the family supplies only scissors, glue, cardstock, and a few household items. The gap between the catalog description and the completed project is narrow, and families who buy these units actually do the activities rather than shelve them.

Time Travelers series at the U.S. history grain. For families wanting shorter five-to-six-week units on specific American history periods, Time Travelers is the catalog's strongest product line. Each unit focuses tightly on a period. Colonial Life, the Revolution, the Civil War, with the same project-rich structure as Project Passport but at roughly half the length, which fits a typical semester schedule neatly.

Consistent illustration and design voice across the catalog. Amy Pak's illustrations run across every product line. A family accumulating materials across years gets a visually coherent collection of timeline figures, lap-book templates, and notebooking pages that look like they were drawn by the same person, because they were. This consistency produces a portfolio over years that feels like a unified work.

What they do poorly

Reading load is modest; depth depends on parent supplementation. The Guide Book text in a Project Passport unit is the primary reading, and it is serviceable but not dense. Families expecting textbook-level historical depth from the unit alone, rather than from supplementary reading, will find the content thinner than they wanted. The publisher's design assumes the family is pairing the unit with library books; families not inclined to do so should calibrate expectations.

Parent prep is real. Each stop requires some printing and occasional material gathering the night before. Families who expect an open-and-go curriculum will find the prep load irritating; families who enjoy project-based teaching will find it part of the pleasure. Either way, the program is not a pure workbook.

Evangelical Christian framing is present in content. Biblical figures are treated as historical throughout the catalog, Scripture appears in sample prompts, and the chronological framing in timeline products references biblical chronology alongside secular chronology. The presence of this framing is straightforward; the density is moderate rather than saturating. Secular families using the materials report that the substitutions required are manageable for most units; Catholic families report that the Reformation unit benefits from careful parent contextualization given the Protestant historiographical posture.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Homeschool in the Woods if: you want a project-rich hands-on approach to history for grades 3-8; you have multiple children at different ages who can work on the same unit together; you enjoy or at least tolerate parent prep time for printing and material gathering; you are in the evangelical or broadly Christian spectrum and welcome the worldview framing; you want a consistent illustrator-voice across your accumulating history materials.

• Skip Homeschool in the Woods if: you want a reading-first approach with modest activities; you need a fully open-and-go curriculum with no parent prep; your student is in high school and needs textbook-level depth; you want secular materials with no Christian framing; you prefer to teach history through documentary video rather than printable projects.

Cost honest assessment

Per the publisher's store in April 2026, individual Project Passport downloads run $34.95 per unit. The Project Passport Bundle (all current titles) is $149.95. Time Travelers units run approximately $29.95-$32.95 each; the full Time Travelers Bundle is $172.95. Activity-Paks are $19.95-$24.95 each. Lap-Paks vary from $18.95 to $29.95 per title. The Essential Timeline Library (Record of Time binder, timeline figures, and accompanying files) is $109.95. CD versions of the digital titles are priced a few dollars above the digital download where still available.

Compared to Beautiful Feet Books ($150-$300 per history guide, literature-led), to Story of the World Activity Book ($25-$35 per volume), and to History Revealed ($250-$400 per level, heavily hands-on), Homeschool in the Woods sits in the budget tier and is distinctive for the volume of printable content per dollar. A family working through one Project Passport a year plus one Time Travelers unit plus a few Lap-Paks at $35-$45 average spends roughly $150 annually for substantial content across multiple units.

A realistic all-in annual budget for a family using Homeschool in the Woods as its primary history program is $150-$250 per year in downloads, plus $100-$200 per year in library supplementation and printing costs.

ESA eligibility notes

Homeschool in the Woods is approved across most state ESA marketplaces that accept Christian curriculum publishers, including Arizona's ClassWallet, Florida's Step Up For Students, Utah Fits All, West Virginia Hope, Iowa Student First, and Arkansas LEARNS. The publisher sells directly to ESA families in most of these states and provides invoices for vendor reimbursement. The digital-download format is treated as a consumable educational resource by most ESA administrators, though a handful of states have historically restricted reimbursement for digital downloads to specific categories. Families should confirm with their specific state administrator before assuming coverage for the download-only titles; CD versions are more consistently reimbursable where CDs remain available.

Alternatives

• Beautiful Feet Books, a family would choose Beautiful Feet because it is literature-first rather than project-first, with carefully scheduled reading plans built around living books rather than hands-on activities.
• Notgrass History, a family would choose Notgrass because it provides a more textbook-structured history curriculum with integrated language arts and Bible, rather than a unit-study project approach.
• Story of the World with Activity Book, a family would choose Story of the World because Susan Wise Bauer's four-volume world history gives a narrative chronological spine with activities that run lighter than Homeschool in the Woods.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Homeschool in the Woods product catalog, pricing, and product descriptions at store.homeschoolinthewoods.com, examined several specific Project Passport and Time Travelers product pages, and cross-referenced against the Schoolhouse Review Crew's published reviews and the HSLDA publisher directory. Prices and program details verified April 2026.