Project Passport World History Studies

Project Passport is the long-form world-history line from Homeschool in the Woods, illustrated and largely written by Amy Pak. Each study runs 25 lessons across roughly ten weeks of work and lands on the hands-on, project-rich end of the homeschool history spectrum, closer to a unit study than to a textbook.

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

At a glance

Method	Unit-studies / literature-based / hands-on
Worldview	Christian-evangelical (broadly Protestant, written from a Christian historical perspective)
Grades	3-8 (the publisher's stated band; older students adapt with extension reading)
Formats	Digital download or CD; printable masters for hands-on projects
Cost tier	Standard (per study); Budget when amortized across multiple students
Parent intensity	4 (project-driven; significant prep and joint work)
ESA-common	Varies (eligible on most marketplaces that permit Christian history materials)
Accredited	No (single-subject curriculum line, not a school)
Established	Homeschool in the Woods founded by Amy Pak, a graphic designer and homeschool parent (founding date not publicly disclosed by the publisher)
Website	homeschoolinthewoods.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	3	Strong on narrative and engagement; lighter on primary-source analysis
Ease of teaching	2	Highly project-driven; parent reads, prints, cuts, organizes, and works alongside
Content quality	4	Beautifully illustrated; carefully researched within an evangelical Christian frame
Flexibility	4	Each study stands alone; pairs with any history spine or used independently
Value for money	4	$35 per study covers ten weeks for one or multiple students at no per-child cost
Worldview scope	3	Christian framing is woven through ancient civilizations and the Reformation; secular families adapt
Visual/design	5	Amy Pak's illustrations are the catalog's signature; the design carries the line
Support resources	3	Strong publisher community; thinner formal teacher support than mainline curricula

Who the publisher is

Homeschool in the Woods is the family-run history publisher founded by Amy Pak, a graphic designer and homeschool parent who began illustrating timeline figures for her own children's history work and turned that into a publisher's catalog. Pak's company operates out of upstate New York and has produced, across the line, timeline kits, lap-book activity packs, A La Carte mini-units, the Time Travelers American history series, and the Project Passport world-history studies that are the subject of this review.

The publisher's brand identity is essentially Pak's illustration style. Every Homeschool in the Woods product is recognizable on sight: full-color, character-rich, period-accurate-ish in the way a children's-book illustration aims for evocative rather than photographic. Where most homeschool history publishers commission stock historical art or rely on public-domain images, Homeschool in the Woods draws nearly everything in-house. This is what the company is selling, and it is genuinely well done.

Theologically, the publisher writes from a broadly evangelical Christian historical perspective. Project Passport's studies of the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world handle the biblical narrative as historical, treat the rise of Christianity as a substantive turning point in late-Roman history, and frame the Renaissance and Reformation study from a Protestant Reformation-affirming vantage. This is not heavy-handed, the studies are not catechetical, but the framing is consistent throughout. Catholic, Jewish, and secular families using these materials typically supplement or substitute on specific Reformation-era topics; the underlying narrative scope of each civilization is broadly usable.

The core pedagogy

Each Project Passport study is structured as a 25-stop "trip" through a historical period. The student receives a passport and a luggage folder at the start of the study (printed from the master files), which they carry, metaphorically, through the period. Each Stop functions as a multi-day lesson covering one major topic (the geography of the Nile, the building of the pyramids, daily life in Sparta, the rise of Christianity, the printing press) and pairs a short text segment with two to four hands-on project options. A single Stop typically takes two to four school days; a complete Project Passport study runs ten to twelve weeks.

The hands-on projects are the line's defining feature. Each study includes more than fifty project options, a Roman mosaic to assemble, a medieval coat of arms to design, a feast menu to cook, a newspaper to write and illustrate, a lap book to compile, a trade map to draw, dramatized audio recordings to listen to. Students do not complete all fifty; the publisher expects families to choose six to twelve per study based on student interest and available time. The output for a full study is typically a Scrapbook of Sights (the lap book), a period newspaper, a travel itinerary, and a small stack of cooked, sewn, or built artifacts.

Signature mechanics: (1) The passport-and-itinerary metaphor, every study uses the same travel framing, which is unifying across the line and pleasing for younger students. (2) Project optionality, the fifty-plus projects mean a single study can be completed lightly (text plus six projects) or intensively (text plus twenty), giving the same product different difficulty levels for different families. (3) Audio dramatization, each study includes period audio recordings (a senator's speech, a knight's tale) which support reluctant readers and add atmosphere. (4) Single-purchase, unlimited-children licensing, one Project Passport download covers every child in the family using it now or later, which materially changes the per-student cost.

A day in the life

A fifth-grader doing Project Passport: Ancient Egypt as the family's history spine typically spends 45-60 minutes per history day, four days a week. On a textual day, the parent reads the assigned Stop text aloud (15-20 minutes), the student writes one or two passport entries summarizing what they learned, and the family talks through the Stop's discussion prompts. On a project day, typically two days per Stop, the student selects one of the available projects (cutting and assembling a hieroglyph chart, building a model shaduf, designing a sarcophagus mask) and works on it with one parent's help; the project takes 30-60 minutes.

A family running Project Passport across three children of different ages adapts by tier: the eight-year-old draws and colors the projects with help, the eleven-year-old reads the text on their own and writes the passport entries, and the fourteen-year-old supplements with extension reading from a primary-source anthology and writes a short essay tied to one of the Stop's discussion prompts. The single-purchase license makes this tier-and-adapt approach economical in a way few other curricula match.

What they do exceptionally well

The illustration and design. Amy Pak's art is the catalog's central asset, and it is genuinely good, period-accurate clothing and architecture, recognizable historical figures, color palettes that feel earned rather than clip-arty. Children remember the visual texture of these studies in a way they do not remember most history textbooks. This is the line's competitive moat.

Hands-on density without parent presentation burden. The fifty-plus projects per study mean a project-driven family never runs out of options, but the projects are designed so that the student does the project rather than the parent narrating one. The parent's job is to print, cut, gather supplies, and work alongside; the student's job is the substantive making. Other unit-study lines often invert this and ask the parent to perform.

The single-purchase license. A Project Passport study is $34.95 as of April 2026 and covers an entire family, present and future, including future children not yet born. A family using all five studies across two or three children over five or six years is paying roughly $150 total for a multi-year world history program, an unusually generous license.

What they do poorly

Light on primary sources and historiographical depth. Project Passport tells the story of each period; it does not generally hand the student Herodotus, Thucydides, or Bede to read directly. A middle-schooler emerging from Project Passport: Ancient Greece knows the Peloponnesian War narrative and can describe the Athenian assembly; they have not necessarily read a passage of Pericles' Funeral Oration in translation. Families wanting earlier exposure to primary-source work pair Project Passport with a separate primary-source anthology.

Project-driven means parent-prep-driven. The fifty projects look weightless on paper and are weightless on a project-by-project basis, but they require parental setup: printing the masters, gathering construction paper and string and food coloring, organizing the finished pieces into the Scrapbook of Sights. Parents already running multiple subjects across multiple children find Project Passport's bench-time real. The publisher does not pretend otherwise.

Worldview is not switched off easily. The Christian framing is woven into the texts, not bracketed into sidebars. The Renaissance and Reformation study in particular is written with explicit Reformation sympathy. Catholic families and secular families do use the studies; both adapt or substitute on specific Stops, particularly in the Reformation-era material. The studies of Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages are more straightforwardly usable across worldviews.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Project Passport if: you want a hands-on, project-driven world-history curriculum for grades 3-8; you have multiple children who can share a single license; you want beautifully illustrated materials; you are comfortable with a Christian-framed historical narrative; you want flexibility to scale projects up or down by week.

• Skip Project Passport if: you want a primary-source-driven history curriculum (Veritas Press Omnibus, Memoria Press classical history serve that better); you want a textbook-and-test format; you have limited prep time and want a low-bench curriculum; you want Catholic-framed history; you want a fully secular world-history program.

Cost honest assessment

Each Project Passport study runs $34.95 as a download as of April 2026, with the five-study bundle (Egypt, Greece, Rome, Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation) at $149.95. The license covers all children in the family in perpetuity. CD versions are slightly more.

Compared to other middle-grade world-history options: The Mystery of History runs roughly $80-100 per volume across four volumes ($320-400 total over four years; broader scope, more text-heavy, narrative spine); Story of the World runs roughly $50-80 per volume across four volumes for the textbook plus activity guide ($200-320 total over four years; secular-friendly, less hands-on); Tapestry of Grace runs $200-300 per year-plan ($800-1,200 total; deeply integrated, much higher prep). Project Passport's value proposition is the hands-on density and the all-children license at a low total spend.

A realistic family using all five Project Passport studies across two or three children over five years pays approximately $150 total for the materials, plus consumable supplies (construction paper, glue, food coloring) at roughly $30-50 per study, total program cost in the range of $300-400 over five years.

ESA eligibility notes

Homeschool in the Woods products, including Project Passport, are eligible on most state ESA marketplaces that permit Christian history materials, including Arizona's ClassWallet, Florida's MyScholarShop, and West Virginia's Hope Scholarship. Some states require physical (rather than digital) materials for ESA reimbursement; in those states, families should order the CD version rather than the download. ESA-restricted-religious-materials states should verify Project Passport's specific status, as the explicit Christian framing of the Renaissance and Reformation study has occasionally triggered review.

Alternatives

• The Mystery of History, a family would pick Mystery of History over Project Passport because Mystery of History is a chronological narrative spine across four volumes covering Creation through the present, with lighter project demands and a stronger text backbone.
• Story of the World, a family would pick Story of the World over Project Passport because Story of the World offers a secular-friendly chronological narrative across four volumes (Susan Wise Bauer's classical-method spine), with optional activity guides for hands-on work.
• Veritas Press Omnibus, a family would pick Veritas Omnibus over Project Passport because Omnibus combines history, literature, and theology at primary-source depth for older students (grades 7-12), at much higher cost and rigor.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Homeschool in the Woods product pages for each Project Passport study (Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, The Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation), the publisher's bundle pricing, sample Stop materials posted publicly, and Amy Pak's published bio across the publisher's site and social channels. We cross-referenced against the Schoolhouse Review Crew's published reviews, Cathy Duffy's coverage of Homeschool in the Woods, and customer pricing on Rainbow Resource and Christianbook.com. Prices and program details verified April 2026.