We recently finished a long study of the 50 states. I was relieved to be done and ready to move on. However, when both sets of the Olde World Style Maps from Homeschool in the Woods arrived in my inbox to review, my oldest decided she was not ready to part ways with the United States just yet. With the help of Amy Pak’s products Makayla is making her own atlas of the United States. I have a feeling before the project is through it will expand into a world atlas.
Let me tell you more about each product, including what we love, what we like, and even a thing or two we wish had been included.
The Old World Style Maps: United States have three basic maps for each state plus historical maps:
- The Labeled state maps have labels on bodies of water, border states, and the state capital.
- The second map version, called No Labels, show basic physical geography of the state without any labels identifying those features.
- The third map style for each state is the Outline. It is just that. The state and it’s borders are outlined without rivers, physical features, or labels on the state. This makes a perfect map for Makayla’s Atlas. She is able to draw in places she finds interesting or important, label it all, and she’s set.
- The historical maps begin with the American Colonies. I wish there were maps of the major battles of the Civil War, though we will be able to use some of the historical maps to make our own.
We recently printed outline maps of Montana for our current read aloud, The Trumpet of the Swan. While my 8 year old labeled the map for her atlas, my 2, 4, and 5 year olds drew things important to the story, like where Sam lives and where the Red Rock Lakes are.
This set also includes State Facts notebooking pages for all 50 states. Each one has:
- Lines for the student to record basic state facts.
- A small, unlabeled map of the state.
- A drawing of the state bird and flower to color.
- An empty box labeled State Flag. While a student could draw the flag for each state, Amy Pak has included files with color versions of each state flag to print out, cut, and paste in the box if desired. I would have liked to see the maps offered in outlines for the student to print and color, as we do not have a color printer.
There are free samples for the United States set HERE.
On to the Olde World Style Set: World Maps! This set is set up similarly, with a selection of maps in several styles. These maps are divided into Ancient and Modern. The Ancient maps generally offer physical geography without political borders marked.
The modern maps are not nearly as numerous as I would hope. Instead of offering maps for each individual country, most maps simply cover a continent or region like South America or the Middle East. This was not nearly as helpful. If we are studying a specific country and want to label the features of the country we would need to print a map of the continent the country is found upon, and try to label that tiny country. There are a few individual country maps (less than 12) that seem randomly chosen, but our world has far more than 12 countries.
One feature I like in this product, however, is the notebooking pages. 
These include a few generic pages the student can use for any purpose, as well as travel brochures, postcards, flora and fauna reports, and country report pages. The country report is a generic form with boxes to glue in the country flag from another file(color only, no black and white outlines) and a small (less than 3 inch) graphic of the continent/region a country is found upon, with the country highlighted in color and the surrounding areas gray. Again, this graphic will not print well for those of us who do not have color printers. I wish there were individual outline maps for each country.
My 8 year old made a postcard with some items related to Ohio this week: 
She drew a buckeye for the state tree, a cardinal (state bird), and a white-tailed deer (state mammal).
There are free samples for the World Maps set HERE.
The Olde World Style Map sets (United States and World Maps versions) are sold as downloads both individually for $18.95 each ($1.00 more to purchase on CD) and in a combo for $28.95 ($1.00 more to purchase on CD). Homeschool in the Woods offers many other products that I would love to try, including Time Travelers unit studies and Timeline Figures.
Learn my Crewmates thoughts on these products HERE.
{Disclaimer: I received a free download of the Olde World Style Maps Combo Pack to use and review. I received no other compensation and the opinions contained herein are my own.}
Today is officially Jellyfish Day at our house. I thought I would share a bit of what we did. 
This is how we store all those manipulatives for Math U See. You can read more about our inexpensive solution 
Critical Thinking Company
The skirt is one I got several years ago at WalMart for about $10.00. I actually have it in two other colors because I liked it so much. The shirt was a freebie someone passed on to me. Both are very comfortable, which is my requirement for clothing. 
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