Drive Thru History Adventures - A New TOS Review!!

We are currently studying American History and I was hoping we'd be able to add a little umph to our studies. So I was so happy to hear about the new online subscription through Drive Thru History Adventures - a way to take history with you wherever you go! These homeschool videos have given us access to not one course but THREE courses of history -  a full online homeschool video curriculum for American History, Ancient History, or Bible History. We loved our experience with Drive Thru History - The Gospels last year and my kids could not wait to get access to see all the new offerings from Mr. Dave Stotts.

As I mentioned there are 3 courses available now:

American History (12 weeks covering early American History);
Ancient History (12 weeks covering early Greece, Rome, and Asia Minor); and
Bible History (18 weeks covering the Gospels)

And these are just not the videos. This is an video based curriculum with worksheets you can print (with an answer key), discussion questions, extra source document readings, and additional video segments to add so much more to the teaching. Each of the courses is split up by the main video which is about 30 minutes in length, followed by all the extras in the curriculum section which is chock full of ways to enhance your history studies. They are all organized under the specific course you are working on AND you can go to the Resource Tab or Curriculum Tab to look for something specific as well.

There is also one other feature called Adventures TV (an app version of the subscription) that you receive as a part of your subscription. You can get access to your Drive Thru Adventures videos while on the go as an app you download to your phone or tablet device. We just recently added this to my husband's phone (my phone won't let me add anything because I have too many pictures on it) so that we could bring it with us as we go to homeschool convention next week. I told him the name of the app and all he needed was the email my subscription was linked to in order to gain access - he said the sign in process was easy peasy.

We have been using this weekly in our home and have been loving it. My husband goes to work in the late morning so we've been watching this all together as a family which has been pretty cool and lead to some great discussions. After the video, if there were extra videos or links and any pictures that are shared on the page we'd look at those or watch them. Like this weeks extra had the reading of George Whitfield's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" that we read aloud.  For a previous week there were some short videos where Randall Niles, one of the writers for Drive Thru History Adventures,  read some of history's greatest Thanksgiving proclamations. Then we also have what are called Side Roads for some of the weeks, which talk about a particular pertinent historical event in a little more detail - like the Boston Massacre. As I also mentioned there are Discussion Questions which can be printed out for your older students or done as a family recapping what you've learned from the episode. My eldest is in 9th grade so she gets to work on the printed worksheet and my younger two (about to be 9 and 12) answer the questions orally.

We have also liked being a part of the Facebook Community page. Here each week you can send in questions for Dave to answer in his Friday Mailbag slot. He has also posted other short videos on things like Valentines and Groundhog Day as well as other discoveries and content pertinent to any of the 3 courses. There is also a Behind the Scenes tab which have a few short videos of Dave exploring the Museum of the Bible and a blooper reel from when they were in Israel doing "Acts". They are pretty amusing.

Here's some words from my kiddos about their feelings for Drive Thru Adventures:
My son (who's almost 9) says "it's very interesting to watch. I like all the old pictures he puts on to help us learn. I'm learning American History this time. I liked the episode with the battle on the hill (Battle of Bunker Hill). The extra videos mom shared with us from Facebook about groundhog Day and Valentines Day are funny. He (Dave Stotts) is super fun to watch."

My younger daughter says, "He goes to all the different places - Gospels, American History, and Ancient History - and it's fun to watch as he explores all the places. He's very funny I like learning about all of the places in history which makes it way more interesting and fun. There are also a lot of extras - like the poem we read about Paul Revere's ride and the videos we watched about the Thanksgiving speeches that were created by George Washington and Abraham Lincoln."

My eldest is doing a little more and having to write out her answers on the worksheets. She enjoys watching the videos, but sometimes takes a little longer to get her words down on the paper for the worksheets. The activities that go with it help make the program better - don't skip those!

We are also looking forward to the new courses that are in the works! My children ... well our whole family ... has really enjoyed learning history along with Dave Stotts. He certainly knows how to make history come to life again!

I also wanted to mention that right now if you join Drive Thru History Adventures you'll get this special - a FREE Gospels DVD set!! We loved ours! And currently there's a 20% off discount for readers of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine from Drive Thru History Adventures (check out page 19 in the magazine!) You can find them on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram so be sure to check them out! And as always read some of the other review posts from other team members, especially if you are wanting to learn more about the Ancient History or Bible History courses, by clicking the link below.