Look Inside: Passport to Adventures

Hi, welcome to my channel. I'm Jessica from The Waldock Way, and today's video is going to be a look inside of a curriculum that is near and dear to my heart because I designed it, and it's Passport to Adventures. Passport to Adventures came about after asking my daughter what she wanted to learn for first grade. We try to do some interest-led learning when it comes to some of the not-core subjects, and when asked, she said she wanted to do Magic Tree House in Jack and Annie's school. So I took the first 29 books in the series and turned each one into a week-long unit study. The Passport to Adventures will span 30 weeks, and it is going to take each book's topic and just dive into it in such a fun, hands-on way. I hope you enjoy it as much as we are hoping to enjoy it this year, and without further ado, let's get right into the look-through. The first thing I'm gonna show you is the teacher's manual for Passport to Adventures. Within it, you have your table of contents, which shows you the 29 books in the author study that you will be doing for this curriculum. It shows you the what of what's included, as well as why it has been included, and gives you some suggestions for things like television shows, podcasts, websites, apps, and games. The last thing you will see here, the bulk of the book, is going to be your unit study. So within this unit study, for each of the 30 topics, you're gonna have basically a checklist and an information list. So as you're gonna see over here, you're gonna read two chapters each day of the Magic Treehouse book, and each day you're gonna read from the selection of nonfiction books. And then you are going to complete an activity on day one, watch a video on day two, complete student notebook pages on day three, play a game on day four, and do something extra on day five. Now you will notice it does not say days of the week on there. You can do this in a month and do one day every week, like a fun Friday. You could do this in two weeks and do it twice a week, or you could do it in one week and do one day each day that week. This was designed to be whatever works for your family. I've also created some things over here that I like to call your buffet of list. So you have at least five nonfiction books for each unit. Activities, there's a Pinterest board, a hands-on activity, a sensory bend idea, and an art tutorial video for each of the units. There are videos for each unit. There will always be a YouTube playlist link, and then I tried to add any Netflix or Amazon Prime videos that pertain to the unit and that were age appropriate. There are links for different games that you can purchase to go along with each unit. There are additional links, and then there are extras. And then each of the extras, you will find the link to take the passport quiz online, field trip ideas, movie night ideas, writing prompts, and project for research, so research project ideas. I have also included printable movie night tickets. They are editable. So I didn't print mine out yet because I don't know when our next movie night will be, but they are in the package for you to be able to print, put your family name, what movie you're gonna be watching for movie night, and the date and time for them to show up. So just a little extra fun included for you. So each unit is laid out the same way. You will have five days of checklists for things to do and a buffet of ideas so that you can pick what is going to work best for your kids, your family, what you think will make them or help them learn, and what you think is going to work best for you. So that is the whole teacher's manual. And then there is an appendix in the back that has a few extra printables, tips, tricks, and the certificate for when you have finished the curriculum. Now I'm gonna show you through the student notebook. Now there are four different options for the student notebook to accommodate different ages and levels. So if you had a family of, let's say you have four kids and you have a four-year-old, a six-year-old, maybe an eight-year-old and a 10-year-old, I'm gonna show you the different things that you could do. So each of the student notebooks is gonna have the checklist and a map. This is so they can color the map in as you take your adventures around the world. It is also going to have a compare and contrast sheet for the two main characters. So you can have your child either write or draw pictures based off of what is the similarities and differences between Jack and Annie. And then for your youngest children, we have coloring sheets. So each of the 30 units would have a coloring sheet that goes along with it. Then maybe for your preschoolers or kindergartners, we have tracing sheets with a box to draw a picture. So there would be one of these for each of the 30 units. For your early elementary, we have manuscript copywork along with a box to draw a picture. And then for your older kids who are ready for a little bit more cursive, maybe late elementary, we have cursive copywork with a box to draw a picture. Now, as you can see, my daughter is going into first grade and she is six and we have chosen the manuscript copywork for her student notebook. Another thing that is included in this curriculum are these timeline cards. So there is one for every book in every unit and you can either hang these up with string across your classroom or your school room. You can put them on a poster board with some tape. You can make a lap book out of them. You can just lay them out on the floor in the different way that they've happened historically. However it works for you. Now, there are a few that are blank here. These don't have a specific time period they happened. They just kind of happened. So these in the teacher's manual, I suggest doing a little bit of research and letting your child make an educated guess of when they think they would fit best into the timeline. There are also some blank timeline cards available in the printable and those are for you to be able to list birthdays or anniversaries so that it can be personal to each family. The last thing included is a Race to the Magic Treehouse game. This is in case you don't have the game that's suggested for that week or you just wanna play something a little bit different. This is just a simple roll the dice, move your pawn, whoever gets to the treehouse first wins. I'm gonna go ahead and show you the books that you would be reading throughout the year with Passport to Adventures. And they would be Dinosaurs Before Dark, The Night at Dawn, Mummies in the Morning, Pirates Past Noon, Night of the Ninjas, Afternoon on the Amazon, Sunset of the Sabertooth, Midnight on the Moon, Dolphins at Daybreak, Ghost Town at Sundown, Lions at Lunchtime, Polar Bears Past Bedtime, Vacation Under the Volcano, Day of the Dragon King, Viking Ships at Sunrise, Hour of the Olympics, Tonight on the Titanic, Buffalo Before Breakfast, Tigers at Twilight, Dingoes at Dinnertime, Civil War on a Sunday, Revolutionary War on Wednesday, Twister on Tuesday, Earthquake in the Early Morning, Stage Fright on a Summer Night, Good Morning Gorillas, Thanksgiving on Thursday, High Tide in Hawaii, and book number 29 that I do not have yet is A Big Day for Baseball, and it's about Jackie Robinson. So as you can see, the topics in these books are gonna have you expanding from history, science, and geography. The last thing I'm gonna show you is what a unit looks like for us or what it would look like for us. So this is unit one, and these would be the books that go with unit one. So Dinosaurs Before Dark, What Was the Age of the Dinosaurs, Magic Treehouse Fact Tracker Dinosaurs, Fly Guy Presents Dinosaurs, National Geographic Kids Dinosaurs, Oh, Say, Can You Say Dinosaurs? All About Dinosaurs. It would also include this hands-on project, which this is a dig dinosaur skeleton. So you get to dig the skeleton and then build it. So that would be our hands-on project for this unit. And then it's also gonna include some fun games. So one of the fun games we have here is Game Rites Super Tooth, and it's all about what dinosaurs eat what, and it's really fun. So that would be one game we would play. Another game we have is the Dinosaur Card Line Game. And so you try to lay out and figure where your dinosaur goes either by length or weight compared to the other player's dinosaurs. And then we also have the Professor Noggin's Dinosaur Trivia. So you roll a dice and try to answer some questions about dinosaurs. And then last, we will be playing Dinosaur Math Tracks or Dino Math Tracks, which is a place value math game. So let's sneak some math in there, right? I'm gonna go ahead and insert some photos after this when we do the unit, so you can see some photos of the unit in action. And I hope you have enjoyed this video of a look through Passport to Adventure.