Download N' Go Series - Expedition Australia

Many years ago my brother went to Australia and worked for an entire winter (their summer). I wanted to go with him, dreamed of going to the Opera House or the Great Barrier Reef to scuba, but for whatever reason I wasn't able to go. When he came home he showed us all the pictures of the places he had been and brought back gifts from this unique land down under. One day I would like to go and visit this intriguing and mysterious land of Australia, but for now to explore it with my son (8 yrs old) is just the ticket.

So when The Old Schoolhouse asked me to review the Download N Go Expedition Australia I was very excited to share it with my son. I told him (mistakenly I might add) that we were going to Australia, he said "Great mom! When do we leave?" Oops! I had to explain to him that we were going on a pretend trip to learn and study. While I could see a little let down about an actual trip, he was eager to learn more about the country that his uncle had once visited.

I have to say that I started homeschooling last fall. I have seen many blogs that talked about lapbooking, but I didn't quite understand the concept of a lapbook, my Buckaroo came from a public school and I was in public school for most of my education, so therefore this concept was completely foreign to me. When I opened up The Old Schoolhouse's Download N Go Expedition Australia, one of the first things that I noticed was the introduction to lapbooking. So I thought to myself let's give it a try. Boy we have been missing out!

1. On the first day we went over basic geography, studied the Great Barrier Reef, watched four video clips, and learned about the Koala. (I didn't have to spend hours researching!)


2. On the second day we learned about the regions and cities of Australia, the Uluru, and the kangaroo. We watched a few more video clips, colored, and added stuff to our lapbook.


3. The third day we learned about the Desert, the wombat, some history, and music. It's all very sneaky to learn this much while having so much fun!


4. The fourth day we watched a few more videos, learned about the platypus and the culture.


5. The fifth day we investigated the Outback, the boomerang, the Tasmanian devil, and music. All of this is included in a convenient daily outline.

They have a variety of Unit studies for Kindergarten to 4th grade and examples that you can choose from are Ireland and China, George Washington and Ben Franklin, Whale tales and Sea Shells.

This Unit Study is affordably priced at $7.95. It is definitely worth it, you get so much interesting and fun stuff to work with that you might not get it all finished in a week. Since we had so much fun we continued working on Australia into the next week.

Here is a price breakdown:

One Week $7.95.

4 Weeks $30.00 with a bonus study called Birthday Bonanza.

19 Weeks $114.00 with Birthday Bonanza and Summer Sensations plus 2 Amanda Bennett E-Books.

38 Weeks $190.00 with Birthday Bonanza and Summer Sensations plus 2 Amanda Bennett E-Books.

The last option is for a full semester and is where the savings would be. So you could definitely design a custom study for your children for a week or for the entire semester. Go to Download N Go for more information. All you do is download the info and you are ready to go. When I first started homeschooling I ordered my books and for some of them I had to wait weeks to get started. Ugh! I love that you can get all that information right at your fingertips! The only thing you have to wait for is when you go to the library and find all the books that this study recommends.

I also thought that this would be great for larger families. What do you do if you have 2 children or more? With some curriculum's they have worksheets that only one child can use. I think it would be great to spend so little to teach more than one child for an entire week!

For anyone who is new to homeschooling this is a unique way of learning. It is not the cookie cutter P.S. lesson that you might be used to, it is a solid lesson of culture, science, math and then some! I was asked to give the pros and cons of this study and while I could give you all the pros, I really couldn't find any cons. What a fun way to learn!!