| | | Note: This article was originally written to offer help and suggestions to customers using our History Pockets, Literature Pockets, and Making Books with Pockets (formerly called Theme Pockets) titles. Links to these products can be found at the bottom of this page.
At our house we LOVE "living books" and avoid workbooks as much as possible. While this series of books may seem a little "workbookish" on the surface, they are really anything but - in fact, I think that they are some of the very best history and notebooking resources on the market, and the fact that they are fully reproducible makes them a terrific value!!
 The premise behind each of these books is that the child would make a number of "pockets" by folding up the bottom part of a large piece of contsruction paper, then stapling or sewing the pockets together to make a book. Each pocket is labeled and filled with items from the book. Each History Pockets,Literature Pockets, or Making Books with Pockets title is packed with reproducible fact sheets, make-your-own dictionary forms, timelines, pop-ups, maps, language arts projects, puppets, dioramas, crafts, coloring pages, and dozens of other truly fascinating and valuable learning activities for the child to complete and put in the pockets.
In Moving West History Pockets, for example, the child would end up with 10 pockets - "Introduction to Moving West," "The New Frontier," "Exploring the Wilderness," "Missionaries at Work," "On the Oregon Trail," "The Native American Struggle," "Settling the Far West," "The Gold Rush," "Homesteading the Great Plains," and "Building the Railroads."
The format for the Making Books with Pockets titles is just a little bit different. While the History and Literature Pockets titles each offer about 7-12 pockets all based about a single time period or literature genre, the Making Books with Pockets titles each offer about 4-7 pockets each for three different themes. For example, Making Books with Pockets: August covers 1) One of a Kind (a pocket book all about your child), 2) Ocean Habitats (a pocket book about the ocean with pockets for the various ocean habitats such as the deep sea, kelp forest, tide pools, etc.), and 3) Insect Riddles (a pocket book with pockets for various types of familiar insects.) The second main difference is that each Making Books with Pockets title is named after a month. In many cases, such as the August title described above, the month has nothing at all to do with the contents of the book. Some other titles have holiday tie-ins such as President's Day in the February, Thanksgiving in the November book, etc. We really love these books and often use them to enhance a subject that we are already studying. This allows the older children to enjoy the fun projects while still going on to study the subject at their own level.
Now, to be honest, we are real notebook-lovers around my house, and with 6 children we have to be careful of how much "stuff" each one has or makes. While we love and use our History Pockets and Literature Pockets books, we have never made the construction paper pockets. My children do the activities then simply pop them into page protectors in their notebooks for that historical period along with their Color and Learn pages, written narrations, digital photos of projects they have made, creative writing assignments, copywork, etc. For our family it works best to have just one notebook on, say, ancient Egypt per child. This one notebook then reflects all of the work he has done on that subject, all in one place. (One of these days I will probably have to break down and do a pocket book, though. They are awfully cute!!)
These books are also an excellent resource for families who do lapbooks, as most, if not all, of the activites could easily be incorporated into a lapbook. They are very, very content-rich, and the activities are very meaningful. The content tends to be very factual without a lot of political correctness.
You could easily put together an great unit study using nothing more than one of these books, a Color and Learn book, one of our kits, and a few library books. Almost everything you need is in the book. A few of the books have craft suggestions or recipies that would require the use of other materials, but at least 95% of all of the activities just require scissors, construction paper or cardstock, crayons or colored pencils, common art supplies such as glue, tissue paper, yarn, paper plates, etc., and the book itself. We HIGHLY reccomend the History Pockets/Literature Pockets and Making Books with Pockets series!!!!
A NOTE ABOUT GRADE LEVELS: Some of these books are reccomended for grades 1-3, some for grades 2-3, and some for grades 4-6. We have found that these grade levels are pretty meaningless. The only real difference is that the reading level is higher in a 4-6 book than in a 1-3 book. Any kindergartener could easily understand the content of one of the 4-6 books if it was read aloud to him and could do most, if not all of the activities in the book. Because the books are reproducible, we even give our toddlers copies of the activites to make them feel "big." On the other end of the spectrum, our oldest children (and their mommy!!) have learned a great deal from the books geared towards grades 1-3. The activities are by no means babyish and would certainly benefit any child as old as 12 or 13. We always tell moms to ignore the grade suggestions and just buy the title that best complements their study.
HISTORY POCKETS:
Ancient Civilizations
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Greece
Colonial America
Explorers of North America
Life in Plymouth Colony
Moving West
LITERATURE POCKETS:
Aesop's Fables
Greek and Roman Myths
Tall Tales
Making Books with Pockets (formerly called Theme Pockets):
February
June
July
August
November
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