Drive Thru History Adventures (A REVIEW)

 
With three boys in my house, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to try out Drive Thru History Adventures. My car loving, video watching boys and I have learned a lot about American History through this Homeschool Video Curriculum that features Dave Stotts as he drives his Jeep around important historical sites teaching about history. There's adventure, history, humor, scenery, facts, and real life (modern and historical). These videos really make learning history fun and memorable.

For this review we received a full year of online access to the Drive Thru History Adventures, and Adventures TV. This includes access to pretty much everything including a community, curriculum, and all the video series. I was able to join a closed Facebook group where Dave Stotts himself posts and shares updates. It was pretty cool to get to see him in real life. I also utilized the curriculum with worksheets, extra readings, quotes, and other helpful information. Along with each video we read things like The Mayflower Compact, and Paul Revere's Ride.

As I said earlier, we received full access to all the videos, but we chose to focus on the American History Adventures for this review. This American history course covers the time from Columbus to the Constitution with 12 episodes, or adventures. In these episodes Dave Stots travels to Europe, Virginia, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. For a homeschool curriculum it is meant to be a 12 week adventure course, watching 1 episode per week, and then completing the suggested readings and discussion questions that go along with that adventure. There are other adventure series to choose from as well: Bible History Adventures (an 18-week trip), and Ancient History Adventures (a 12-week trip). That's a good amount of History watching! You could easily just watch all the videos alone and still learn a lot!

Along with our Drive Thru History Adventures membership we also received access to AdventuresTV. This allows you to access the videos and curriculum from different devices like ipad, android, chromecast TV, and any computer. I put the app on my iphone, and was able to watch an episode while the kids did ice skating lessons, it worked great!

I still wish I had been able to find a better way to get it on my television though. I couldn't figure out how to get the AdventuresTV to any of our TV devices. It was kind of hard to get everyone around the laptop at the same time, and we don't have enough devices for everyone to watch it separately. So, we had to just hook up the laptop to our television for us all to watch it together. . This worked out pretty good overall. I was able to just bring up all the curriculum stuff after we watched an episode, and we were able to do the readings and questions with everything showing on the big TV.

I had originally intended this curriculum to be mostly for my 6th grader. I could easily have him watch this on his school laptop (which he did once), and have him do the readings and the questions, but we all enjoyed it together. My 4th grader, and 1st grader sat in with us when we watched it together on the big TV, and I found that to be the most fun and effective when we watched it together and could discuss as it went along. The 1st grader is a little young to catch everything in this history curriculum, but he enjoyed pushing his cars around and coloring while we watched.

I did print up the worksheets for the first 2 episodes until I found it easier to just bring it up on the TV after we watched. I also printed up coloring pages for the younger 2 to keep their attention while we watched.

We just love Drive Thru History Adventures. It will definitely be a part of our history curriculum as long as we have it. The annual subscription is $124.99 for a year access. If you buy right now they are offering The Gospels DVD set free for those who purchase the annual subscription. I don't know how long that deal is running, but it sounds like a good way to go! Just click on that link, and the promo code is there for you already!

If you'd like to see what other review crew members had to say about this History curriculum just click on the banner below.