The Pilgrim Story

Dayspring Christian Academy is a Christian Academy that utilizes the Principle Approach, and is located in Pennsylvania.  They also operate an online school, and they provided a 6 month subscription of their self-paced course,  The Pilgrim Story to the Crew to review.

This review came up at a perfect time, with Thanksgiving just around the corner.  We're currently studying Egypt, so this program was an easy way to get in some teaching about the pilgrims before Thanksgiving gets here.  This program is intended for students in 3rd through 6th grade, and Jacob (5th), Micah (3rd), and Nicholas (1st) all watched the lessons.

The program is broken down into the following lessons:

Introduction
Unit One:

• King Henry

• Geneva Bible

• Life in Scrooby

• Liberty of Conscience

Unit Two:

• Leaving England

• The Second Escape Attempt

• Leiden

• Preparing to Go

Unit Three:

• Leaving Leiden

• Conditions on the Mayflower

• Building Christian Character

Unit Four:

• The Mayflower Compact

• Exploration

• The First Winter

Unit Five:

• Spring, 1621

• The Wapanoag People

• The Rest of the Story

Virtual Field Trip

The lessons are presented in slide format, and there is a narrator that reads the slides to the student.  There are activities and games in some of the lessons, and some live-action slides as well.  These lessons take about 30-45 minutes to complete, though any enrichment activities will extend the amount of time needed for each lesson.  At the start of each lesson, you are instructed to print out various worksheets for the lesson (note taking sheets, maps, vocabulary sheet, and any other resources needed).  The Principle Approach relies heavily on notebooking, and all of this information is intended to help your student create a notebook for this course.  The notetaking sheets are fill in the blank worksheets; these are easy to complete because the text is underlined on the slide so it's easy for the student to copy.  Each lesson begins and ends with a review, so the student gets repeated exposure to the information.  There is a unit test at the end of each unit.

All three of my sons that did this program really enjoyed it.  Jacob found the notetaking sheets helpful, and he enjoyed learning about the Pilgrims.  Micah thought this course was fun, and he liked the activities and games.  Nicholas liked that he learned about the Pilgrims sneaking away from their homes.  None of the boys  liked the tests, but that is to be expected.

The only complaint (other than the test) was they didn't like having to listen to the instructions to download the worksheets at the beginning of each lesson.  They did this program mostly without my help, and Jacob was able to get to the website and easily navigate each day's lesson on his own.  They asked daily to do this course, and it's always encouraging to have them ask to do schoolwork.

For $99, you'll get a 6 month subscription to The Pilgrim Story.  You can watch the lessons on your timetable during the 6 months, which makes it very convenient.  If you're looking to study the pilgrims, I would recommend that you check out Dayspring Christian Academy.

For more reviews of The Pilgrim Story, go here.

Disclaimer: As a member of the TOS Crew, I received this product, at no cost to me, in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are mine.