I have long wished over my years with the Homeschool Review Crew that I could review Drive Thru History but never had the opportunity to do so. FINALLY our moment arrived (YAY)! We could study Ancient History with Drive Thru History Adventures. Dave Stott’s well done program has my son so enthused that he will even watch an episode on Saturdays if we’ve missed a day throughout the week. It’s a winner in our household, so I invite you to read on, perhaps it will be a winner in yours as well!
What is Drive Thru History Adventures?
A series of three online courses. During these courses Dave Stott takes field trips around the world talking history, geography, archaeology, classic art, and Christian worldview. Right now three courses are available.. Biblical history (18 weeks), American History (12 weeks) and Ancient History (12 weeks). Into this conversation he interjects humour and stories. Each video is accompanied by discussion questions (also provided on PDF’s) and readings to extend the lesson.
How did we use it?
We watched two videos per week, normally at lunchtime, on Monday and Wednesday. We watched as a family and found the video’s very entertaining and educational. The Mr. Stott’s voice was pleasant to listen to, the images used helpful. My son enjoyed reading the quotes.
As my son will often say he doesn’t remember things, on the days between videos we did the worksheets. Testing his recall and then for things he didn’t remember, we’d look them up in a different format, which would help him recall information from the video. This gave us an opportunity to extend our knowledge of particular details via youtube videos or various websites. Always good when one had their curiousity peaked to explore more isn’t it?
Check out part of the history we learned on Rome. This was a few lessons back and my son still remembers it. 🙂
We looked at the readings provided, and I admittedly found them interesting, but at this point for my grade seven lad, they were a bit beyond his understanding. The neat thing about PDF’s is they can be stored for use at a later time! I can see them being of excellent value if he were a highschool student.
OH.. before I forget. My son was delighted one day to get some mail from Drive Thru History! He grinned and stashed them in his “I’m keeping this box”. 🙂 It was great to see his surprise.
How does it work?
It’s easy to work with. When you login you pick where you want to go. Curriculum leads you to the lessons. Resources are the PDF’s and extended information. Community links to their social media. Adventures TV (a cool resource I’ll talk on later)
Three programs are available at the moment. I have no clue if any more are planned. The ones currently on the plan are history courses for bible, American and ancient.
It’s just a matter of clicking on the one you want to view. If you were so inclined you could watch one episode per week of a different course. We are following along the Ancient History one, biblical history is on our radar. Each lesson starts with a video that I would chrome cast to the TV. This made it easy for us to watch the episodes as a family.
Numerous art work was portrayed as you worked your way down the page after viewing the video. Each lesson also came with a quote that my son delighted in reading to me. Sometimes we would talk about what that quote meant. The lad didn’t always know, but it made for good conversation. 🙂
I have to admit, sometimes we did the lessons backwards. 🙂 Working our way through what the discussion questions might be, reading the summary, looking at the images and everything else in the lesson. Sometimes my son knew the answers to discussion questions and other times we knew watching the video was the smart thing to do. 🙂 Answers are also provided.
The discussion were listed in the lesson, and were also available on PDF’s. As I mentioned earlier we would normally watch the video and go through the art work one day and the next my lad would fill out the discussion questions. Most of the time his recall was great but sometimes we would have to look up the answers. These discussion questions would often disappear the void that is his room so I was lucky to snap pics when I did! 🙂
We also received access to adventures TV. This requires a separate login. It is available as a free app on android and apple devices and it is available as tab through your dashboard on the computer. You do need a subscription to be able to access all the content, but the app itself is free to download. Once you install the app you can sign in with your email and than you receive an email that updates the app so you can use it. Pretty neat eh?
Adventures TV is a series of videos that vary in length, that are either just fun to watch (like the learning about cheese), interesting to watch/learn from or videos of the lessons (without the PDF’s). Subject areas include: History (Bible, American, Ancient), Dave’s adventures (various updates), Sideroads (history of groundhog day, coins, cheese etc), Behind the scenes (museum of the bible opening etc) and Dig Deeper (bible reading plans etc). They are well worth going through and picking what you’d like to know more about. We haven’t watched a lot of them as my son’s focus is on ancient history. As he says “we can watch those another time right? I want to do my history!” I’m just not going to argue with that logic eh? 🙂
My Concerns:
Sometimes the videos would go through a stretch of being highly pixelated. It never lasted beyond four minutes running time, but was a distraction when listening. This bothered the boys more than it did me. As far as we could tell this was simply a downloading issue.
My Appreciation:
Dave Stott is a highly engaging speaker who has put together a program that not only educates the listener, but entertains. He’s a funny man who is at sometimes just a goofy geek (so he’d fit well into our family). You can see his love for history in the way he speaks about it, communicating well the truths of history. He speaks well of how biblical characters fit into the history of the moment. I fully expect once we are done watching the ancient history episodes that we will continue going through the other history as well. My son mentioned that bible history was next on his “I want to do that” list.
Drive Thru History Adventures. Dave Stott On-line subscription (received full year) Reviewed for Homeschool Review Crew Pricing: see here. They are currently offering a discount special so don't delay. In the winter edition of TOS magazine "Drive Thru History Adventures is offering 20% off for readers of The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine." see page 19 for that discount. I don't know if they can be combined. |
Do you want to know more?
100 people from the Homeschool Review Crew looked at Drive through History. You can find our reviews here.
These are the programs that we used:
+ Bible History (18 weeks on the Gospels)
+ American History (12 weeks on early American history)
+ Ancient History (12 weeks on early Greece, Rome and Asia Minor)
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