History Passport

Since we’re starting our main history unit anew with ancients again, I decided to make a history passport for the boys. I’m pretty happy with how they turned out! I’ll tell you how I did it if you want to make your own, or feel free to use my template.

Like I mentioned in the Lesson Planning posts of late, we are using Mosaic with the Story of the World. We’re also doing a tour of the 50 states in geography, so we’ll get to use it for more than just history. I’ve found several images with travel stamps and country postage stamps that I’ll probably put into a document, print and then put through a sticker-maker so they can go into the books.

I made the boys’ passports in Microsoft Word. I made the margins narrow on a new document, then added a shape (rectangle), then copied it and placed another one next to it to make the cover and back of the passport. Then I added the text and background color, then a picture of the United States Seal (since we’re in the US. If you’re international, you could use your country’s symbol or flag or seal, or your homeschool’s symbol or crest – the options are limitless!).

For the inside pages, I created a new document and placed the same sized rectangles to make the page borders, then added a map for the background (edited to be ‘washed out’ looking) and added the lines to make the interior boxes. If I’d thought about it, I would have added text inside for ‘entry’ and ‘departure’, but I didn’t. I’ll write them in later. Once I was done with the shapes, I printed (which took some finagling to get them printed just right) and cut out, folded and stapled. Then I let the kids sign them inside. I may take the finished passports to be laminated next time I go. Leaving them closed and running them through will laminate the outsides and I can cut the opening again. We’ll see if that’s necessary.

I found some ready-made templates here:

DonnaWard.net

Satori Smiles

and I have mine uploaded if you’d like to use it.

HistoryPassportTemplate_cover_ThisAdventureLife

HistoryPassportTemplate_inside_ThisAdventureLife

The boys are keeping theirs tucked into the corner of their desk calendar for easy access. So far, I hear good things about them; they’re anxious to start using them! If you’re using a pretend passport with your kids, please tell me about it in the comments. I’m interested in other things to use them for.

Warmly,

~h