Drive Thru History Adventures Including Curriculum Review

This entry is part 3 of 24 in the series 2018 Homeschool Reviews

History is something I did not come to appreciate until well into my college years. My teachers just didn’t know how to make it interesting so I branded it dull. Not! I wanted to make sure that my daughter had a different experience so I was pretty happy when we received the opportunity to review a great Homeschool History Curriculum from Drive Thru History Adventures with Dave Stotts.

Drive Thru History Adventures is an online site based on the popular Drive Thru History videos.(we did a review on their Gospel series last year). Drive Thru History videos are a creation by Dave Stotts whose goal is to provide the truth of history as an adventure. History grounded in a Christian Worldview.

Dave has traveled all over the globe and gets up close and personal with where historic moments have taken place. The Drive Thru History Adventures History curriculum is based on these videos.

The main website features the…

Drive Thru Thru Curriculum, including Bible History, American History, and Ancient History
A Resources section with articles, worksheets, behind the scenes videos of Drive Thru History , a section called Side Roads, and another called Dig Deeper
An online Community where you can see all the social media posts
And a link to Adventures TV (a separate subscription) where you can watch all the videos

There are currently 3 options for a Drive Thru History membership.We received a year long subscription to Drive Thru History Adventures.

Annual: Includes the curriculum (Bible, Ancient, and America History) and access to Adventures TV where you can watch the full videos, specials, and behind the scenes action. Also includes a FREE physical copy of the Gospels DVD series (you can read our review on this here).
Month to Month: Includes the curriculum (Bible, Ancient, and America History) and access to Adventures TV where you can watch the full videos, specials, and behind the scenes action.
7 Day trial: Access to the curriculum (Bible, Ancient, and America History)

Drive Thru History Adventures is offering 20% off for readers of The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine.

(The Drive Thru History Adventures ad is on page 19.)

How We Used Drive Thru History Adventures

I wanted to try the Drive Thru History Adventures Curriculum as an option for supplementing our current curriculum. There are a lot of dates, names, and concepts to remember and it can get overwhelming.

Man! I wished we had access to this last year when my daughter just started doing Ancient History. But no problem it’s still good for this year’s curriculum too!

We chose to review the Ancient History Curriculum from Drive Thru History Adventures. I know from experience that it totally helps to have some visuals and Dave is the perfect person to give you a visual tour of the Ancient World.

There are 12 Episodes in the Drive Thru History Ancient World Curriculum

The Rise of Western Civilization
The Age of Conflict
A Time of Challenges
Roots of Democracy
Challenges of a New Religion
The Spread of Christianity
East Meets West
Ruins and Romans
The Advancement of Knowledge
Heart of Stone
Constantine and Constantinople
The Best of the Ancient World

Each video is about 45 minutes long. Dave drives through the areas where history happened and gives you a bigger picture of what happened and why it was important at the time. He also uses art to help depict scenes. He’s really good at explaining all this in an exciting way and his humor doesn’t hurt either.

Along with the videos, there are pictures and images of the times. And reprints of any papers that may apply to the video.

To round out the curriculum after watching each video there is a downloadable PDF worksheet with questions from the video. How well did you pay attention?

How do We Live Drive Thru History

We were already fans of Drive Thru History but this time we got to try it as a learning tool (not that we didn’t learn before). As part of our curriculum, I have my daughter watching Drive Thru History Adventures the Ancient History Curriculum.

Since right now we are studying Ancient History in our curriculum I felt that watching Dave’s adventures would help my daughter see the big picture and put together all these facts and figures together. I was not wrong.

To hear her recap what she has learned I know it was the right choice. We chose to do the worksheets audibly so I ask the questions and she answers.

Above you see a picture of her learning about the Coll0seum in Ancient Rome. Watching a tanned Dave drive through the streets of Rome and explain early Rome is captivating. He effortlessly weaves important facts in with interesting tidbits while you view beautiful artwork or stunning scenery.

In our first lesson (yeah I watch them too, actually sometimes late a night when everyone else is in bed!) we learned about the mythical story of the founding of Rome, about Julius Ceasar and his assassination, New Years, the calendar, a little bit of Latin, dating Jesus’ birth, and a whole lot more!

My daughter loves this program. Dave is funny and interesting at the same time. And while she enjoyed the Ancient History Curriculum she also spied the American History Curriculum and has been watching those just for fun. She loves American History and watching Dave travel to those places and seeing what they look like is a lot of fun. I see a road trip in our future.

My daughter also wants to know if Dave can do Drive Thru Math, Drive Thru Grammar, and Drive Thru Science LOL! He really does make learning history (and geography) fun!