State Study Scrapbook and Lapbook

This year my two oldest kids will be studying our state history (I know, I said that last year, but this year they really are going to do it!). Since they will be doing a lot of this unit independently, I thought it would be fun to have them create a state study scrapbook and lapbook.

Roughed Up Maps No. 1 by Katie Pertiet

Basic Paper Alpha Notebook by Katie Pertiet

Stitched by Anna Borders Evergreen No. 1

Ingrid Solids by Michelle Martin

My kids will be creating digital scrapbook pages of the places we have visited plus several fun fact pages about Indiana. For the lapbooking elements, we will be using many from the Indiana History unit at Homeschool Share. The layout above it the title page for their books. They will be creating all the rest of the layouts using Photoshop Elements. We'll get the layouts printed as 8x8 photos and adhere them to the scrapbook page (I found 10x10 spiral scrapbooks on sale that we are using. Any top-loading album would also work).  My kids love creating on the computer and my plan is to try to actually go visit many of the sites in our state so they can scrapbook them. If you'd like to know more about digital scrapbooking with kids, check out my article called "Digital Scrapbooking as an Educational Tool"

At the end of the unit I hope they will both have a wonderful keepsake plus fact book of our state.

I went ahead and looked through Designer Digitals' store and found some digital products that would work great with geography theme projects. You could use them to create scrapbook pages for learning, regular scrapbook pages, hybrid projects or even printables (for personal use).  Most of these products can be used with any photo-editing software program. Just create and print! :)

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WW2 Final Projects

This past session in our local co-op, my oldest two children studied World War II. The team of teachers did a wonderful job going all out to teach different events. They did so many more hands-on activities and learning than I would have had time to do if I taught this at home. I appreciated all the hard work those teachers did.

For their final projects, each student had to have a 1-2 page typed report, a project and then give a presentation to the whole co-op.

My daughter chose to study Corrie Ten Boom. She read at least 5 different books about Corrie. She was hooked on learning more about this courageous woman! I was proud of her because speaking in front of people was a new skill for her and she was very nervous. She did a good job!

My son chose to learn more about the Tuskegee Airmen.

His favorite part was creating his first model airplane. We found a model of the P-51 Mustang airplane that Tuskegee airmen flew. With some help from his dad, he was able to finish this model just in time for the presentation.

He also did a good job on the presentation. I think this was a wonderful experience for the both of them.

For more World War 2 resources see:

Jimmie's Collage --she posted a lapbook and resources that she used with her daughter when teaching about WW2

World War II for Kids -- book that has great hands-on activities and projects. We used this several times during the unit.

Maps and Coloring

 

We are on year 2 of Sonlight Core 3-- American History. Yes, it's normally a 1yr. program but we had many off-topic weeks, special projects, and just plain off weeks. It has taken us a little longer to get through than I intially had planned, but that's ok. We were just ending the American Revolution when I remembered that I had won a Time Travelers: The Early 19th Century History Study from Homeschool in the Woods.  I pulled it out and was thrilled to see that it covered everything we were getting ready to study. This history study has projects, lapbooking elements, map-work, crafts and more. There is a lot there! Be sure to check out the site where it describes in detail what all is in this unit.

This was exactly what we needed to get out of our history rut. Don't get me wrong--I love the Sonlight books, but we needed to switch it up a little. We'll be supplementing many of the projects into the rest of our American History unit and adding all the notebooking and lapbooking elements into our History binder.

 

Today we did some map-work. We haven't done much of that in the past, other than looking places up on our markable map. My kids loved it. My son even commented on how he liked doing work like this.

 

We even little littlest DD "color" her own map. Ok, it wasn't a map but she doesn't know that. She thinks she was doing school work just like her big brother and sister.

 

I think we'll incorporate more map-work in our curriculum. And if I do that, I'm going to be getting a set of Prismacolor pencils. I used to use them all the time when I was really into paper arts. They blended well and were easy to use for detailed work. The pencils we used today worked ok, but the kids would try to sharpen them in order to color in tiny spaces and the tips kept breaking off. They could never get them to a fine enough point for some of the more detailed coloring they needed to do.

So I am happy to be on track with history again, and am looking forward to finishing Sonlight Core 3 well instead of just getting it done--lol.