The Boy Who Changed the World

The Boy Who Changed the World by Andy Andrews is The Butterfly Effect for children. I love reading childrens books, especially if there are real-life people woven into the story. I was not disappointed--this little book is packed with inspiration!

The main theme of the book is that actions matter. From big things to little things--what we do can make a big difference and effect others. The story shows how the lives of four people are woven together: Norman Borlaug, Henry Wallace, George Washington Carver, and Moses Carver. Each one's actions effect the other which led to effecting the world!

The story is wonderfully written by Andy Andrews and beautifully illustrated by Philip Hurst. I love how each person in the book has a different butterfly fluttering by them. I think the message of the book is one kids and adults need to hear---that God made them for a purpose and

"That means YOU can
be the kid who
changes the world!"

As a home educator, my mind was reeling with all the possibilities I could go with this book. You could easily use this book as the basis for a whole unit study:

- Study the life of Norman Borlaug
- Study the life of Mr. Henry Wallace
- Study the life of George Washington Carver
- Study the life of Moses Carver
- plants and seeds
- crops (rice, corn, wheat)
- peanuts
- sweet potato
- Iowa
- butterflies
- being created for a purpose

So to start off, I created a couple  The Boy Who Changed the World mini-books for my kids to use. These can be used in a lapbook or lap-n-note (which is what we do).  If you would like to share this file with others, please link directly to this post, not the file. Thanks! :)

Tommy Nelson has some free coloring pages to go along with the book, and the author of the book offers a free curriculum guide aimed at K-2nd along with a reader's guide.

I can't wait to get the hard-back edition added into my personal library. This book would be best for kids 5 and up. Even though it is a picture book, the combination of the historical references and the idea of the butterfly effect makes it perfect for older kids too.



Related Posts:
Butterfly Unit for Young Children
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Disclosure: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

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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World Geography Mini-Unit from TOS

This week on Spell Outloud I thought that I would focus on sharing some geography resources. The first up for the week is The Old School House's Travel the World June Planner Module. These monthly modules are supplements to the School House Planner. You don't need to have the School House Planner to use these additional modules.

What is Travel the World Planner Module?

It is an e-book unit with information for the student to read, hyperlinks, mini-books for lapbooks and other printables. The Travel the World unit focuses on what is geography, some of the basic terminology (longitude, latitude, compass rose etc)  the continents, and the oceans.

How We Used the Travel Unit:

When The Old Schoolhouse first gave me the e-book to review, I had originally planned on using this with my 8yr. old dd and 10 yr. old ds. Instead, I was able to use it with all my kids at various levels and it was my 12 yr. old dd that really love the unit.

The unit starts out with 8 informational pages that are hyperlinked. My 8yr. old and I read the material together over a couple of days and followed the links which enhanced the topics that were being covered. My 10 yr. old and 12yr. old read and did the material on their own. 

Next my 3 oldest requested that I print out the word searches for them. There are also some other supplemental printables such as crossword puzzle,  fill-in-the-blanks, rebus activity, and acrostic poem. I usually consider these types of pages "fillers" but my kids enjoyed doing them.

I had originally planned for my 8yr. old and 10 yr. old to start their world lapbook. There are mini-books for each of the continents and a special travel book for the student to write about a country they are interested in learning more about. Though we didn't get to this part, I plan on having them start this project this school year. The booklets included in the Travel the World download will be the beginning of the lapbook  and we will add additional mini-books for each of the countries we study this year.

What I Thought:

I was surprised that I was able to use this unit with 5 of my kids. I appreciated the fact that there were materials included to cover various age-ranges. For instance, there are coloring pages of each of the continents. While working with the older kids, I gave my younger girls (and my 8yr old because she loves to color) the pages and they were so happy to be doing "geography" just like their older siblings. There is also a section on the e-book that is geared toward high-schoolers. So the information in the e-book can easily be customized for various age-ranges. I would say though, that the material fit best with my 10-12yr. old, but with help, my 8yr. old enjoyed doing it too.

Specs at a Glance:

E-Book: Travel the World!—June 2010 Issue
Publisher: The Old Schoolhouse
Price: $7.95
Format: downloadable product

Not sure if this is for you? Well you can check out a sample to see more of this geography resource.

There are 12 supplemental e-book modules, each for each month of the year.

* Every module is filled with interesting information and facts, studying a topic in-depth.
* We look far and wide to find the best additional resources to expand your studies.
* You'll find activity pages, quizzes, and puzzles your kids will beg to work on!
* Your children will enjoy coloring pages designed just for our modules.
* We include copywork to help develop penmanship skills.
* Yummy recipes in every module!



Disclosure: I was given this product for review purposes only. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

We have had soooo much rain lately! One of the many reasons I went with a Square Foot Garden in my backyard is that the ground stays too wet after it rains. I'm so glad my garden is able to drain! Right now the back yard is kind of squishy. Still more rain in the forecast this week. The good thing is that I haven't had to water anything! :)

Well my garden has really been growing since I last posted. My bush beans are getting huge, tomatoes are appearing and my squash, cucumbers, pumpkins are growing like weeds!

This is my garden that's just outside my backyard. It is the first time I've planted anything in it. I am so happy that the plants are really thriving! I didn't have time to prepare the soil as I would have liked, but I did manage to add a couple bags of compost. In this garden I have my raspberry starts, 2 pumpkin plants, 2 zuchinni plants, 2 watermelons and 1 acorn squash. I figure they can all go wild growing everywhere. :)

I can't wait until we are able to pick some of our vegges! Like I mentioned before, on my summer to-do list is to learn how to can some of the tomatoes and green beans. My kids enjoy seeing how much the plants have grown since we've first started our garden.

This week my little girls will be doing some activities to go along with Muncha! Muncha! Muncha. (Supplemental books: In the Garden: Who's Been Here? and Vegetable Garden by Douglas Florian.)



Homeschool Share has a whole lapbooking unit based around Muncha! Muncha!Muncha!. We'll be using the printables found there.

There are also some songs, snack ideas and more found on Here.

We'll also be taking some ideas from Totally Tots: Once Upon a Book-Muncha!Muncha!Muncha!

After we do some fun gardening things this week, I hope to bring the kids to our local musuem where they have a World War II canning and Victory Garden display. We saw part of the garden when they first planted it, but I'm sure it is huge now!

So that's on our list for some Big Summer Fun!  Don't forget to link up your summer plans for the past couple of weeks on our Big Summer Fun Blog Hop. I plan to post this weekly through the summer on Mondays.

Download N Go Unit Study Australia | Review

 

This past week we started our third Download N Go unit study by Amanda Bennett. Download N Go unit studies are one week themed units that have everything planned and ready to go for learning. We had already finished and blogged about Winter Wonders and Birthday Bonanza, and were excited to try out the Australia unit.

Ages: K-4th

Cost: $7.95 per unit, though there are package options available that reduce the price per unit. Since it is a downloadable product, each unit can be reprinted for other siblings to use, or to go back and do again.

Supplies Needed: Paper, notebook, file-folders (or cardstock) and access to a computer.

Preparation: A weekend to print materials, set up the folder and gather books. Once that is done there is virtually no daily prep. needed.

The Australia unit has been our favorite unit so far. My 2nd grade daughter loves the subject matter and the different types of activities that are included. The unit is laid out so that the student can work through everything independently if they are able. It really is Download N Go! My daughter and I work on the unit together. We pull up the PDF file on our computer since Amanda Bennett links directly to the videos, websites and learning activities for the day (I love this feature!! Takes us directly to where we need to go). My daughter also has her notebook open to follow along with any reading and to complete the written portions. Usually there is a combination of videos, websites, notebooking/lapbooking activities, and read-alouds for each day.

Now that we've done a few, I have a certain set-up that I like to do for each unit. The nice thing is that you can use the unit as-is or tweak it to work for you. I have found that my daughter needs two weeks to complete a unit. This is because the unit is not her only curriculum and she also needs my help moving through things (though she is getting better at being able to do more of it independently).

  

First I print everything out. Then I use 5 color pockets and 10 divider tabs. I also 3-hole punch several sheets of cardstock and place them at the front of the folder. We adhere all our lapbooking elements to the cardstock instead of creating a lapbook.

  

Since the original unit is made for a week, I place all the printables listed for that day in the pocket.

  

Then I place two divider tabs for the days it takes me to complete the one day of the unit. I've found that usually I can evenly divide one day's workload into two.

 

Then behind each day tab I made an assignment sheet to help my daughter and I know what activities we need to do each day. Each day my daughter does her two vocabulary words, and we read at least 1-2 books on the topic together. Sometimes we have additional crafts or projects to do along with working though the unit materials. This sheet is not necessary for the unit, but is something I added to help our day go smoother.

Once a unit is completed, I move all the papers from the white working notebook into a big 3" blue notebook that holds all our completed units. You can find a free cover from The Old School House store. Then I reuse the tabs, pockets and notebook for our next download.

The Download N Go units have been a perfect fit for my 2nd grader. Just the other day she commented on how much she liked doing her special units. For the price, the time it saves me in preparing my own units, and the ease of implementation --we will definitely be adding more studies to our year.

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The Australia Download N Go unit was given to me for review purposes. No other compensation was given. All opinions expressed in this post are mine.

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.

Toddler Activities---Little Lapbooks Jungle Puzzle

When I was teaching a preschool co-op this past fall, I came up with a toddler-sized lapbook that works well for little hands. Ours was based on the song, "Who is the King of the Jungle?" I wish I had pictures to show you, but the book is MIA at the moment. We had a lapbook component or activity on each flap. The kids love having their own little books.

Using that idea as a springboard, I've created a jungle puzzle book using the little lapbook format. This would work well as a workbox activity or activity bag activity for younger children.



Jungle Puzzle Page 1
Jungle Puzzle Page 2
Jungle Puzzle Page 3
Jungle Lapbook Instructions
Little Lapbook Instructions

Feel free to print away and use at home! I'll be coming up with some more little lapbook ideas in the upcoming weeks. If you use this format for a project, I'd love to see it and feature it here.

Christmas in July

There are so many people whom I have never met who have helped me with my homeschool journey. They are the people who have created unit studies, lapbooks, forms, link lists etc. and shared freely. So when one site, Homeschool Share , announced their Blast contest, I knew that I wanted to join in order to give back something to the community. Michelle Light and I teamed up to finish a Christmas Around the World Unit and Lapbook. It is huge I tell you, huge! These are the countries that are covered:

Argentina
Australia
England
Ethiopia
France
Israel
Mexico
Philippines
Sweden
Switzerland

There are over 40 printables for this unit! I also created a coloring page to go with each country. I thought that younger children would enjoy creating their own Christmas Around the World coloring book. You can find these files listed within each country from the main unit link: CATW

In addition, there is a file-folder game included:

File Folder Game
Game Cards 1
Game Cards 2
Game Cards 3
Game Cards 4
Instructions

Another way I plan to give back is by joining The Big Curriculum Clean-OUT that Homeschool Creations is hosting. From August 2 - August 15 I will have several curriculum give-aways on my blog, and Homeschool Creations will have the master list of all blogs participating. I have been cleaning my shelves and have found that I have either duplicates of some items or items in good condition that I would like to pass on to others. I know for sure that I'll have something from All About Spelling, Sonlight and SpellQuizzer. I'm still going through my stash so I might have a few more things posted as well.

Finding Clipart for Printables for Personal Use

I am currently working on a big lapbooking project that is taking up some of my blogging time--hence the short updates lately. While working on this project, I'm finding it hard to find clipart! Since my project will be for public use, I must use royalty-free/copywrite free images. But if you are creating a project for your own personal use (always check with the designer's Terms of Use for uses other than personal), digital scrapbooking stores are a great resource.

Digital scrapbooking supplies usually come in several formats:

PSD files --- can only be used with Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements

ABR files --- which are brushes---and to my knowledge can only be used with Adobe Photoshop or Elements.

PNG--can be used in most graphics programs and word processing programs

JPEG --can be used in graphics programs and word processing programs

Here is a better explanation than my little blurb: Digital Products

One of my favorite stores is Designer Digitals. Every Thursday they have "Thrifty Thursday" and today they have 317 items on sale. I've highlighted a couple below that are worth checking out. (Click on the picture for a direct link to the product)

I thought the following products would be great for Nature Journals and notebooking pages. You could even print the butterfly cards out and use them as a matching game or type facts and use as game cards/flashcards.

These are just so stinking adorable! If you want cute clip-art, Mindy has it! She has some cool safari and zoo stickers too. My first thought was that these would be great for toddler/preschool projects. You could use them to create matching games, lapbook pages, counting cards etc.

And of course if you want to learn something new, Cassie Jones has all you need to know in her downloadable lessons. She has several on sale right now.