Apologia Anatomy Jr. Notebooking Journal Giveaway

I am so excited to be going through Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy & Physiology book with my kids this year. We do science in a co-op setting and I will be teaching the K-2nd grade group. Since I’ve got the younger kiddos, I will be coming up with many hands-on activities that go along with the main concepts taught in each chapter but on their level. I plan on posting what we do each week here on my blog. One resource that Apologia has for this class is the notebooking journal. There are two levels, the regular notebooking journal and the junior notebooking journal.

The junior notebooking journal is much like the original Anatomy Notebooking Journal, but is designed for younger students or those with limited writing skills. All the lines are primary writing lines (a dashed line between two solid lines), and there are far fewer than in the original journal.
This junior journal is perfect for:

• Younger students that have not yet mastered handwriting
• Older students that are delayed in handwriting mastery
• Older students with learning disabilities
• Students that are new to written narration

~Apologia Website

I really like the inclusion of coloring pages and the personal person project. If I could have ordered those two components separately, I would have purchased them for my whole K-2 group! This notebook is very well-made and includes notebooking pages and some lapbooking elements.  You can view a couple pages from the Jr. Notebook here (the samples don’t do the journal justice—there are well-done copywork pages, coloring pages too!) Don’t let the word “jr” throw you---I would actually consider this appropriate for grades 2 on up. My group won’t be using this wonderful resource (too much writing for little ones in a co-op setting) but the older groups will be using the original notebooking journal in their classes.

The Giveaway: CLOSED

The Details:
1. Mandatory Entry: Name three bones in your body.
2. Optional entry:
Share on Twitter: “Giveaway from @SpellOutloud Apologia Jr. Notebook http://bit.ly/pqWkdt  "

Please leave a separate comment for each entry.

Winner will receive 1 Apologia Jr. Notebooking Journal.

*Giveaway runs from Aug. 18th – August 27th. 
* U.S. residents only – 18yrs. or older.
*Winner will be drawn by random.org and will be emailed.
*Winner will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be drawn.
*Please leave your email address in a comment or visible on your profile.

Disclosure: Apologia is not affiliated with this review or giveaway. Product will be donated by Spell Outloud. Opinions are my own.

Click here to see the rest of the giveaways for this week!

Signs of Spring: Nature Walk

Today it was such a nice day out that I knew we needed to get out of the house and head to our local garden for a nature walk.

Each kid was armed with their clipboards, pencils, and their spring nature study worksheet. Our mission was to look for signs of spring.

DS pulled up a chair and started sketching. (Another sign of spring here is baseball season!)

We saw lots of flowers blooming on our nature walk.

3yr. old DD did her "homework" too. It cracks me up to see her sitting like this. She took her work seriously.

We spied bushes and trees budding.

Painted turtles sunning. (Here's a toddler turtle unit that I pulled together recently.)

And several geese nesting.

It felt good to get outside, observe God's creation and stretch our legs.

Other Nature Study posts:
Fall 2009 Nature Walk
Fall 2009 Nature Walk Con't
May 2009 Nature Walk
Drawing Nature

Birthday Week

 

This week my DD#2 celebrated her 8th birthday! Goodness I can't believe she is that old already. Her older sister made her a special brownie-bite birthday cake. MMmmmm!

We started working on a special birthday unit last week and are wrapping it up this week. She loved having her school work focus around her. :) This is our second Download-N-Go unit and we are enjoying them immensely. The big perk for me is that besides initial prep work, it is all done for me! DD and I sit down together and work. Since I have everything in one notebook, I decided that instead of making a separate lapbook, we'd just put the lapbook elements in the notebook.

 

She then decorates a piece of cardstock and then adheres the lapbooking elements on the cardstock. That way everything is in one place. This particular unit makes a wonderful keepsake. I'm sure we'll enjoy looking through it over the years.

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.

Wilbur Wright Birthplace Museum

Last week we went to the Wilbur Wright Birthplace Museum in Millville, IN. They held their first homeschooling days event--and I think they were pretty shocked at the turn-out. There were so many homeschoolers from IN and OH who attended. Too bad the weather didn't cooperate though---it rained all day. The bad weather didn't stop the event and the museum did a good job at planning many stations around the campus.


During the even they had 16 stations around the campus. At this station younger children could ride in a plane that moved up and down with water pressure. We also got to tour the house--which even had the Wright Brother's parents and grandmother leading the tour, see the barn and view a couple of demonstrations there, view the museum and so much more.

At one station in the museum, kids could make their own propellers. My son was thrilled to be able to use tools. He stayed at this station for a very long time. I think that this might make a good Christmas gift...scrap wood and tools.

There were also rope making demonstrations, blacksmith, loom weaving and so many instructors willing to share what they knew. I would highly recommend stopping in and seeing this museum. It's a jewel in the middle of corn (fields that is---lol).

Here are some resources on the Wright Brothers:

Wright Brother's Notebooking Page from Homeschool Share.

More Wright Brother's Notebooking Pagesfrom Homeschool Share.

Wright Bro. Notebooking from Currclick

Facts About the Wright Brothers from Enchanted Learning.

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.

Homeschool Share Blast!

 

I was so thrilled when I came across Homeschool Share at the beginning of the year. According to their FAQ,"Homeschool Share (HSS) is a on-line cooperative effort of several homeschooling moms to provide free but quality literature-based unit studies and resources." They have lapbooking,notebooking, unit study ideas and printables available to you for free! Not only that, but most units are based around living books, which is what we use in our homeschool. This website has been such a great resource to me.

Right now they are having their HSS Blast contest, which is a fun way to motivate and reward people for sharing their creations. I plan on giving it a try---if I can think of a topic! LOL!

So I hope you'll check it out and maybe consider submitting something to the site. The official contest rules, sponsors and prizes can be found here: HSS Blast!

Tuesday Tea on Thursday

Last year we started a tradition called Tuesday Tea. I wish I could take the credit for implementing such a clever idea, but I can't. I got the idea from the BraveWriter website. Basically, as a family you read poetry or books over tea. It is an intentional time to create a memory with your family while introducing them to good literature. Last year we did Tuesday Tea pretty faithfully. My mom even gave the kids their own china cups to use. My oldest DD likes to go all out for Tuesday Tea. She makes sure that we have some sort of baked good to eat (by either reminding me to make something or making something herself). She likes to pull out the tablecloth and artfully set the table (or picnic table) for this occasion. She makes it special.

So today since there was nothing to eat for breakfast, I decided to make a double batch of chocolate, chocolate chip muffins. I was not thinking "Tuesday Tea," well because one, we've been hit or miss with it all year long, and two, it was Thursday. The fragrant smell of muffins baking must have reminded DD about this tradition. Before I knew it, the picnic table was set, the muffins were carefully arranged on a plate and a pizza was baking (she decided to make it a tea/lunch). She even brought out the two Shakespeare books I had checked out from the library a month ago but never got to. [My intentions were to start a short 2-week Shakespeare unit--and do this annually-- so that my kids would have exposure and background information for when they had to read the real deal in a couple of years.] You know, I realized today that I missed doing Tuesday Tea, and learning about Shakespeare was kind of fun. I'm going to have to make a better effort to keep the tradition going.

Shakespeare Resources

We are just starting out this unit, so most of these resources I am hoping to get through within the next couple of weeks. If you know of any other good resources, I'd love to hear about them. Here's what I have found so far:

Printables

Shakespeare Timeline by Jimmie

Shakespeare Notebooking pages by Jimmie

Shakespeare Stage by Jimmie

Resource Website:

Shakespeare for kids on Squidoo

Books:

Shakespeare's Storybook: Folk Tales that Inspired the Bard (I think my DD read the whole book today)

Shakespeare for Kids: His Life and Times 21 Activities by Colleen Aagesen & Margie Blumberg

Shakespeare Can Be Fun series