I took a little bit of a break from blogging over the last two months and Noah took a short break from school. With visitors in town (Chris' parents just celebrated their 40th anniversary - Congratulations!) and Chris' deployment fast approaching (which he is now on), we didn't want or need the added pressure of trying to ensure Noah was keeping up with his curriculum schedule. We just kept things rather informal - reading library books in the backyard, doing math problems in our heads while waiting in line at Target, drawing and coloring, field trips, watching "When Animals Attack!" videos on YouTube...you know, the important stuff.
So now we're back to our regularly scheduled programming. I decided early on that we would be year round homeschoolers (for pretty much the same reasons this homeschooling mom outlines
here), so we've been working on a few fun projects in conjunction with our Sonlight curriculum. Lapbooking has been something I've been very interested in further incorporating in Noah's learning (we did one for
Easter) because in breaks down the information into manageable pieces, helps cement ideas and information in their minds, and provides them with a fun, creative record of what they've learned that they can return to anytime they wish. In addition, there are so many great tutorials on lapbooking out there and plenty of Internet sources and templates for various subjects/topics that putting one together is quite easy - in most cases, the real work has already been done for you (you the parent, not your student) and you just need to find the applicable PDF file(s), print, cut, and begin your lapbook!
Noah has been begging me to do a unit study on the
Titanic, but after having completed our pirate unit study (you can read about that adventure
here) so recently, I just wasn't ready to jump into another GIANT project so soon...not with several weeks left to finish in our Sonlight materials. So we reserved a few libraries books, pulled out the manila folders and the pencils and crayons, and went to work on creating a
Titanic lapbook instead. Here's photos of our finished product:
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| Front Cover |
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| First Section |
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| Information on "growlers" and "bergy bits," passengers and crew members about the ship, before and after photos, and important facts about this luxurious ocean liner. |
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| Geography and Class Division |
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The Sinking of the Titanic: A Timeline
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| Second Section |
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| Noah's pretty accurate depiction of the sinking of the Titanic (Notice the people in the water and the sad faces on those aboard the lifeboats. I thought that big, grey scribbly thing in the top, left corner was the smoke monster from Lost - that would explain everything! - but he advised me that it was how the iceberg would have looked at night.) |
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That concludes our
Titanic lapbook. It was both easy to complete and lots of fun - both are qualities that I love in homeschool learnin'. :) In the past, Noah has hated coloring or drawing (he'd rather paint), so these projects help encourage him to express himself in that format without a battle over simply covering coloring or workbook pages in large red or blue scribble and saying, "Done!" I think our next lapbook will probably involve a plant and seed lapbook of some sort, since we've both enjoyed our mini garden in the backyard. Or maybe a lapbook on Donald Trump's toupee...we could cover a lot of subjects on that monstrosity - wind velocity, the power of adhesives, the devolution of humanity - the list goes on.
P.S. Titanic lapbooking materials seen in this post can be found on this webpage.
you are such a great mom and homeschool teacher! it seems to really fit you guys. i think it would me too.. if i just had G. dont' take that the wrong way... i so don't mean that it's easy if you only had one. but the amount of time and energy you put into planning and doing .. i just couldn't do it x3. some people can... and i have friends that i admire that do.. but i know i just couldn't. thankful that we are going to jax for that reason.. the school that the kids are going to is awesome!
ReplyDeletealso, G and Noah.. would be such buds! G is also on a titanic obsession right now. been looking things up.. and read the magic tree house version a few times! lol! plus there are a few Usborne books he has put on his list. one the actual events and the other is a sticker book .. looks cool and informative. just fyi.
Oh Amie...thank you! But it's not x3 (a popular misconception) - not unless you absolutely wanted it to be. I think the biggest obstacle to homeschooling is letting go of the public school mentality about what "school" should be like. If I had more than one child, I know that I wouldn't teach three separate curricula...it just seems like an impossible amount of work to me. Think of the one room schoolhouse - there's reading, writing, and arithmetic...and then there's everything else. The everything else doesn't need to be compartmentalized, since if you teach to your oldest the knowledge will trickle down to your youngest. I see it all the time (my next door neighbor has six kids and uses this method of teaching) and it works really, really well.
ReplyDeleteAs a parent, I think homeschool is not about what you can or can't do - clearly you CAN do it because you're already raising three great children. Homeschool is simply an extension of parenting. If you can parent three kids, you can homeschool three kids...and that's not from me, but out of the mouths of parents who do homeschool multiple children. No matter how great a teacher you can find or how fabulous the school, you will ALWAYS be a better teacher because you're their mom - you know their learning styles, their interests, their capabilities, their unique personalities, and what motivates them; you provide consistency and most of all (at risk of sounding cliche)...you love them. You care more...and that goes a LONG WAY. You will ALWAYS be working for their best interest and putting them first. No matter how talented or special a teacher may be, there's not one in this world who can educate them better than you can. That's a fact. :)
Now *wanting* to is a different matter all together. :) Some parents simply don't want to and that's okay. I don't even bother talking "shop" to those parents that just seem adamantly against the idea of homeschooling their kids. I don't fully understand it, but I do recognize that there's "different strokes for different folks" and I believe that most parents try to do what's in the best interest of their whole family. Homeschooling is simply what works best for our family. :)
well said! and yes i agree. i have at times entertained the idea. at times i think i would really really like it. i love planning activities with the kids, i feel like we do a lot of not official homeschool stuff.. or maybe its just being a mom. maybe it's my educational background. who knows. but it's scary to me as well. for a number of reasons. i know you can appreciate that, thank you. i'm not sure it would be good for our family.. in that i might go crazy! but then at the same time i worry.. what if i'm missing out. i have a number of friends, especially military, that have 3 or 4 kids.. and they homeschool.. and they do it superbly. all with similar.. and different styles. it works for them. they too do what you said about teaching and letting it trickle down.. which is certainly the way to go. i do that now with things we do and adapt it for addie or have G teach something to her. they are 3 years apart so it's a decent gap. then little micah is another 3.5!
Deleteany way, i enjoy reading what you guys are doing. i think your blog is an encouraging way to get to other moms and give us moms who like to "sprinkle in" some homeschool. :)
We're parents...I think a little "crazy" keeps things fun! ;) Ultimately, I think homeschooling is a calling, Amie...it really is. I think for some of us, God truly impresses upon our hearts that it's the right path or choice for our children; I think He calls other parents to follow a different path and we may never know the reasons why there's a distinction between the two families...or even amongst children in the same family. Chris went to public school while his siblings homeschooled and I think Eileen and Dave (his parents) and the kids all made the right choice for each of them. And I say "calling" because that's what it has always felt like for me - I adamantly proclaimed years ago that I would NEVER homeschool my child(ren) because I thought it was such a hair brained idea in the first place. I even fought the idea in my mind up until I bought N's first curriculum because I thought a career outside the home was where I was REALLY meant to be. Yet here I am. ;) I also said the same thing about marrying a man in the military....so God's been really busy in my life showing me that I had NO CLUE about what I was doing. ;) Hahaha!
DeleteThanks for reading and following us on the blog! It really is a ton of fun for the both of us and I feel like I'm learning just as much as he is. For someone who failed with a big capital "F" in the creativity department (I think my sister inherited every ounce of that), it's pushed me in areas that I was absolutely terrified to explore. Who knew?
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