Preparation Education

This is the most detailed lapbook that we have done so far. (So get ready for lots of pictures.) The kids were very proud of these lapbooks. It took us several weeks to do these as we read and learned about the explorers.

Here is a list of books that we enjoyed on this subject: Around the World in a Hundred Years, The Usborne Book of Explorers, Eyewitness Books Explorer, Exploration and Conquest by Betsy Maestro,  When Clay Sings,  In My Mother’s House, Who Were the First North Americans?. And of course we continued reading This Country of Ours. Also there was a lot of interesting information that we read from the Time Travelers New World Explorers CD by Amy Pak. I really can’t say enough good about her products. They are outstanding. This is not an exhaustive list of what we read, but it’s all I can remember.

We learned about so many explorers in this unit. I was amazed at how well the kids remembered what we studied. I really think that lapbooking helps especially my daughter remember what we are studying. She is a very hands-on learner.

Here are the lapbooks. The first one is JD Boy’s (age 5). JD Boy’s lapbook components are about half from  Explorers of North America History Pockets and half from Time Travelers New World Explorers.

JD Boy’s cover:

Inside:

His painting of the sea:
His Pirate: (Clothing attaches to pirate with velcro.)

His Explorer Profiles:
Backs of Explorer profiles:

Inside of lapbook with extension up:

His treasure chest:
His navigation tools:
His sea monster pop-up :
His timeline:

To see more detailed pictures of JD Boy’s lapbook, click here.

Whew! That was already a lot of pictures, but there’s more. Here is Zippy’s (age 8) lapbook. It is all from Time Travelers New World Explorers with a few adaptions. They enjoyed being able to do different lapbooks this time. Some things were the same, but they were mostly different. Before, even though they’ve each made their own, they had mostly the same things in them. So it was fun to have two different finished products.

Zippy’s Cover: (We can hardly get it closed.)

Her Timeline:

Her maps: (Each explorer had his own overlay made out of overhead projector sheets. This was the thickest part of her lapbook and was a lot of work.)

Inside with extension opened to display explorer profiles: (The timeline and the maps are tucked into the red pocket.)
Inside of one explorer profile:

Zippy’s Sea Monster pop-up:

To see more pictures of Zippy’s lapbook, click here.

One other fun thing we did with this unit study was to make Inca masks. This idea came from Time Travelers New World Explorers. These were really fun, but took half of a day to make.  They are made out of papier-mâché. We taped down string and aluminum foil to make the shapes on the mask, then the papier-mâché, then once the masks were dry, the kids spray painted them.

Here are the pictures:

JD Boy’s:

Zippy’s:

What a fun project! (And, by the way, my daughter took those pictures of my hands in that gooey stuff. I couldn’t stay out of it!)

More lapbooks! This is the first lapbook that we did for our "official school year". The previous ones we did during our summer vacation.

We are enjoying learning about the beginning of America and we started reading about none other than Christopher Columbus. Some of the books that we enjoyed were: A Picture Book of Christopher Columbus, Animals Christopher Columbus Saw, Columbus by Ingri & Edgar D’Aulaire and You Wouldn’t Want to Sail With Christopher Columbus. We are also reading through a book entitled This Country of Ours by Henrietta Marshall. This covers the discoveries of Leif Eriksson to the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. It is a reprint of a 1917 book and you can find several different reprints of it if you search for it on Google. You can even get it free in an ebook format. We were also fortunate enough to find it in an audiobook format so we often listen to it playing while we are working on our lapbooks. This is really our core book, and we get the others to supplement what we are reading in this one. Some of the above mentioned books we found at our library. Some were unfortunately reserved for the forseeable future (Obviously they are good ones.) so we purchased them.

Now for the lapbooks. The first one is JDboy’s (age 5);

Too see more closeups of Zippy’s minibooks in her Christopher Columbus lapbook, click here.

We got the components for this lapbook from New World Explorers Time Travelor series by Amy Pak and from History Pockets: Explorers of North America. (History Pockets are also in ebook format.) By the way, I love both of these resources. They have very nice illustrations and make great components for lapbooks. I made the minibook on the knots myself. (If I knew how to post pdf’s on my blog, I would, but I’m kind of new to this whole blogging thing and I can’t figure it out. If somebody tells me how, I’ll put it up. I don’t even know how to post it in homeschoolshare.com, so if I figure it out, I’ll do it and put a link.)