A couple more lapbooks

In Term one we studied Ancient Rome (which is probably one of my favourite periods of history to study.) Charlie loved learning about Ancient Rome, my guess is because of all the wars, weapons, soldiers and gory ways the Romans loved to kill people for entertainment. Pernella wasn't that thrilled about Ancient Rome - she prefers studying animals, reptiles, the earth etc, etc.. I couldn't even get her enthused with how the Romans threw the Christians to the Lions - well it was something to do with animals (big grin!)

So I took a few photos of their completed lapbooks - Here's Josiah with his Ancient Rome lapbook (OK parent's bragging right's, both Charlie and Pernella got an A on this social studies project - there was a lot more involved than just doing the lapbook. The children also watched DVD's, read books, researched on the internet & read parts of the Bible about Ancient Rome also.)



This is Pernella's completed lapbook. (I couldn't find her to take a photo)


This lapbook was from Home School Share (an excellent site filled with free lapbooks that you can do)

The next lapbook the children did was on Mammals (Much more Pernella's style - we did this for science - it covered everything from mammal vocabulary, classifications, carnivores, insect eating etc, etc... I brought this from Hearts and Trees blog





This lapbook goes along nicely with the 101 documentaries on the animal world the two of them watch each month.

(Pictured is Charlie's lapbook on mammals)

Salt Lapbook

Well this is our first lapbook for the year.


(You can't really see it but on the word 'SALT' they sprinkled salt on the wet paint)




I saw it on Hearts and Trees blog as part of a kit, but then saw that Amanda was selling the lapbook by itself... Very well priced, easy to print off, with great instructions on how to do the experiments and put the lapbook together... I was one very happy customer!


lots of cutting out

I thought the Pernella & Charlie would really enjoy doing the salt experiments....
and they did.


Making Coloured Table Salt (this was cool!)


The egg really floated


Making our own salt crystals

This science project was a huge success - and a lot of fun!

Egyptian Masks

The children really enjoyed making these masks as part of their Egyptian lapbook we are currently working on.

VOLCANO LAPBOOK

Our big project for term 3 was on Volcanoes. (The childrens choice, they have a thing for natural disasters - big grin!)

I brought two IMAX DVD’s on volcanoes from ebay
* The eruption of Mount St. Helens and
* Ring of Fire.
Would highly recommend both and we enjoyed watching them.

The books we read about volcanoes were:

Eyewitness – Volcanoes
Volcanoes – facts, stories and activities
Pompeii buried alive
Volcanoes – lets read and find out science
Pompeii and Herculaneum, past and present
Hill of Fire
The House on the Volcano
Geology, Volcanoes – enrichment 4 You e-guide (from Currclick)
National Geographic magazines that we owned had several really great articles on volcanoes from around the world.


Don't you just love their artwork on the front cover of their lapbooks!




What we learnt
.What is a volcano
.Facts about volcanoes
.About the ring of fire
.Inside a volcano
.Types of volcanoes
.Parts of a volcano
.About the earth's plates
.What causes a volcano
.About the earth's crust/what's inside the earth
.How volcanoes were named
.Warning signs of a volcano
.The hazards of an erupting volcano
.Mount Vesuvius eruption
.Mout St Helen's eruption
.Vocabulary used for volcanoes
.Types of rocks from volcanoes
and a few other things besides - big grin!








We got our lapbook templates, maps & pictures from...

Homeschool Share have great resources. We got our Volcano tri-fold from here (thanks Jimmie) also they had lots on volcanoes from the book ‘hill of fire’ (they now even have a volcano lapbook that was posted two days after we finished ours! Oh well!
Enchanted learning
Homeschool Helper
Currclick

Our Pineapple Lapbook...

We kept this lapbook simple and fun to do. We took photos of our excursion to the Packing shed and stuck them into our lapbook with a one-line description of what was in the photo.

The children wrote a brief outline of their visit. I made a couple of basic (very basic) mini books for the children to fill in and stick in their books.
The main focus of this lapbook was on their visit to the packing shed and not on so much detail of the pineapple industry as a whole. We did cover where pineapples grow in Australia and included a labelled map. We looked up how long it takes for pineapples to be ready for harvesting and what needs to happen for the crops to grow well. We included some pictures of pineapples growing in the field and of course we learnt that the botanical name for a pineapple is Ananas Comosus. It was called a pineapple because its shape looked like a pinecone.

Pernella's Lapbook



Charlie's Lapbook




Lapbooking is great for all of us to sit around the table and work on it together. As Pernella is in grade three her lapbooks have more detail and more writing in them then Charlie’s does. (Much to her disgust! Big grin!) I have brought them magazine holders so that they can keep their lapbooks/notebooks in them and so they can look at them anytime. (Which they do often) I find with lapbooking or notebooking they learn more on a chosen subject then if we were just reading from a workbook or textbook and filling in the answers. With a lapbook they are left with a beautiful item of work to display and show around to the family.

Pernella & Charlie's Plant Lapbooks...

This lapbook was a lot of fun to make and we learnt so much about plants, leaves, trees and flowers.
We ended up with so much information that we had to add an extension to the folder.

I think this was such a successful project for them both as it wasn’t just sitting down and learning theory but also lots of hands on things to do. We spent a lot of time outdoors in gardens, national parks and the beach looking at all types of plants. We went to a plant nursery and chose some herb seedlings to grow in flowerpots. The children planted them, watered them and even used them when cooking. We watched nature documentaries and read lots of books. And then of course is the fun part of cutting out, colouring and sticking everything into the folder. Which is then surpassed only by the proud look on their faces showing their work to Dad, Nanny and Grandad.




So a little about what we learnt was photosynthesis, uses for plants, their life cycles, stems, how seeds spread, the roots and habitats of plants. The parts of a flower and plant and what they need to grow. The plant structure, what is a fruit, leaves, seeds, types of plants, parts of plants we eat and a bit more besides.




We used a variety of resources to make this lapbook.
There was a free plant lapbook at mediafire
Lapbook on plants at homeschool helper
Lots of information at Homeschool Share
Enchanted Learning
and the cover page from Notebooking Nook

The Waterhole

The Waterhole by Australian author Graeme Base is one of our all time favourite children’s book to read. It is a very simple story about a group of animals gathering around a waterhole. As the story continues the waterhole begins to shrink and eventually dries up but then the rains come… The book is set in different countries and shows their wildlife. There is even a famous landmark hidden in the background of each page so you know which location the animals are from. For example, on the first page you know that you are in Africa because you can see Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance. Likewise you can see the Taj Mahal on the Indian page and on the Australian page you can see Uluru.

There are frogs in each scene of the book and as the waterhole dries up we see less and less frogs. Frogs are ‘bio-indicators’, which simply means they show the health of our environment where we live.

Both Pernella & Charlie love anything and everything about animals & frogs so I decided that the Waterhole would make a great science, social study, art and geography lesson for term one.



We got a A4 excercise book, photocopied the front cover of the Waterhole and stuck it on the front. Covered it with clear contact.



After learning about the author/illustrator we spent a lot of time studying about frogs. We learnt about their life-cycle, different species, parts of a frog, their diet, habitats, classification and predators. When we first started this study it was our rainy season and the children got to collect frog sporn in our garden. We made a pond and watched the tadpoles hatch into frogs We documented everything and took photos and stuck them in our book.




We then next spent time exploring the different countries in the book. We learnt where they were on the map, a little bit about their culture, famous landmarks and the children chose a animal from the region to study.





We also looked at the rivers and streams around the world, the ecosystem, about rain and the water cycle and the extinction of animals and reptiles. We went to the museum to see their rainforest display and we did a lot of nature walks outside looking for frogs. We even found a frog at the beach. We watched DVD's on the different animals around the world and read lots of books. We also looked in newspapers to find any interesting articles on wildlife.

The children really enjoyed doing this study and putting their books together. We all learnt so much and it didn't feel like school work at all - big grin...

Some great resources we used were:
Homeschool Share
Homeschool Helper
National Geographic kids
World Atlas
Enchanted Learning
Printable Maps