Our Money Lapbook

This post highlights the money lapbook Grace and I made over the last 2 weeks. This post is also to show GRANDMA that we do real schoolwork around here and not just play with goo, bubbles, and fingerpaint.

A lot of the ideas for this lapbook came from Carisa, at 1+1+1=1. Carisa has also graciously provided printables for many of the elements seen here.
Above, Grace is simply sorting coins. The strip at the left helps her to remember the names and values of each coin. This was the first thing we did as we began to learn about money.
Inside: a very cute money poem-which has been memorized, a little book about coin value, and pet store money cards-used to practice counting coins.

The link to the Pet Store money cards is here.

Gracie can learn to spell using this element of the lapbook.
Hard at work.

This Piggy Bank Coins book can from

Enchanted Learning.

This book I put on the back of the lapbook. It is also from Enchanted learning.

inside the book

Gracie has a hard time remember the value of quarters, so I made up this little chart to help her.

This little fan booklet shows ways that we can save money written on it.

Here Mark and Grace are racing to put the correct amount of money on the pet store cards.

So, Grandma, if you have read this far, real learning does go on in "the little house".

Space lapbook and study part 2

We learned about life in space today, specifically, how astronauts eat and drink in space. Following our lesson, we felt the need to try our own "space eating".

We made vanilla pudding and then very carefully, ate it through a little hole in a ziploc bag. At first it was a quite tricky, but then Grace and Mark got the hang of it.
We also added two new elements to our space lapbook.
I found this flower fold element at Homeschool Helper Online. I will use this template for other lapbooks. It is very cute.
Inside the folds the we wrote down what we wouldn't want to be without if we had to spend some time in space. I like the fact that Mark wouldn't want to leave behind a Wii. The only trouble with this is, is that we don't even have one!

Gracie's first choice, of course, is her green blankie.

We have also been enjoying many books of fiction about space. I made a little booklet to add to our lapbook. Inside, I printed pictures of the covers of the books we have read to be a reminder of the fun books we have discovered.

Stayed tuned for more exciting space fun planned for this week!!

We have blasted off into outer space!

We have been looking upward, into the heavens, and learning about this glorious universe that God has created for us.

This unit is basically for my primary level kids. Mark-8 and Grace-6.

I have posted some of the things we are doing and have done, but I am also looking for you folks to offer any suggestions you might have to enhance our study.

We are all really enjoying this one!

We have been reading factual books to start our study off--learning the basic facts of astronomy. A few weeks ago I purchased this game and after just a little study into our space unit, I am very pleased that both little kids have fun, and success playing this game. It is the perfect learning level for my kindergarter and second grader. It also leads to more exploration as we play the game and learn new facts.

I bought this mobile kit. I haven't opened it yet, since I will use it for our "grand finale" project. Hopefully, it won't be too hard, and the kids themselves will be able to acheive nice results.
Here are a few of our "fact" books that we have been using. I have a couple more requested from my local library such as First Space Encyclopedia-a DK book. Of course, we have also been using a lot of resources from the internet, especially Enchanted Learning, from which I have found a lot of elements for our lapbook.
I have also been having fun searching for space related fiction picture books. If you know of any, please leave a comment. These are so fun. We have been learning to pick out fact from fiction, and been learning about how fun it is to use our imaginations. I want the kids to try and write a outer space story together next week.

And now, the beginnings of Our Space Lapbook.

Many of the elements that we have included in our lapbook came from the website, Space Lapbook on Squidoo. If the ideas didn't come directly from this site, they came from links that were included on this site.

We did make an accordian fold booklet about the phases of the moon. I copied pictures out of the book The Moon to use for this element.

One of the things that everyone enjoyed was finding out what they would weigh on other planets. I found this at Enchanted Learning's Zoom Astonomy ( a wonderful resource.)

The moon phases flip book has also been a big hit. I found it at this site.

I still have more ideas for this lapbook. One important element is the Homeschool share unit about the book Maria's Comet. I am still waiting for this book to arrive from the library.

I am also looking for suggestions as to what else to include in this study. I would love to hear some comments.

Away to Australia

Last week and this week we have embarked on an exciting trip to Australia.
We have begun our journey with the help of a lapbook from Hands of a Child.
I have come to realize that this type of learning is very helpful in the education of Mark and Grace. They definetly learn more, the more "hands on" projects they do.

I have found quite a few wonderful picture books about Australia thanks to the 4Real Learning
ladies. I can always count on them to come up with super reading lists.

Our Australia Books:
REFERENCE
Coral Seas--Roger Steene-Great Barrier Reef
Australia in Pictures--Ann Kerns-reference
Top to Bottom Down Under--Ted Lewin-GREAT reference

PICTURE BOOKS:
Farmer Schultz's Ducks--Thiele
Wombat Stew--Vaughan
Rainbow Bird--Maddern-Aboriginal Folktale
Wombat Divine--Fox-Australian animal nativity
Ernie Dance to the Didgeridoo--Alison Lester
Bright Star--Gary Crew
Flood Fish--Robyn Eversole
Sebastain Lives in a hat
The Old Woman Who Loved to Read
Pumpkin Runner

Chapter Book
The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie--May Gibbs

A Rabbit Trail

I commented to one of the older children recently that we have only been schooling for a few weeks and we had already headed off on a "rabbit trail." This child didn't understand what I meant so I explained and then realized that it would be more easily explained in a visual way.

So, here is what happened in our homeschool from the time we began our Blueberries for Sal
lapbook from Hands of a Child, up to today.(We never know what tomorrow will bring.)

We got started in the usual way, we purchased the book and project pack and started on our trail.

We learned a lot about Maine and blueberries. We studied the New England states, and the coast line and the ocean.
We then went on to the animals of the New England area, concentrating on bears. This caused us to learn about bears around the world, especially Kodiak bears and Polar bears. Two of our favorite animals, which of course live in Alaska.

We happened to see a television show, Into Alaska with Jeff Corwin, which is now one of our favorite shows and I have scheduled our DVR to record all the episodes. We loved the scenes about bears, in fact we loved everything about Alaska.


After discussing Alaska, I ordered all these books from our inter-library loan borrowing system.
These books made us very interested in all the animals of northern North America.


Because we have found we love all the animals of northern North America, I bought these very nice animals from Safari Ltd.


Of course these animals are so nice, we will need some from other parts of the world, maybe the animals of Antactica, because we could always compare the animals of the far north with animals from the far south........or we could learn animal folklore of the Inuit people.....or animal folklore of all native Americans......maybe this is way we don't always finish everything I plan to do in a school year----there are too many rabbits leaving trails around.

The Feast Day of St Anne and St. Joachim

Today, to honor St Anne and St Joachim on their feast day, we added a beautiful novena

to our Blessed Mother Lapbook.

Our Blessed Mother Lapbook Update

At the beginning of May we began our Blessed Mother lapbook. We have been coming up with our own ideas, and as you can see, compared to our first post, here, we have been progressing very nicely.Our cover remains the same. I don't know if we will add words to the cover or not.

On the first fold we have our prayer for the unborn. This was inspired by reading Lovely Lady Dressed in Blue. We discovered this book through Catholic Mosiac by Cay Gibson. I thought the abortion topic in the book might be too much for my 5 and 7 year olds to deal with, but when we finished the book they were so eager to say the rosary for the unborn, I knew that we had certainly NOT made a mistake. We have now adopted an unborn baby in danger of abortion and will continue praying for this baby for the next 9 months.

Our parish church is Our Lady of Good Counsel, so we have added a picture of our church, and underneath that we have put the image of Our Lady of Good Counsel.

I decided to consentrate on four images of Our Lady. Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Lourdes and Our Lady of Grace. ( Our Lady of Grace is in honor of our 5 year old Gracie)
We have incorporated geography into our lapbook by discussing Juan Diego and that he was from Mexico. We also have some questions that need to be divided in groups. If we do what each card says we need to decide if we are saying yes to God or no to God.

Our flip book contains the words to the song "Lady in Blue" We have decorated each page with pictures and stickers and we have also learned to sing the song very well (if I do say so myself).Hopefully, we will keep filling our book up and very soon we will be able to show the final product. Even if we were to stop here, I am very pleased with what the children have learned and the amount of devotion they have developed for Our Blessed Mother.

Our Blessed Mother Lapbook

Being the month of May and the month of Our Blessed Mother, we have begun a lapbook dedicated to Mary. We have only recently discovered lapbooking and the kids and I are certainly enjoying it. Here, Mark is coloring a section of the lapbook dedicated to the unborn. We have spiritually adopted a baby in danger of abortion. We will pray for these babies for nine months.

I made a pocket to hold holy cards dedicated to Our Lady of Grace, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Fatima, and Our Lady of Lourdes. I think these are what we will concentrate on right now. I am sure we will add to them as time goes on.We also attend Our Lady of Good Counsel church. I found a picture of the church and when you turn that picture you see the image of Our Lady of Good Counsel.

The cover is very beautiful with Our Blessed Mother and stickers. In the botton corner Mark made a card of Our Lady of Guadalupe on his own and wanted it on the cover. I am very proud of him. We have many other fun ideas for this lapbook, and will be giving occasional updates.