World War Two

Above is the decorated cover. My daughter used a variety of 'cigarette' cards with WW2 images on them which we bought as part of a pack from one of the many museum's we visited. This turned into a very long unit of study as we read many books, spoke to grandparents about their experiences and visited lots of museums some of which had live re-enactments of various stages of the war. We listened to music from the time period using a cd which came with this book; it even had an air raid warning on it!

Below is the pack which we bought, it has a ration book, identity card and various other things in it which my daughter loves. This led onto a discussion about having identity cards today - mixed feelings here about that topic!

We finished up the whole project with a WW2 meal. Some of the recipes were found in this book.

Unfortunately the camera quality isn't fantastic as this was before she got her new one.
My daughter cooked the whole meal herself and did a good job too. She was very tired afterwards though ;o)

I haven't taken a picture of the menu but you can just about make out Toad in the Hole, Woolton Pie (vegetables with mash on the top) and at the far end of the table is Jelly, Syrup Loaf, and Honey Cakes and a variety of vegetables for those who didn't eat the sausages. Also a dish of M&M's because the soldiers ate them in the trenches because they didn't melt in their hands.

Books we read included:

The Diary of Anne Frank, Carrie's War,
The Blitz, The Singing Tree , Letters from Rifka,

Number the Stars, The Endless Steppe, When Hitler stole Pink Rabbit,

The Dragonfly Pool , Life on the Home Front

We obtained the free teaching pack from Royal British Legion last November, it is available every year, so sign up and get it, it's full of great information specifically aimed at children.

Lots of information here, here and here; also had fun here.

St Patrick's Day

We decided to do this on the spur of the moment and I think it actually turned out pretty well.
The lapbook printouts are from here and the notebooking pages were also free from here

My daughter made a booklet and threaded it together using braided wool. She designed the main logo herself but unfortunately due to my camera work you can't quite make out the leprechaun's hat, or the gold coin or the shillegagh :o(

First page has relevant info on about St Patrick and where he came from and that all business' except restaurants in Ireland are closed for the big day, something which my children think is totally unfair because nothing like that happens here for our saints day :o(

Next page has Ireland's flag on it and info about the country and what the Irish do to celebrate the saint.

Last page has more info on Ireland in a lapbook flap and the 'shillelagh' tradition and the 'pinch' tradition and various legends on St Patrick that my daughter particularly liked.

Edible Colour Wheel

Oooh! I'm blogging again, can't quite believe this, three nights in a row, I'll be done for child neglect if I'm not careful ;o)

Here's our latest art exploit, should have really gone on yesterday's post but never mind it's on now and that's the main thing. Basically it's an edible colour wheel, yum! It is so simple to do and so tasty to eat.

We baked the fairy cakes first and then mixed the icing up using food colouring to make the three primary colours, then mixed these up to make the secondary colours and again to make the tertiary colours, the yukky brown cake in the middle is a mixture of all colours. For a more detailed description of how to do it please go here

Art work

We started this 'school' year with Giotto and Botticello, notebooking pages are below. We found doing our copies of their famous painting a little difficult to say the least but it was good fun trying all the same. We are using The History of Art by A.N.Hodge which we bought from our The Works, our local reduced priced bookstore and Ambleside Online for information.

After a while I decided we needed something a little easier to paint so we concentrated on 20th century artists; this did the job nicely and coincided with our study of World War Two.
Below is our version of a Matisse. This was done by making a patchwork out of scraps of paper and fabric and then cutting out lots of shapes and sticking them on and trying to make it look something like his.

Below is our attempt at a Kandinsky. We used acrylic paints on acrylic paper and made lots of mess and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Below is our take on Van Gogh's 'sunflowers'. We had lots of pistachio shells left over (I collect anything) so we used them to form the petals and used various seeds to form the middle of the flowers. We painted on canvas using acrylic paints and stuck a piece of fabric on top for the vase. I was vacumming the seeds up for days afterwards :o)

Below is our African art that we are currently doing during our African study, more to follow soon I hope.

We got quite attached to Van Gogh and so tried to do our version of 'a starry night'.

Below is the very first painting my youngest did this year, so I thought it deserved a place here, I love it.

Guinea Pig Lapbook

We recently acquired two guinea pigs, I say recently but, actually it was last year now from a rescue centre... yes there really are rescue centre's for Guinea Pigs... so naturally the next thing to do was to complete a lapbook on them.


I eventually found one at hands of a child . I was a little unsure at first because the grade level was below that of my daughter and I feared she might have found it too easy but I shouldn't have worried. She was so excited about doing it that she wanted to get started right away so I handed it over and let her run with it.


I am pleased to say that she finished it in record time, learnt a lot and thoroughly enjoyed every minute and that's what it's all about isn't it? I think we all learnt something from it actually so I need not have worried about the grade levels, after all it doesn't matter what age you are, if you haven't read about guinea pigs before then you will definately learn something new.


Below are the photos of the lapbook, I'll try to get a few shots of the actual guinea pigs later and post them up at the bottom too.

Rivers Lapbook

Above is the cover page of our River lapbook, originally it was covered in green glitter all around the outside but it has almost rubbed off with everyone holding it. We were going to re apply but we were begged not to, by a green fingered hubby ;o)

Above photo has a pull down four part flap with info about how a river erodes, below that one is a two flap about flood plains being good for farming and at the very bottom is a three tab booklet about how a river erodes, deposits and transports it's load.

The above photo shows simple folds with information about rivers flowing from side to side, shapes of river valleys, where waterfalls occur and upland rivers having steep sides. I particularly like all the colourful drawings my daughter did to illustrate each point perfectly.

I love these drawings... so much so that I didn't take a photo of the insides but there is plenty of information in there about river basins, source of a river and about rivers becoming deeper towards their mouth.
Below is a fold down flap about meanders and how they deposit their load on the inside bend to form a slip off slope.

The below photo shows the four ways a river transports it's load.

Above is a very colourful water cycle wheel. The photo below has even more info on rivers and their load.

Above and below are photos of my daughter's booklet about famous rivers, well, the three that she wanted to do about :o) This was done on 'Publisher' on the computer, she designed it herself and chose the colour gradients and pictures and I think she's done a lovely job. She made the clever little flap thing that holds it in place too.

The lapbook folds were from here and the information came from a Letts book which you'll find here. The geography book was very thorough but a little dry for our liking so we supplemented with a horrible geography book which covered more or less the same things but in a much more child friendly way.

Mesopotamia Notebook

Below are the piccies from my daughter's first attempt at Notebooking or at least how we perceive it to be. She enjoyed doing it (and learned alot) as it made a change from lapbooking but all the handwriting got a bit much towards the end.
The notebooking pages were from here



The first written page has a map of the area in the corner and information about the lay of the land and what 'Mesopotamia' means. This info was read in Story of the World and history reference books.

The next page has been devoted to King Sargon; his story is remarkably similar to that of Moses.
Next came Hammurabi and his many laws. The pic is of the code or laws which Hammurabi had carved into a monument which showed him getting the laws from the sun god.


The last page is of Nebuchanezzar, somewhere along the line we 'lost' Ashurbanipal and when we realised this my daughter had had enough of the writing, so she didn't bother ;o)

She didn't want to decorate this page or draw a piccie of him either. I think she was quite relieved when she finished writing it up because obviously she had written rough copies too, so all in all she ended up writing quite alot.

Science Festival

Over the next week or so there is a local science festival that happens each year. So far we have been to see 'Galileo and the Stolen Telescope' and to a workshop were we made our own DNA pendant. The Galileo event was very good. A man, in period costume gave a talk on Galileo and the stars etc and we got the opportunity to play with lenses and see through a telescope and learn how they work.

The DNA pendant workshop was about an hour long. We learned about DNA and why we have it and where it is in our bodies and how to extract it out of the nucleus so that we can actually see it. We ended up with a unique pendent.

Over the coming days we have a lot more science things planned, I only wish it was over a month rather than 10 days because there is so much we want to do, but so little time to fit it all in :o(

Resources for HB lapbook

There's been lots of interest in my daughter's Human Body lapbook so I've been trying to remember where everything came from, not an easy job seen as it was done last year and we've had a clean out of computers and the house, so most of info has gone I'm afraid but what I have I can now share with you all and hope that you have as much fun as we did.

The main lapbook is from Hands of a Child, human body one, not healthy bodies. Most of the downloads and printouts came from Ellen Mchenry site. A fantastic site full of all sorts of science stuff and some of it is free of charge. I used the digestive template for the t shirt in our lapbook as my daughter didn't want to wear the t shirt but it worked just as good on paper as on fabric; the brain hat was from here too and I'm utterly convinced that this is the site were 'Boney Bob' came from but I can't find it anywhere :o(

Below are the books we used: 'How your body works' is very good with the naughty bits... there isn't any, on the other hand the Dorling Kingsley book below that one is very lifelike and detailed, not my daughter's cup of tea at all, too gory for her liking. The HB Action pack was very informative with heaps of activities in it to do.

We also used anything and everything off the internet, as my daughter is a very 'hands on' learner. For more info and a few websites please see my previous post on the hb lapbook. I hope you find this useful and have fun doing yoiur own.