First Week

Whoah! I can't quite believe where the time is going, this week seems to have flown by.
I haven't got nearly as much done planning wise as I'd hope to have done but we've had a busy week all the same.

I spent one afternoon in a hospital after one of my family had an allergic reaction to intravenous iron. Apparently this doesn't happen very often, but everything is back to normal now thank goodness!

My eldest attended her college interview, signed up and paid to do her A levels at college from September this year, if only she'd completed them when they were free :o( She is spending this weekend in Edinburgh because it is her friends 'Hen' party, so no doubt she is having plenty of fun there.

My son is continuing with his free lance work in I.T. and my youngest has spent plenty of time outdoors at the horses and in going to the cinema and catching up with friends.

We did a round trip to see my parents at the beginning of the week, they were both well but my dad has now gone into respite care for a few weeks to give my mum a break so hopefully they can both get the rest and care they need and it's hubby's parents anniversay on Monday so we'll be off to see them over the weekend so busy, busy, busy.

I just hope I can get more planning done next week :o)

French Revolution Lapbook

Well, I thought the last week of term would be spent winding down, finishing off, filing away, getting ready for the long summer hols, oh how wrong I was!
My youngest had watched a film on Marie Antoinette and wanted to know more about her, this of course, led on to the French Revolution, which led onto a lapbook. There's nothing wrong with this, it's great, home ed in action, but it was the last week, I was winding down and filing things away ready for the holidays... sigh!

So here it is the fastest printed out and put together lapbook in history!

Most of the information was from here and here.
We learned about the 3 estates, Marie Antoinette, Louis 16th, Napoleon, The Bastille, The Guillotine, The Tennis Court Oath, The French Flag, Voltaire and Rousseau, The Declaration of Man, The New Constitution of France and general French geography.

The printout lapbook flaps came from here and I really can't thank the person enough because we just wouldn't have been able to do this lapbook without her!

Below is a printed out power point presentation of the Lady who started this whole thing off! I took a photo of the front cover only.

Below is a 'made up' diary of someone who attended the beheading of Louis 16th.

And even though this whole project was 'a rush job' my daughter remembers in detail the things she learned, just goes to show that if the interest is there, they retain the information.

African Lapbook and not a mention of football ;o)

The picture below isn't Africa, it's my daughter's 'Earth' cake, which we gobbled up when she did her Earth Lapbook but luckily I managed to take a photo of it complete with delicious icing. Africa is the green bit on the right hand side so I thought I may as well put it in here :o)

Now I can't remember what these are called but they are sweet pastries deep fried and then covered in honey. They are supposed to be interwoven but they separated when in the fryer but that didn't change the taste any, they were delicious and very sticky. I have the recipe somewhere if anyone wants to try them :o)

Below is my daughter's African mask and Door post she made from an African set we had.

This is the full display with her salt dough map and flags pin pointing the areas we studied, because I learned such a lot too, as always.

The front cover of her lapbook is just a map that I googled and printed out in colour.

At the top is a fact file on Middle Ages Africa,a booklet on my daughter's favourite country (Egypt) and another tribal mask.

Below is an African Slave Trade fact file, an unpainted shield and a habitats booklet.

At the top of the first page is a 'What I want to know' page and under neath is a huge file of animal facts. If you look on the left hand side you'll see that she kew where Africa was, the middle is what she hoped to learn and the right hand side is everything she did learn :o)

Showing some of the animal fact files below:

Predator and Prey sheets and a leaflet on African huts.

Lifecycle of a Mosquito, and fact files on Mosquitoes and a flap about the most leathal killer in Africa which I got about 5 years ago but I can't remember where from.

The map is a booklet with information and other maps underneath showing rivers, mountains and regions of Africa.

My daughter took notes when reading about Nelson Mandela and then typed it up.

Below is a page on David Livingstone's life. We used sticky back velcro on the back of the pictures so that they could stand up for display but be put down in the lapbook, it worked quite well. There is also a museum not far from us all about him called The David Livingstone Centre.

We made Adrinka cloths, cutting up pillow cases and tiedying them and painting on the markings. We threaded them with string on a straw and hung them up for display.

Since completing our lapbook I've found this, it looks really good.

Resources Day, Redundancies and Baby Hamsters

With the impending holidays and the new 'school' year around the corner our area held a home education resources day in a local church. It was really good to meet so many new and interesting families and meet up with the old ones that I already know.

Other home edders spoke on their various methods such as Steiner, Montessori, Structured, Autonomous, Classical and Charlotte Mason. It was great to have an insight into others days but it left me kind of wondering where we fit in...and I'm still wondering ;o)

We found a few books that we fancy for next year but we may have to hold off with any plans of buying them just yet as redundancies are being made at hubby's work over the next few weeks :o(

Once home we found the escaped baby hamster (not sure if I got around to posting about this) sitting outside the cage peering in at it's mum and brothers and sisters, so after a mad dash to catch it, it is now safely back where it belongs :o)

Wild Dogs Lapbook/Notebook

Here is another of my youngest's booklets made using Homeschool Share's FREE Wild Dogs lapbook. My daughter completed this herself as it is her favourite topic, animals!

Below is my daughter's sketch of Molly our dog, she's not really a wild dog, she just acts like one :o)

On the back page is a photo of Molly with her ears down so she looks rather a funny shape

The Earth Lapbook

I didn't mean to neglect my blog for quite so long, I had decided to make a real effort to blog at least a few times a week, but then the sun came out... and I mean really out! The weather here has been fantastic, really hot sunny days and still hot evenings and muggy nights and it's been continuing for a good few weeks now, well until yesterday when it poured down for most of the night.

So here are the latest photos of work done by my youngest. It is not the full content of her studies as she does lots of different things but these are the easiest to 'show off'.

This is two of Hands of a Child lapbooks put together, but my daughter decided to make it into a huge booklet instead. She braided bits of wool together and threaded it in the holes to keep it together. Doing about Earth was a last minute choice as I wanted to do a review of previous work and this fitted the bill perfectly :o)

This cover is self explanatory, I think, as it has a huge photo of the Earth on the front. This pic was 'photoshopped' by my daughter too.

The next page has information about the seasons and the planets. My daughter was well and truly disgusted that Pluto was not on the list of planets because it will always be one according to her :o)

The next phot has a day and night wheel, and a coloured in map of the continents.

More info about continents.

At the top is a Rotation and revolution flaps, a fact book abbout Earth anda booklet about how 'we must take care of our planet'.

Below is a 'layers of the earth' booklet and information on tectonic plates.

A fold out on the layers of the atmosphere...

... and flaps showing why it is so important.

Then she moved onto the soils and rock types and how land forms are made.

Below is a map and fact cards about the 7 Natural Wonders of the World, not to be confused with the Man-made Wonders of course ;o)

Moving onto natural resources and energy, renewable and non renewable.

A flap on biomes and one on magnetism below.

And finally the bodies of water on earth and a flap on the most interesting field of science...

... which of course is Zoology (animals).