Apologia Botany and Astronomy Noetbooking Journals

Apologia is now producing notebooking journals that accompany each of the elementary science books. Both Botany and Astronomy are now available.

These journals are beautiful spiral bound notebooks that will save you time and money. You won't have to print and keep up with your child's notebook pages, buy and maintain page protectors, or purchase and compile binders...everything that makes notebooking time-consuming and labor intensive for mom. Also, your child will adore having their own notebooking journal.

Each of the notebooking journals include:
A daily schedule for those who like to have a plan or would like their children to complete the book on their own
Templates for written narrations, the notebooking activities and experiments
Review Questions
Scripture Copywork, with both print and cursive practice
Reading lists and additional activities, projects, experiments for each lesson
An appendix with beautiful, full-color, lapbook-style Miniature Books
Field Trip Sheets to keep a record field trips
A Final Review with fifty questions the students can answer either orally or in writing to show off all they remember and know at the end of the course.

See the sample pages here:
Botany: https://apologia.securesites.net/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=128

and
Astronomy: https://apologia.securesites.net/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=127

Jeannie is giving away four Astronomy Notebooking Journals and four Botany Notebooking Journals to bloggers who post about this on their site. Visit her blog to learn more about this contest: www.jeanniesjournal.com

First Language Lessons Lapbook- Year One

I created this lapbook to be a companion to First Language Lessons- Year One by Jessie Wise.

Resurrection Eggs Lapbook

This is a cute little lap book for Easter. It centers around Resurrection Eggs. I downloaded it off of this site:http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jaminacema/500883/ . This lady has great lap books!

Happy Easter!

Astronomy Lapbook

Well, we just finished Exploring Creation with Astronomy by Jeannie Fulbright and this is the culmination of our work. I downloaded this lapbook from the Yahoo Group Notebooking2Learn. It is a wonderful lapbook created by Jessica (the moderator of the group). After each chapter in the book, we completed the corresponding mini books. It was a great review of the chapter for the kids.

In case you are interested, here are some great science web sites:

http://www.earthsunmoon.co.uk/

http://www.gamequarium.org/dir/Science_Interactives_for_MO_GLEs/

http://www.jeanniefulbright.com/notebookpages.html

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forkids/kidsclub/flash/games/levelfive/KC_Solar_System.html

http://www.gamequarium.org/dir/SqoolTube_Videos/Science/Space/Moon/Phases_of_the_Moon/moon_phases_4656.html

http://www.gamequarium.org/dir/SqoolTube_Videos/Science/Space/Solar_System/planets_3775.html

http://www.gamequarium.org/dir/SqoolTube_Videos/Science/Space/Solar_System/

http://www.gamequarium.org/dir/SqoolTube_Videos/Science/Space/Space_Exploration/

I hope you enjoy!

Art/Famous Artists Lapbook

Well, this is another idea that I had in the middle of the night when I could not sleep! I hope it is a good one.

There are always so many things that I want to do with the kids but cannot find time for- art is one of them. Theoretically, I was going to do this with the kids over the summer, but the list of things to do over the summer seems to be growing fast! We will see how it works out. Anyway, I used these books that I picked up from the used book store titled Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists. Our library has corresponding DVDs to go with them.

The first section I made a color wheel, light, major artistic movements, and little matchbooks that each focus on a different mode of art. I used an Usborne art book- Children's Book of Art- for this information and Homeschoolshare for the templates.

In the following sections, I highlight a few of the famous artists that I want to focus on (Monet, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Picasso, and Van Gogh). I made little books on the artist, their home country, and famous artwork. I also wanted a place were the kids could try to mimic the artwork itself and where they could do a bit of narration about the art.

Here are a few of the sites that were helpful:

http://www.first-school.ws/activities/artapp/collage.htm -Picasso

http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/elem/elemlessons.html- so many great ideas

http://pixilatedschoolnotes.blogspot.com/2007/09/learning-about-art-van-gogh.html - Van Gogh

http://www.first-school.ws/activities/occasions/vangogh.htm- Sunflower/Van Gogh

http://www.first-school.ws/activities/artapp/impressionism.htm - Monet

http://ebeth.typepad.com/serendipity/2008/07/a-is-for-art.html - Da Vinci

I think we may add to this once we get started because there is so much out there that we can use, but this is a good skeleton to start with.

Explorers Lapbook

I decided to create this lapbook for my kids to do over the summer. I found this great book at the library called Look it up Explorers, and I used it as the basis for my lapbook. I decided to divide the section into the Americas, Africa/Asia/Australia, and Artic/Antarctic.

For each section I made small matchbooks with different explorers on each one. I made my list of explorers using the book above. My intention is for my kids to read the section on each explorer and write important facts about them in the matchbook. Also, for each section I mad a fold up book with a map of their region inside. My plan is to have the kids track the voyages of each explorer in a different color.

As a second thought (and because I had extra room), I decided to include small books on different related topics. For example, with the Americas section I included books on the Incas and Aztecs, Sacajawea, and Scurvy. For Africa, Asia, and Australia I made small books on The Crusades, The Nile River, Confucianism, Buddhism, Easter Island, and The Great Wall of China. For the Artic/Antarctic I included books on Icebergs, Inuit People, Penguins, and Dog Sleds.

The lapbook is not tremendously in depth but for summer work it will do just fine for us. I hope you enjoy.

To help me make this book I used the homeschoolshare site because they have a wide variety of lapbook templates and Google Images. Sorry all of my pictures are sideways!:)

Getting ready for Spring/Botany ideas

This is a great site that will send you sunflower seeds so that you can plant them and hopefully attract bees.
http://www.greatsunflower.org/en

This site has ideas on lessons for Biomes and Ecosystems.
http://www.mbgnet.net/

Wildlflower Coloring Book
http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/uma/urban/

Nature Center Lesson Plans
http://sciencespot.net/Pages/nclessons.html

Botany videos
http://www.gamequarium.org/dir/SqoolTube_Videos/Science/Plants/

Nature Detectives
http://www.naturedetectives.org.uk/club/

For Kids Naturely
http://www.naturely.com/