Viking Lapbooks

Our viking lapbooks created by us!

Max is putting the front cover together on a lap book we designed ourselves using bits and pieces of other lap books and images we found online or from Cd's we purchased.

This cover is made by TJ. All the covers were made by cutting off the bottom portion of the front flaps to make the sail. The viking hull and oars we adapted from this make-it-yourself viking boat pattern. We printed it on card stock and glued down only the bottom and the side edges so that it remained sort of a shallow pocket for the viking men to sit inside. The shields came from the viking boat we made in passport to the Middle ages ship last week, and the viking sailor is a coloring page reduced to 40 percent when printed.

Max added the water below the boat on his lap book and TJ took his idea and made water on his as well. They each did the title a little differently.

Max's cover includes two cleverly hidden pockets to hide hidden treasure he says.

And Zak added three extra vikings to his ship and used the black and yellow colors to make it look more fierce.

Detail of Tj's Viking.

Zak's viking men and viking mask.

TJ is working on his map under the table. :)

What's on the inside of TJ's Lapbook? 

(the tan dragon that sort of hold the map down is also under the long house. The long house is glued down on top of the dragon portion underneath.)

The vikings are mostly known for their ship building, raiding and sailing so the map shows the travels of the vikings, and the larger flip book on the right describes all the things vikings were most know for. The smaller flip book details things the vikings were less know for. Thus if you lift the map you will see more of those things.

When the map is lifted up there are more items; the viking alphabet, two recipe cards for barley bread and beef stew, which slip down into the long house.

The long house doors open and inside are viking men and women doing every day things. 

Zak is working on his long house under the table too!

On the underside of the viking trading map is the term viking defined. and more info about who the vikings were.

We made viking masks and the boys pretended to 'go a viking'

This lap book was the culmination of our month long look at the vikings. Over the months time we have been reading many books and listening to a few audios and seeing some really great documentaries, they are as follows:

Viking Tales Audio

Eirik the red's Saga Audio

Viking Adventure

The Vikings by Janeway 

(very similar to Lief the Lucky but a more complex story)

Lief the Lucky

Rolf and the Viking Bow

Links to more Viking lap book ideas

Dynamic 2 moms

Squidoo lens History of theVikings for Kids

Viking Adventure lap book

Who were the Vikings BBC documentary 1 of 3

Viking Traders BBC documentary 2 of 3

The end of the Vikings BBC documentary 3 of 3

The Real Vikings by the History Channel

Viking Voyages board game you remake yourself

Passport to the Middle Ages

TJ's Viking longboat one of the souvenir crafts from stop #21.

TJ painting his viking longboat sail.

The back end of Zak's Viking longboat.

Max's Viking longboat dry docked on his loft bed self.

Front view of TJ's Viking long boat.

A close up of Zak's jousting mini book. The arm broke off but it should move up and down with a brad hinge and the knights face each other and can be slid forward to simulate a joust.

The inside of the jousting mini book

Max working on his jousting mini book.

Max's complete jousting mini book.

TJ playing the Fox and the geese game with Dad.

We attached the fox and geese prints to old othello game pieces so they played better on the board. Looks easy but it is a very challenging game for the geese.

TJ's own coat of arms. We used this book for ideas and then scanned some pages so the boys could trace them via the window light. They first selected what shape of shield thy wanted. Then they selected a motto, we decided not to try and put it in latin. Then they added animals and scrolls etc as they wanted by tracing them onto their paper using the sunlight as a light box.

Max's Coat of arms.

Following are excerpts from their medieval newspaper, templates provided by Passport tot eh Middle Ages.

Pageboy advertisement by Max.

Upswitch Armory advertisement by Max.

Jousting Match news article and Viking long ship drawing by Max.

Viking Longship illustration by TJ

News article and accompanying picture by Zak.

New Castle Article and picture by TJ.

Zak's coloring page and Viking souvenir craft card.

TJ's Rooms of a Castle overlay.

The castle without the overlay.

Lifting the overlay.

The boys have been getting postcards from historical figures like Alfred the Great and the Viking chief Rollo. They then illustrate the picture for the postcard. This is Max's postcard rack.

All these wonderful hands on activities are from Passport to the Middle Ages.

Thanks for stopping in. 

:)

On Their Own

Via Flicker

This spring we were not at home, so homeschool took on an 'on-the-road,' loose sort of a look. I loved it! We did spontaneous things and less seat work. We were in the outdoors more (when it wasn't raining) which was therapeutic for us all. This kind of change in schedule satisfied the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants longings I have when I do execute a well planned day. Well this spring I got my freedom, for a time, and actually some good things came out of it.

I am posting today about one activity that I initiated but became kid driven as we went along. It began with a bird book and time to look outside. I purchased this beginning bird watchers book with stickers. I know it isn't a "real" nature journal like we usually try to accomplish at home, but it did accomplish something our 'real' nature journal making has not yet done....my boys asked to do it and got out their books on their own to do it.

My guess is that they felt confident that they could wield this tool of observation and the 'real' nature journal entries we have been doing are still beyond them skill wise. The skill they have not yet acquired with ease is drawing and handwriting. Just about the entire 'real' nature journal entry activity is either drawing or handwriting. They will most likely catch on later as their fine motor skills develop but for now the sticker book was just within their grasp so they used it. You know something is working because your children will use again and again. They will drain it to the dregs if it is the right tool for them.

They were not allowed to simply put the stickers onto the birds as they liked it was a unsaid rule that they must have seen the bird and had someone witness that they saw it. SO they began a sort of guy like competition to see who can spot more birds than the other. Typical. I love it when their 'boyness' really accelerates their learning because there are so many times when the 'schoolish' type things simply do not appeal to boys and thus make it seem they are just not so bright. But now in the wild they can hunt down birds and add a sticker and they could do it faster than the next guy. Enthralling.

They would often beg for help to fill out the info about the birds because THEY WANTED TO KNOW more about the bird they had found. They had developed a connection or relation to the birds.  It was fun for them to add in the sticker, learn more about the bird they saw and of course be first. I know this is not to be encouraged in a CM approach but I have yet found it detrimental to learning. There needs to be obvious sportsmanship rules but all in all I have found that good competition is healthy for boys. Also my boys are all within 1 1/2 years of each other with the oldest being 9 and the twins being 7 so there is room to spur one another on and it is truly a fair fight to the finish.

One activity that we did near the beginning turned out well indeed. I purchased a high quality molding clay in lots of fun bright colors. It is the kind of clay that never dries so you can reuse it again and again. It just gets better with time. However looking back maybe it would have worked better had we used an oven bake clay like FIMO because then they could have kept each bird they made.

We created several clay models of our birds but these are the only pics that survived some how. RATS! At first we tried going 3-D but that wasn't happening so the boys ended up making 2-D relief like images of the blue jays they saw in the park. The colors were very rewarding to work with and the way the clay moves in your hands makes working with it for beginners simple and successful. We still have the bags of clay at my mom's house which we can use again for another project. I love it how a simple resource like clay can become so many things over time.

Via Tumbler

We don't aways do education on the road or away from home and in the way we did this Spring but it worked for us for that season of the year. I have many happy memories of the lessons we did and the things we learned. It was truly relaxing. Maybe we can learn something from it too and let our children wiled appropriate tools so they can really do the learning for themselves without us grown ups always telling them how to do it.

Week Twenty Wrap-Up

Project Day, how it came about. This is something we started new this year, it is a way to have time for projects or lessons that take more than 20-30 min. to accomplish. Last year, I noticed that in many subjects the lessons the boys would benefit most from would involve lessons that took time. Lessons that gave them the space to think, create and then execute. I was very inspired by the bloggers Kim, Sara, and Tracy over at four& twenty and how they made this extra space in  their school days for creativity. After ruminating on the ideas from their blog posts I bought Kim's book Habits of Being. Inspired more I also bought one of their literature guides for Douglas Florian's books of poems. I came up with the idea of adding a day to our 5 day school week to practice doing this type of lesson. So our sixth day of the week has been project day ever since. Recently I found this fun book called Project Based Education which I have only just begun to read through, but so far I have found it useful to provide many very practical ideas of how to implement projects in any style of homeschool of classroom setting you have. I like this idea for I think structure is important for creativity and it is often misunderstood that creativity needs no limits however the limits appropriately set will allow a young creative person to really soar. It also prepares students to develop more skills towards a self education; meaning the child does the work of learning. On our project days I am handing to them little by little the reins of structures and let them make more decisions and have more time to follow them through.

This week we spent a good twenty minutes developing the schedule for the day. I gave them the subjects, some of which they had already helped me decide on, written on strips of green paper. I described what each lesson entailed so they could see how long or short each one was. They each were given a turn to arrange the subjects how they thought the day would go best, and in an orderly fashion the other two gave feedback. Responding in an "orderly" fashion was the difficult part of the exercise. (smile) In this way we talked through the benefits and disadvantages of each schedule. I was pleased to see they were already in a habit to arrange the work so that the hard work would be done first and then the easier lessons would follow. They also already knew it was best to stagger the work with hard lesson next to easy lessons so that they did not tire before the work was done. All in all it was a good exercise for them to think it all through. Here is the schedule they came up with and followed.

In the end the day went much smoother and quicker because the boys had a mental picture of how it would go, they had a say in the plan, and they owned it. The ownership aspect for them is very motivating, and I have seen them thrive knowing they have this amount of control over their education. As they grow and use it wisely they will be given more.

Bible: We are continuing our reading from 1st Peter over breakfast.

Stories of Faith: Martyrs of the Catacombs: A Tale of Ancient Rome Audio book.

Mathematics: Everyday Number Stories by Emma Serl.

Aesop Copy Work:

Ancient Greek History: D'Aulier's Book of Greek Myths

Greek Myth Literature Pockests by Evan Moor

Stickers from DK The Ultimate Greece & Rome Sticker Book

We added Mt. Olympus (the home of the gods) to our map.

Science the Study of Insects: The Tale of Kiddie Katydid by Arthur Scott Bailey

Nature Notebook:

Ha ha, Max drew his own thumb!

Geography: Our Little Roman Cousin from Long Ago

Language Arts: We completed our dictation exercise (PLL Lesson #47) and next week we will learning how to write letter. Looks like fun!

Reading Practice: Elson Reader Book Three. As we are getting closer to the end of this reader my mind began to think about what would be next. Although we do own book four it seemed like perhaps the boys would like to pick out a real book of their own to read. I proposed this idea to them and they were very enthusiastic! yeah! So soon the boys will get to have their pick. I am so curious what they will chose. I will put a bottom limit on their choice, nothing easier than this for example but I'll let them shoot as high as they want to. TJ already has a keen interest in Rosemary Sutcliff's book Outcast because he loves the character Beric so much. He is willing to read a page a day until he finishes it. We'll see what the other two decide.

Bedtime Read Aloud: Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff

Latin: Chapter 7 of Minimus we are working on reading and translating the dialogue entitled "Do as You're Told!" our grammar points this chapter include the command form of verbs.

Art: Ode to Matisse Mural still in progress.

Music: We have been enjoying Opal Wheeler's book about Robert Schuman.

I hope your week was as delightful as was ours!