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

St. Patrick Lapbook

We have arrived at the Story of Saint Patrick in our history readings so even though it isn't St. Patricks day (march 17th) we idd a lapbook about Saint Patrick and some of the ideas that go along with the March 17th celebration.

We read about him from Our Island Saints by Amy Steedman, and did the mini books etc. I apologize for losing many of the links to the things we used in our book, if I find them I'll update this post.

Cover image 

St. Patrick note booking page

illumination pocket

The project that this image came from was not really designed to be a pocket but we made one by glueing the illumination image to another sheet of card stock and folding down the edges to make the flaps for our pocket. Much sturdier construction this way.

I lost the link to this vintage St. Patrick's Day greeting Card image. So sorry. Inside the boys wrote, "Have a Happy St. Patrick's Day."

I lost the link for the four leaf clover flip book. Inside the boys wrote down a sin or too they were thankful Jesus has given them power to overcome.

I lost the link for the cross mini book. Sorry. Inside we wrote down the facts about St. Patrick and his building of churches in Ireland. This came form our reading about him in Our Island Saints.

shamrock shape

twirling fairy 

The real Saint Patrick story

Symbols of St. Patrick's Day flip book

Zak is making his fairy coin box

At the end our project day we did a short treasure hunt for fairy gold.

Treasure hunt with Limerick clues and fairy gold

limerick 1

limerick 2

limerick 3

limerick 4

pot of gold image

Enjoy!

Week Five Wrap-Up

The weather is cooler this week now that fall is finally decided to show up. We still have some green leaves on the trees making for some lovely shade in our garden which I adore. Before it gets too cold I still plan more outdoor dinners and time to take naps on the trampoline...makes for a great hammock!

We are just about finished reading The Blessed Child by Ted Dekkar and Bill Bright. It will be sad to end yet another heartwarming story to move on to the next one. We all have enjoyed this glimpse into God's miraculous nature that The Blessed child has revealed.

We are also completing our memorization of skip count song X6 about the monkey's in the jungle and will be learning X7 next week. I have been implementing more living math methods in our approach towards multiplication. So now that we have arrived at the X6 tables I am slowing down on how much new stuff I am presenting them to be sure they are really understanding the why of the table.

“The child may learn the multiplication-table and do a subtraction sum without any insight into the rationale of either. He may even become a good arithmetician, applying rules aptly, without seeing the reason of them; but arithmetic becomes an elementary mathematical training only in so far as the reason why of every process is clear to the child. 2+2=4, is a self-evident fact, admitting of little demonstration; but 4x7=28 may be proved." (Vol. 1 pp. 255, 256) 

So next week I'll explain how we did this. In the handbook Mathematics: An Instrument for Living Teaching gives some guide lines:

“To help the children to see the rationale of the multiplication table, they at first construct each one for themselves with the teacher’s assistance, e.g., suppose it were 4 times, the teacher begins ‘I write down one 4 on the board with a small 1 above it, to show how many fours I have. Then I write down another four, how many have I?’ ‘Two.’ ‘How much have I now, two fours that is?’ ‘Eight.’ Put eight down underneath the second 4. Now write down another four, we have three fours or 12, similarly four fours or 16, five fours or 20, and so on to the end of the table, 12 fours or 48, until the whole table stands: 

(Stephens, 1911, p. 10). 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

equals
4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48

They will see ( I trust) how the skip counting helps with the table and how multiplication is a simple way to do addition.

Much of my time this week has been spent preparing a lapbook centered around The Iliad by Homer. We have been reading Rosemary Sutcliff's version (Black ships Before Troy) of this epic poem which is actually written in a narrative form. On our next pass through this fascinating portion of history we will read the poem written by Homer.

To prepare the lapbook I print off the pages, cut them out and assemble parts that would be time consuming and irrelevant to the point of the book. Some things by doing them the boys will learn more about the story, other things are just busy work, I save them that. So once the mini books are ready I put them into a plastic pouch and save them for the boys. This time I fashioned the lap book to fit into our spiral bound scrapbook.

Just a glimpse of the mini books all out of the pocket.

The boys spent time coloring the pieces that made up the two front covers before we pasted them onto the cover and then into the spiral bound book. We limited the colors used to just browns and yellows to see how the colors will tie the whole lapbook together visually. This was an unpopular suggestion on my part and though the boys did it, they asked that they could decide on the colors next time. So though it looks great this way it is theirs and next time you will see the colors they choose.

Here is Zak's completed covers pasted in the notebook. We now have a lapbook in a note book. I am not sure if we are lapbooking or notebooking but probably the former rather than the latter. Either way it is working rather well. :)

We did put the mini books together and into place, but we have not yet written in them, colored them or done any sort of real study using them. In the end we will have understood better who killed who, who fought with the Trojans and who fought with the Greeks. We will know the family tree of the Greek gods and which gods played a part in this story. And last put the story on the map.

More entries made this week in the Aesop copywork book. Zak really caught onto this assignment and though I require only one fable a day he has been doing two or three hoping to get more and more treats for good handwriting. Very cute!

The boys are all sad that the Burgess Bird Book is drawing to a close. They are counting the pages that are left and savoring them. I suggested we read the book again, for there are so many things you can do to compliment this book and dig a little deeper into the information he so wonderfully presents about birds. I am strongly considering this but have not yet decided. What would you do? The boys were intrigued. I mean really, who said you can only read a book once? And then there are the issues brought up in my mind regarding illustrations and CM's methods. I like this quote from this article and am pondering just what part adding more to the reading of the story will play in their minds.

Our senses, it seems to me, are some of the tools we have for taking in information, but they are not the primary tools for learning.  This is a major problem in much of the world of education today.  There is much talk about learning styles, and I suppose it is helpful to know one’s learning style, but the fact is, taking information in is not the same as processing that information, or, as Mason said, “labouring with the mind.”   This is the step that many children never get to take in their learning process.  This is the purpose of narration, which Mason called “the act of knowing” (p. 17).  In fact, we may have preferences as to which sense we prefer to take in information (visually, kinesthetically, aurally, tactically, or odoriferously), but this is not the same as owning new information.  Mason says, “We trust much to pictures, lantern slides, cinematograph displays; but without labour there is no profit.” 

I'll tell you what I came up with next week. 

Another thing we completed this week: Memorized the Poem "A Secret." We did it the same we memorized the first poem, with drawing pictures, copywork and lots of reading and repetition. Now we are off to do some dictation the boy's favorite exercises. No really, it is!

We are getting to the end of Toad Triumphant too. This week seemed to be a week of many endings.  Thus I am soooo excited for next week which will be full of beginnings. :)

We veered away from the dialogues this week to look into the grammar of Latin. It was just a peek. I printed off cards with nouns (animals), cards with adjectives. The first day we simply played concentration with the animals to learn their names in latin.

On the second day we together matched the adjectives with the animals according to their gender. SImply collectively making up funny sentences with just the nouns and adjectives.

Then on the third day I hand printed two cards for each with the verbs we know thus far, erit (will be) and est (is). They first took the pile of adjectives and separated the masculine ones from the feminine ones, then I gave them each an animal and they created sentences matching the gender of the noun with the gender of the adjective. Then they read out their sentence in Latin and translated it to us using the words to help sheet below.

The cards for the animals and the adjectives were from the Minimus Teacher's guide, but the Words to Help sheet I made myself in Publisher.

To enhance the Klee inspired 3-D cities we painted last week we added some black lines, wow, they look so much better. These are Max's paintings.

Mostly this week we have been working on drawing and coloring 'inchies.' of Paul Klee's art works. Each square is 2 inches by 2 inches. We plan to make twelve in all and so far the boys have made 6 each, so we are halfway there.

Last week we finished reading A Day with Tchaikovsky so this week we listened to Tchiakovsky Comes to America a production by Classical Kids. Now onto a long look at the NutCracker Ballet. The boys will love this!

Lastly this week we went indoors to add an entry into our nature notebooks. Is wasn't because the weather was bad, but that it seemed a good time to add in a little skill training to our nature observation. We used basic contour drawings to develop the eye and train the coordination between what you see and what you draw. 

We did go out to get something to draw and then we drew the contour or outside edges of the specimen we selected. Then on another sheet of paper we tried a blind contour drawing looking only at the specimen and not at our papers. I did it first to show them how silly it will look and so they would not be afraid to just give it a go. This technique develops the best hand eye coordination needed for drawing. It was hilarious, fun and relaxed us all. Then they drew their specimen having had a good look at it now adding in as many details as we could see.

Hope your week was a good one too!

Week Two Wrap-Up

I can't say enough about our new schedule...I just LOVE IT! We start at 11am do four lessons, break for lunch and then do four more lessons ending at 3pm or 4pm depending on the day. What I love most is having the time in the morning to get a lot done before we begin. By that time I have accomplished something or often many things and I am feeling I am ready for the boys. I am prepared to focus on them, be more patient, more relaxed and thus a better teacher and mom. I also LOVE having lunch right in the middle of the lessons to give us all a mental and emotional break. Seems to take the weight off of the day and allows us time to talk during the meal about things we have learned in the lessons. Often as they linger over the meal I read the next lesson while they are eating the last morsels of food. Ahh multi-tasking I love it too!!

This week we have been reading through Daniel. My dh does this over breakfast. We have heard the stories before many times but still I am amazed at Daniel's trust in God up to the last almost fatal moment. I would have cried "unfair!" "Enough!" when the satraps slandered him and plotted to usurp him even to kill him. But Daniel believed God would save him even though he was being thrown into a den of hungry lions. Amazing. How far would you let God seemingly ruin your life before you stopped trusting He is good enough to save you?

First lesson of the day is reading from Buchko. I read about two chapters before the 30 minutes for the lesson is up and we are moving along to math. (I changed the order of our lesson this week to to coincide better with my planner.) We are loving to hear how Bruce is telling the stone aged indians about the gospel. How he puts it into terms and ideas the indians can understand. I simply love the idea of tying my hammock into God and getting in with both feet. This is more challenging then it seems when you realize the Motilone indians he is speaking to sleep in hammocks 25 feet off the ground. Yikes! That takes a bit of trust to tie in way up there. It is also a way they invite you to be part of them. If a girl likes a boy she ties her hammock next to his and they are then officially married. Hearing ideas we know so well put into new terms makes it more clear to us. The boys all heartily agreed tying their hammocks  into God is a wonderful idea!

We are having a lot of fun with the skip counting songs in math. We moved on to the X3 and X4 songs this week. The X4 song is a country western tune which really resonates with my bluegrass heart. Yippe i kie aaaay we skip count every day! In addition I introduced the boys to Sal from Khan Academy. (Thanks Debbie for the pointer) He has been explaining to them about what Multiplication is and what a multiplication table is. Then we made our own tables this week. Max especially liked it. We played An old style version of Multiplication Bingo that I found at the Goodwill this summer for our game-activity-fun day.

After Math we are reading from the Story of the Greeks and preparing for our Saturday Scrapbook day. The boys want to scrapbook about the Greek Olympics. So we will be working on that theme for a few weeks. We did get our books started last Saturday, see Max's inside cover and title page below.

We are using a basic wire bound sketch book for our scrapbook. The map on the cover came from Homeschool in the woods packet of old world maps. The title page is from Notebooking Pages packet of Ancient Times pages. On the other cover of the book we plan to add the old world style map for Ancient Rome. Thus the book will open left to right for Ancient Greece and right to left for Ancient Rome. Somewhere in the middle they will meet. We did more this week preparing things for the pages on the olympics but the boys wanted me to wait to show you it all when they have it done. So I will let it remain a mystery until then.

Also last week on our 6th day/fun day we did our first nature notebook entry. Using Keeping a Nature Journal by Clare Leslie Walker I introduced the boys to the scientific aspect of nature hikes/walks...recording your observations. Following Clare's advice from Chapter 2 "Beginning Your Journal" we entered our daily observations. There are eight of them noted on page 22:

1. Name
2. Date
3. Place
4. Time
5. Weather
6. First Impressions
7. Wind direction
8. Cloud Patterns

Then we drew something we loved:

Before we do an entry I read a little from her book that I think would help them form an idea about what a nature journal can be or  something that would inspire them. I love this quote form the book (Zak did too!)

"Think of a nature journal as a treasure hunt. Ask yourself, "what's out there beyond  the doorstep? What treasures will I find?" You will be amazed when you actually get outside at all the things there are to draw or write about." - Clare Walker Leslie

Following a reading from the Stories from Ancient Greece we  continue our reading through the Burgess Bird Book. We have met the fly catchers and the woodpeckers, the cow bird and many other friends of Peter Rabbit in the Old Orchard. There happens to be copious resources to go along with this book, but here are three of my favorite ones:

Audio version
Free Printables that go well with the stories
Burgess Book Companion Web site

I am however going to keep our reading simple and just read and look up birds in resources books I mentioned last week. Having said that I did decide to add one more resource, The Handbook of Nature Study. It was a DUH! moment when I realized I had the text on my shelf and the questions Max was asking could easily be answered by reading there. SO we are reading more from that book next week.

Lunch Break!!!

After eating is a Language Arts lesson or two. We have been working through a dictation lesson this week from Primary Language Lessons. The word SQUIRRELS was hard for the boys to master so we wrote the word over many times and did dictation a few days in a row on the same sentence until they got it! Boy were they proud! In the same book, PLL, we did an short lesson on when to use "is" or "are." They also wrote a short story about squirrels using "is" and "are" in their composition notebooks (which we picked up at Walmart for cheap). Take a look...

I recommend getting the teacher's edition to supplement the student text of PLL as it has some wonderful ideas for how to implement and further use the lessons. When it sugested writing a story or drawing a picture about squirrels I knew that would be  good switch from dictation. It also allowed them to use the word they had mastered their own way. I addition to the teacher's guide, I recommend either Living books curriculum layout workbook or Cynce's because it makes doing the lessons so much easier having places already set out to write your answers.

Here is Max's drawing from the poem "If I knew" (Where the box where the smiles were kept)

I enjoyed hearing the boys read out loud to me from Elson Reader book Three and narrate the story this week. They chose to go through this series last year and they still love it. I love it too, as the stories they read to me are good ones and though not modern they have timeless values woven into them which is refreshing. So I have them read two or three pages for me this fall. We were reading 5 to 7 this summer from Peter and Polly in Summer, but the words in these short stories are bigger, and more challenging to sound out. I don't want to tire them out, I want them to practice, so we read what they can get done in about 15-20 minutes. So far it has worked out very well. The truth be told...I don't know if I could do much more than that. Listening to three emerging readers for one hour is about my limit too!

To complete L.A. for the day we have one more lesson. Just before bed we are reading  The Wind in the Willows. Oh how I love this book! It is chocolate to the ears. To supplement my own readings I also play an audio version of the  chapters I have already read. (They just can't get enough) The audio version we have I picked up a garage sale for next to nothing. It is part of a set called The Children's Classic Library. It includes more than Wind in the Willows, it also contains  40 other classic stories like Treasure Island, Pinocchio and Heidi. I love that they are unabridged and dramatized. Gives my throat a break and they get their fill of good literature. Win win!

Onto Lain! We have made some good progress with our dialogue "meet the family" in the Minimus  Latin curriculum we are using this year. We must have listened to the dialogue about 7 times before the boys were able to read it all the way through making no mistakes and understanding the dialogue. Each time we listened to the dialogue more details became clear. Then each one was given a chance to read it out loud while the others listened. Once that was complete, we took about half of the vocab words at a time and wrote them onto 3 X 5 cards. The latin they wrote on the front and a picture of the word or the english word on the back. These flash cards that they are making for themselves was an idea from the teacher's manual. Take a look at Max's card for Feles (cat).

Once they had completed all of the vocab words we played a sort of spelling bee type of game to reinforce them. They stood up together in a line and I gave them first the latin and they gave me the english, then I gave them the english and they would give me the latin. If they failed at a word they sat down and the last one standing was the winner. We played several times and all won in the end. Today (Thursday) we translated a birthday invitation which was found at Vindolanda in an excavation.

You know a boy loves a book when he puts his legos aside just to listen. Well that is what they do when I bring out The Story of Peter Tchaikovsky by Opal Wheeler. Zak said, "I just love that horse boy."

Our look at Paul Klee this week has resulted in some fun drawings and paintings of cats.

Tj is painting a 'the cat head' based upon the coloring page we did last week called "The Head of Man."

Here is Max working on his 'cat head.' We began the drawing by tracing a bowl form the kitchen. Having the circle thus define the space made the rest of the drawing/painting a piece of cake.

We then morphed from "The Head of Man" to "The Cat head" to Klee's "Cat and Bird". There is a great site we used to guide in drawing this. You can check it out here.

Can you find their signature in the drawing? We used oil pastels to color these.

Zak said this is chocolate cat! And so it is.  I hope it is a chocolate ice cream cat!

That is all for this week. I hope you are having a good one too.