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

History Lesson

We are studying the Middle Ages this year. It is so much fun for it is full of castles and knights, and classic stories I have been wanting to read to my boys for years like Robin Hood and the Story of King Arthur. There is so much out there to make this year wonderful it was truly hard to pick and choose for fear something fun will be left out. See my pinterest board on the Middle Ages/Renaissance. My saving grace was the spine, Story of the Middle Ages by Christine Miller and Passport to the Middle Ages a hands on trip through this historical period by Homeschool in the woods. Between these to resources I have just what I need to flesh out the middle ages time period with fun activities, great books and with more ease and peace of mind than I first thought was possible.

Apparently we have the old out dated cover image. If you checked out the link to The Story of the Middle Ages you can see that it has been redone. I think I like our old version better. One of the best aspects of this book is the suggested book list in the back. It suggests living books that fit in with the story of the Middle Ages narrative. It also give you an idea just where they go in the flow of the historical story. So by using this suggested book list I was able gather together relevant living books and plan them out with the spine readings, and with the help of the SCM panner, I know it will all fit into the school year. Yeah!

Below is a portion of my master list of books and where they fit into the spine. I have not stuck to the 20 minute lessons here as my boys can absorb more so my readings are a bit lengthy. It is working for us but it may not work for you. See for yourself, maybe you can do more. :) I also supplement with audio books when I need a break. See my other post on the ones I found for free at Librivox.

SOTMA: Europe Long Ago-Ceasar in Gaul and Britain (one lesson)

SOTMA: Europe under the Romans-The 1st Martyrs (one lesson)

In God's Garden by Amy Steedman(7 lessons/days)*

SOTMA: The Patron Saint of France- The Early Germans (one lesson)

Children of Odin by Padraic Colum (portions of it in 3 lessons)

SOTMA: How the Franks Came into Gaul-The first Kings (one lesson)

The White Stag by Kate Seredy(two lessons)

SOTMA: Theodoric and Ostrogoth-The Bishop of Ireland (one lesson)

Our Island Saints by Amy Steedman chapter on St. Patrick begin lap book (two lessons)

Lantern bearer by Rosemary Sutcliff (11 lessons)

SOTMA: The Anglo Saxons-King Arthur (one lesson)

King Arthur by Howard Pyle (five lessons)

SOTMA:  The story of St. Augustine (one lesson)

Augustine came to Kent by Barbara Willard (six lessons)

* If the book has 14 chapters in it like In God's Garden, it will take 7 lessons/days to complete the book if I can read two chapters/saint stories a day. Some books will be shorter or longer so the days it will take to read each one is different. 

Following is the rest of the list of living books we plan to use for History.  

Son of Charlemagne by Barbara Willard

Story of Roland for Children by H.E. Marshall

Castle by David MaCaulay

DK: Castle at War 

Castle Diary by Richard Platt

Vikings by Janeway

The Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow by Allen French

The Viking adventure by Clyde Robert Bulla

Leif the Lucky by Ingri and Edgar D'Aulaire

Dragon and the Raven by G.A. Henty

Illuminations by Hunt

Little Duke by Charlotte M. Yonge

Cathedral by David MaCaulay

If All The Swords in England by Barbara Willard

God's Troubadour by 

Winning His Spurs by G. A. Henty

Magna Charta by James Daugherty

In Freedom's Cause by G.A. henry

Otto if the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle

The Apple and the Arrow by Mary and Conrad Buff

The Door in the Wall by

St. George for England by G. A. Henty

Canterbury Tales by Barbara Cohen Illustrated by Trina Hyman (a favorite illustrator of mine)

Joan of Arc by Diane Stanley

You may have observed as you read through the list that some classic books noted to be good for this time period like Robin Hood and Adam of the Road are missing. I have scheduled them into our literature readings instead of our history lesson and they should correspond also with the flow of history as it moves through time in the middle ages. 

Passport through the Middle Ages is something we do on project day which is the last day of our week. Project day was instigated last year because we love hands on activities but we also value the simplicity of Charlotte Mason's methods. One thing I wanted to make time for in our school week was to include more living books to fill them with ideas, "a banquet of mind food", and I also wanted to limit our hands-on work so we could practice narration which stimulates the mind to work on the ideas gained instead of and activity which may or may not accomplish this. So Project day is the sixth day in our week and it is where we do the fun activities, games etc. that we enjoy without losing the great advantage of sticking closely to a CM method during the week.

This is TJ's notebook where he keeps his passport notebooking type activities. 

Sample of one of their notebooking pages describing the different class levels in the Middle Ages. 

The boys also keep up a time line as we go along.

The boys write fictitious newspaper articles.

And illustrate some.

Here is Max's passport to travel into the Middle Ages. 

Each week I also read from a tour guide about that particular time in history, it sets the stage for the activities. Sometimes there are audio tours as well as the readings. This last week we listened as a reporter interviewed different people about their role in the Medieval class structure.

Now and then we get postcards from historical people telling us about the event in history where they played a part. The boys then illustrate the front of the post card and place into their post card rack.

We also are creating lapbook mini books as we go along and at the end of the year we will assemble the whole lap book. It should make for a fun review of all the things we have studied. 

There will be recipes to make, things to make like a castle out of sugar cubes and a Robinhood hat. We will also learn about every aspect of Medieval life. More about all that as we go along. I also have found oodles of wonderful you tube videos that go along nicely with each weeks readings and activities which I will be showing the boys each project day. 

NOTE: Many of the titles below are not suitable for children. We got around this by downloading the video and editing it in a editing program. Then we can be sure they boys get the content that is worthwhile for them at this age.

Here is our list of Medieval history videos. You can find them all on you-tube:

BBC Rise and Fall of Rome Series

History Channel's "The Dark Ages"

Merchant of Venice

Terry Jones Medieval Lives: The Peasant

Terry Jones Medieval Lives: The Knight

Medieval Warfare: Castle at War

Who were the Vikings BBC part 1/3

Viking Trading Empire BBC part 2/3

End of the Viking Age BBC part 3/3

History Channel's : "The Real Vikings"

Terry Jones Medieval Lives: The Monk

Illuminations BBC parts 1-6

History Channel's "The Plague"

El Cid

Terry Jones Medieval Lives: The Kings

Terry Jones: The Crusades parts 1-4

Terry Jones medieval lives:  The Outlaw

Christina: a Medieval Life

Terry Jones Medieval Lives: The Damsel

Terry Jones Medieval Lives: The Philosopher

Terry Jones Medieval Lives: The Minstrel

Bye for now....Enjoy!

Geography Lesson

This is the first year we actually have a subject on the schedule called Geography. We do this subject three days a week for about 1/2 of an hour each lesson, so it is not a huge time commitment but it is fun! Maybe it's fun because it is Europe we are studying or perhaps it is just that maps can be a beautiful thing to learn.

Our lessons are varied but regular and we all are loving this. 

The first lesson of the week is a read-a-loud lesson. This year I will be reading from Lucy Fitch Perkins Twins Stories. We plan to read the following twins stories this year:

The Belgium Twins

The Dutch Twins

The Irish Twins

The Eskimo twins

The The Italian Twins

The Swiss Twins

The Scotch Twins

The Second Lesson of the week is adding pages to our country book one week and a short half hour to an hour long you tube about the country the next week. Here are a few you tubes I m=have bookmarked to choose from.

Austria (Part 1/6) Each part os about 10 minutes

Belgium the whole movie is about 1 hour

Denmark A little over 9 minutes

England: Oxford/ London Bridges/ Hampton Court/ Villages/ Berkeley Estate less than 10 min. ea.

France: travel by train(10 min)/A trip to Paris(10 min)/Visit France (23 min)

Germany(1 hour)/ Neuschwanstein Castle (4 min)

Hungry, Budapest (part 1/3 each 17 min.)

Iceland (43 min.)

Ireland (44 min.)

Italy the great cities part 3(14 min.) part 4, part 5, part 6/ Italy Revealed (1hour 37min.)

Norway (23 min.) Beautiful Norway (14 min) A Norway Passage (1 hr.)

Spain: Village (6 min.) Sister Wendy in Madrid (9 min.) Taste of the Sea made in Spain (24 min.)

Gaudi's Barcelona

Sweeden: The Real Stockholm 1/2(10 min.)

Switzerland part 1/2 (14 min.)

The pages for our country book include a notebooking page on the country we are focusing on, other cool icons like the Belgium coat of arms below that we found online when we researched about Belgium and a map drill page. The cover I designed myself in Publisher. We bound our book together with the Pro-Click Binder.

The Third Lesson of the Week is a map drill. 

Lesson one: With a blank map and a map with labels, practice finding Belgium on the blank map. color it in and copy it's name. Memorize how to spell it. Add all the flag labels to the large, colored map of Europe. (includes 20 countries and three seas) 

Lesson two: Add Belgium to a new blank map without looking. Color it in and spell it correctly. Then, practice finding Austria on the same map but now using the map with the titles. Color it in and copy the name learning to spell it correctly. Add all the flag labels to the large, colored map of Europe.

Lesson three to twenty: Add another new country and review the previous ones in the same way. Add the flags each time to the large, colored map.

Sometimes we play games like the one below, Viking Voyages, on project day, the last day of the week. Viking Voyages is a FREE game you can download, paint, and tape together your self. My boys helped me make this game.

Week Fifteen Wrap-Up

We would be half way done with this year but we plan to school the whole year round with a month of in May and part of June. So our halfway point is really in Feb-March. At that point we switch to Ancient Roman history and the study of Insects. I can't wait! But for now we took another day off to celebrate Max's 9th birthday!

Happy Birthday Max!

Bible: We are finishing up Genesis this week and moving on the the last book of the Bible, Revelation.

Stories of Faith: We finished This Way to Christmas as well this week and Have begun to read The Christmas Porringer.

Math: We have completed the Usborne math skills Multiplying and Dividing Puzzles and will begin to work through Everyday Number Stories in rotation with The Multiplication Matrix. We did work through Everyday number stories last summer but I know that this year now that we have had some good work on multiplication tables and division that the book will be much more beneficial. 

We are continuing to read about Albert Einstein from Kathleen Krull's book entitled Albert Einstein (Giants of Science series)

Aesop Copywork:

Ancient Greek History: We are reading Alexander the Great by John Hunter.

Geography: Our Little Spartan Cousin of long ago by Julia Darrow Cowles.

Science the Study of Birds: We are reading Reddy the Woodpecker by Arthur Scott Bailey this week. I am thrilled. The living books we have been reading about birds is igniting an interest and the boys are doing a lot of looking up birds on their own. Yesterday was a typical day in this area as Max had out the large volume of Birds the definitive guide by DK and finding birds he knew. Birds from Winged Migration a movie we watched umpteen times when he was only three-six years old or so, Birds from our readings, Birds form our yard and neighborhood. As he poured over the pages looking at flight migration paths and where each bird can be found he felt as if he was looking at old friends. At the same moment the twins were playing the birds of America concentration game I picked up at Good Will this summer and naming all the birds they "knew". Earlier this week I found them all three out in our yard with their binoculars searching the skies for birds and looking  up in the trees for nests. TJ finds the littlest birds nests often after they have fallen out f the tree where they were perched. We think it is the warbler who is making them.

And look what we found 'stealing' grain from the chicken pen.

I also found a handy link to many living nature books by Thornton Burgess and Arthur Scott Bailey over at Manybooks.com.

Nature notebooks: This week we learned to draw an owl.

Langaue Arts: We completed lessons #35-38 in Primary Language Lessons which includes work on has and have, a little dictation, an oral lesson about cows and milk where I focus on having the boys answer the questions in complete sentences. The lesson was about milk so we made homemade marshmallows and hot chocolate for a lunch time snack!

Bed time story: Little Town on the Prairie.

Afternoon Audio book: Narnia, The lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, The horse and His Boy, Prince Caspian several times over.

Reading aloud: Elson Reader Book Three, still working on two pages a day for each boy. They are getting much more fluent and it is more and more of a pleasure to hear then read.

Latin: This week we learned a new dialogue using adverbs and verbs. We have spent the week learning the new verbs and adverbs as vocabulary and as parts of speech and how they are used in Latin and in English. How to identify them and how to use them ourselves.

Art/Music: Drawing lesson #15 evolved into a multimedia painting. The lesson was about drawing ellipses which create a bowl with fruit in it. So their were examples in our drawing book of different fruits and how to draw a bowl. The boys practiced drawing a bowl and then I showed them this picture that I found on pinterest:

The foundation of all painting is drawing so it seemed an easy step to take our bowl drawing and make a painting out of it. Our source picture was created by Mrs. Anderson for her art class but there were no instructions on the website were it was pinned from on how to do it so we just winged it and had some fun. 

We began by mixing acrylic paint to get the color Mrs. Anderson had in her background. Then the boys painted that color onto a canvas panels. These are wonderful, They are much less expensive than a real canvas but it gives the feel and look of a canvas when painted. I love them. While the paint was still wet, with the back of our brush we drew swirls and designs into it. Then we set it aside to dry.

While the background was drying I printed off some paper with words on it. Any print will do. Then the boys drew fruit with pencils using the ideas from the drawing book to guide them. It was hard to think to draw the fruit big enough to make a presence on the painting but they got it in the end. Once the fruits were drawn they got out their gauche paints (opaque water colors) and painted them. Then those were set those aside to dry while the table top was draw and painted as well on printed paper.

Once all the printed fruits and table tops were dry the boys "glued" them onto their now dry backgrounds. done for the day.

The next day as we listened to Chopin the boys painted on the black outline of the table, the fruit stems and leaves, the q-tipped white dots (you can use the back of your brush too) and signed their names.

Merry Christmas!

Week Twelve Wrap-Up

Bible: Last week we read through the end bit of Ephesians, started and finished Colossians, and this week we are at the beginning in Genesis which fits really well with our reading of Grandpa's Box.

Stories of Faith: Grandpa's Box is a delightful story written as an ongoing conversation between Grandpa and his grand kids, Marc and Amy. Everyday after school as the children help him in his junk to treasure shop He tells them the story of the Bible. Behind each story is the backdrop of the war between God and Satan and how we play a part in it. Marc is especially interested in battles so although he knows the bible stories he is fascinated by Grandpa's war analogies. The boys are loving this book and like Marc though they know the bible stories Grandpa's analogies and unique point of view brings up for them a new take on God and what He has done for us.

Last week we completed The Stories of the Pilgrims right on Thanksgiving day!

Math: We have completed our lessons which took us through the multiplication table, table by table and learning some patterns in each number table, and through out the table. We learned skip count songs for each of the numbers and we did all of the multiplication story problems in Ray's Primary Arithmetic several times over. So last week and this week we have been doing a new lesson rota. I began with introducing the boys to The Matrix, a tool I found over at Don Potter's website for getting the math table facts down quickly. Then we work a page or two in The Usborne Math Skills book called Multiplying and Dividing Puzzles.

The Matrix is a set up so the child works all of the math facts from 2X2 up to 12X12 as is done on the multiplication table however all the duplicate problems have been removed. So, 3X4 in the 3's table is not re introduced again as 4X3 in the 4's table. There are then 67 problems to complete. The table is filled in and timed. Once the boys have completed the table I mark down how long it took them to do it and how many out of 67 they did correctly. I post their best times and they try to beat themselves. Thus far the best time is 8.5 minutes with 2 mistakes (65/67). The goal is to do the problems until they come so easily that you simply are racing to write them down. This could get old day-in and day-out so in between doing the Matrix challenge I give them some fun math problems to play around with from the Usborne puzzle book.

Our rota is three days a week The Matrix, two day Usborne, then the next week it would change to three days a week Usborne two days a week The Matrix.

The mathematicians we read about on project day are Neils Henrik Abel and Ada Bryron Lovelace.

Ancient Greek History: We are still reading The Children's Plutarch by F. J. Gould and working on our paper mache' armor.

And we put a few things in or History notebook...

Armor of God pages. The one on the left was drawn by Nadene from Practical Pages.

Zak and TJ completing a map drill

Aesop's Copy work: I used to have to give out treats to get them to aim for making no cross outs or mistakes, however now that I have stopped doing that they still aim for it themselves and do their best in the coloring because it is good to do it even without the treat. TJ especially hates to make any mistakes and works very hard to get it right. Zak is wonderful at the handwriting but this year he has lost all interest in coloring or drawing etc. But my shinning example really is Max my oldest. Last year he was such a dawdler and I wondered just how I was going to deal with it and for how long because it really bugged me. However this year he is such a different student. It is plain he does not like some of the work I assign but he willingly makes himself get it done. In addition he has become my advocate as he encourages the other two to stop their whining and get with it. Those are his words not mine. :) "It takes less time if you just obey and do what she says," he tells Zak, "She'll make you do it later on your free time if you don't." They both shudder and get to work. I think their understanding and value of time has been the incentive to work it through. As they have grown older and have more ideas of their own they want to work on then their time is more valuable to them. Natural consequences have paid off no nagging needed!

Science/Birds: After reading all the way through The Tale of Jolly Robin by Arthur Scott Bailey we are reading Blacky the Crow by Thornton Burgess.

Nature Notebooks: 

After reading from A Pocket full of pinecones the boys headed outside to find something to draw. Max and TJ both found a lizard and TJ was so excited! "Mom it had yellow on its back see I drew that in!" I was so pleased. For the last few weeks when he looks for something to draw he comes back with the same leaf...but not this week.

On project day we made some bird feeders from old paper towel rolls, peanut butter and birdseed for the winter birds.

Language Arts: Our lesson in Primary Language Lessons was to memorize The Swing by Robert Louis Stevenson. We took four days to do this. Day one, orally go through the poem reciting the first stanza then the first and second etc until we are saying the whole poem altogether. Day two, the boys copied 1/2 of the poem and drew a picture. Day three, they copied the second 1/2 of the poem and drew a picture. The fourth and last day the boys orally recited separately the entire poem, then they recited it al together. It is so amazing how they memorize these verses so easily. And how adorable they sound as they do it.

Max's copy work.

Last week they wrote about what they would do on vacation. Here is Zak's composition and drawing.

Read-aloud before bed: Gentle Ben, On the Banks of Plum Creek.

Latin: Minimus dialogue and verbs and adjectives.

Art/Music: Drawing Lessons # 3-#8 in I Can Do all Things

TJ's Wally the worm in the garden, a lesson on forshortening

Max's drawing.

Zak's drawing

We began reading Chopin the Early Years by Opal Wheeler last week. I read from the book one day and then on the other day we listened to his music ( 99 most essential Chopin Masterpieces) and began to color a page from Opal Wheeler's book.

TJ's work in progress