Disclaimer

There is a huge tendency among women in general, and homeschool moms in particular, to compare ourselves to others and find ourselves lacking. I can see what another homeschool mom is doing and think, "I should be doing that", or carried to the extreme, "I'm a loser at this and should just put my kids in building school." I know this because I have done it.

BUT.

It is terribly destructive. It takes our eyes off Jesus and fosters discontent and even envy. God has unique plans for each of our families, and we need to focus on the priorities He has given to us, not those He's given to someone else. We answer some day to HIM, not to each other.

If you are a homeschooling mom who uses Tapestry and you don't do unit celebrations, that is okay! If you are a homeschooling mom who doesn't use Tapestry at all, that's fine too! If you don't homeschool but instead trust the education of your children to others, that's great! It grieves me to think there may be those who read about our hands on activities or our unit celebrations and feel inadequate. If that is you, please stop reading my blog.

I'll be honest and tell you a little secret that feeds into our unit celebrations. We have a very difficult time finishing home maintenance projects here at our house. A set of beautiful half finished wooden bunk beds has been sitting in our garage for 6 years now, while our cars are parked in the driveway. There is a hole in my kitchen ceiling, made by an overly enthusiastic Jedi knight, that will probably be there until we sell the house someday and are forced to fix it. My biggest fear in starting our schoolroom expansion project this past summer was, what if we never finish it?

Psychologically, it makes me feel so good to have a unit celebration and mark that 9 week period of study as DONE. There are so many other things in my life that are not done.

My friend Guinever uses the Student Activity Pages that come with Tapestry each and every week. We are hit and miss with those.

My friend Marsha hits English grammar really hard. Us, not so much.

My friend Sally has an immaculate house. She would disagree with that, but she'd be wrong. ;-) She comes here and enjoys our artsy craftsy clutter. I go there and enjoy her nice, clean home.

I have friends who play with their children more than I do with mine. Some who do a much better job at teaching household chores. Some who do bulk cooking.

You get the point.

Can we learn from each other and be inspired and motivated by each other? Of course! This is one of our God given purposes as women, to encourage and mentor one another. But God has wired us all differently, and if we let those differences cause us to envy or doubt our own calling, or focus on our inadequacies rather than the complete adequacy and awesomeness of God, that is WRONG!

So, as I share about things we do in our homeschool, please keep in mind that I am striving to be faithful to what God has called our family to do, as one who will give an account.

And that as long as I am supervising hands on activities, I don't have to dust. :0)

Epiphany

God is so good!

I have been praying about a school related issue for a couple weeks, having to do with the tension between holding our children accountable to complete their work with excellence, and having their content areas of study (history and science) be fun and enjoyable for them.

Our daughter has been at the dialectic level of history for two years and is now starting her third. Our son G is also transitioning to this level. The dialectic level is basically middle school age in cognitive development. At this level in Tapestry of Grace students have several questions to answer each week as they do their history reading. Some of the questions are deeper level ones that require thought and the putting together of information they knew previously with information they just learned. In other words, it's work.

I helped our daughter learn how to answer these two years ago when she first started at this level, as I am doing now with our son G. But since then she has been working mostly on her own. Some weeks the reading is heavier than others, and some weeks there are more questions than others. Some weeks she was still answering questions after youth group on Wed night, in preparation for virtual co-op the next morning. It felt to her like sloughing through a swamp all week long and never quite reaching the other side.

Over the past two years I have watched our daughter learn how to think. But I have also watched her enjoy history less. I became increasingly concerned about this and began to pray and ask God for wisdom in this area. I wasn't really willing to not require answers to these questions, and every student has to realize at some point that they need to do the work because it needs to be done whether they like it or not. But what could I do differently to ensure the best possible chance that she'd enjoy, and maybe even love, history?

As an aside to my fellow TOG moms, our daughter has always loved the hands on aspect of history, and the read alouds, and the other "fun" parts. It has just been since starting the dialectic level and having to answer the questions each week that a cloud has fallen over her previous love of history. And it's hard to watch someone who used to love it begin to resent it! What to do??

I had a long talk with my husband about it on Tuesday night, and woke up Wednesday morning with a plan. God literally gave it to me while I slept!

I told G and G that we were starting a new thing. Each Wed afternoon at 3:00 the three of us will have a history meeting. At this time, all history reading and the answering of questions will STOP. No more is required after our meeting, even if they didn't get them all done. We will discuss all the questions they have not yet been able to answer. I told them that they know a lot more than they think they know, and discussing together will prove this. They are welcome to jot down in outline form any answers that reveal themselves during our discussion, but if they still have blanks on their paper after the meeting that is okay.

In my desire to hold them accountable to their work, I have inadvertently been teaching them that answering every single question on paper is the goal. And that is not the goal! The goal is knowing facts and concepts and making connections in their heads. If I can show them this through the course of a weekly "mini discussion" (before their "big" discussion during virtual co-op) I think they will be encouraged with all they are truly learning and enjoy the process more.

This will also make Wed afternoons and evenings much less stressful, and there is already enough happening on Wednesdays this fall to induce stress! So, it has only been one week, but we had a great time during our discussion this past Wed, and even though they both had a few blanks on their papers, I think they totally got the gist of what our virtual co-op was all about on Thursday morning. After our discussion on Wed, son G said to me "well this is great! I only have to finish my questions and I am completely done with school today!" And I said, "no, you are done." Which got me a glowing smile. :0)

This will work with these particular children because I know they will have been working diligently since the previous Friday to accomplish their daily reading and answer as many questions as possible. If they were slackers I would have to have a different plan.

I share all this for two reasons. One, to show that God cares about even this. I prayed and He answered! Nothing about your school day is too small to bring before the Lord. And two, even a 5 year Tapestry veteran and a 9 year homeschooling veteran can learn new things! (actually, I learn new things every single day!! One thing I love about homeschooling!)

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Visit this website to read the middle section of the Declaration in its entirety.

The closing paragraph of the Declaration:

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Continental Congress voted on July 2, 1776 to declare independence from Britain. Thomas Jefferson had been appointed to write the first draft of the declaration, and he presented a lengthy document to Congress on this day. There were several points which congressional delegates objected to, so during a long July 3 the next day it was re-worked, re-worded, and about one fourth of Jefferson's writing was deleted entirely. The words printed above were the final version, being voted on and approved unanimously by Congress on July 4. On this day only John Hancock and the secretary of the Congress, Charles Thomson, fixed their signatures. The famous "signing of the declaration", of which there was a famous painting made, actually took place on August 2, with several absent delegates not signing until the fall. The final signature, that of Thomas McKean of Delaware, was not fixed until January 1777.

This is the scene in Philadelphia when the declaration was read aloud in the public square on July 8 (from the book John Adams by David McCullough):

"With drums pounding, five battalions paraded through the city and on the common gave us 13 cannon blasts, notwithstanding the scarcity of powder. Bells rang through the day and into the night. There were bonfires at street corners. Houses were illuminated with candles in their windows. In the Supreme Court Room at the State House, as planned, a half dozen Philadelphians chosen for the honor took the King's Arms down from the wall and carried it off to be thrown on top of a huge fire and consumed in an instant, the blaze lighting the scene for blocks around. There were bonfires, ringing bells, with other great demonstrations of joy upon the unanimity and agreement of the Declaration.

As mounted messengers carried the news beyond Philadelphia, celebrations broke out everywhere. In New York the next day, the Declaration was read aloud to Washington's assembled troops, and it was that night, at the foot of Broadway, that a roaring crowd pulled down the larger than life equestrian statue of George III. As in Philadelphia, drums rolled, bonfires burned, prayers were said, and toasts raised in town after town, North and South. When the news finally reached Savannah, Georgia, in August, it set off a day long celebration during which the Declaration was read four times in four different public places and the largest crowd in the history of the province gathered for a mock burial of King George III."

John Adams himself felt that the vote to declare independence, taken on July 2, was the more noteworthy day, and this is what he wrote in a letter to his wife Abigail that evening:

"The second day of July 1776 will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more."

If Adams were to see the fireworks and parades that multitudes of communities presented throughout our country today, I think he would be pleased, don't you? I am so grateful for the thought, debate, wisdom, prayer, and sacrifice of our founding fathers as they drafted the important documents that lay the foundation for our system of government. Thank you founding fathers! And happy birthday America!

Record Keeping and Storage (part 9)

Thankfully, we live in a state that is currently very friendly toward homeschoolers and does not require record keeping or reporting of any kind. We know, however, that this could change at any time, so we have chosen to keep a record of the work we have done should we ever be legally required to show it. It's also good for our own benefit, to be able to look at a record of our work and say, "oh, that's what we did all year!"

In our family, we don't keep official grades for every subject until sixth grade (as in, writing down the grade of all assignments in a grade book of some kind and giving a letter grade for the class overall). Since our oldest just completed fifth grade, I have not had to keep a grade book yet. That will be something new this next year.

This past spring I was able to purchase a comb binding machine during a really good sale, and I made a comb bound book for each of the three older children of all their daily assignment sheets for the entire year. Each book is literally 36 pages that shows what they did each day in every subject.
I also made comb bound books of all their work in history, geography, literature, and writing. We used file folders for the front and back covers, in each of our children's assigned colors of course! :-)

These books hold everything from mapwork,

to coloring pages,

to writing,

to homemade charts. This is a homemade flow chart showing the 3 branches of government as set forth in the constitution.

Our daughter has a separate writing notebook where she has chosen to keep all her completed writing assignments, but our son G has his writing for the year in this comb bound book. Here is an example of a key word outline, which we learned how to make from our excellent writing curriculum, Institute for Excellence in Writing.

After making his key word outline from a paragraph in one of our history books, he closed the book and rewrote the paragraph from his outline. Here is his version of the paragraph:

Each of our children has completed a writing book called All About Me during their third grade year, and I think these books are destined to become treasured keepsakes! Each page asks a question or two about the student's life, and when the book is finished it is a record of many of that child's favorite sports, memories, things to do, vacation spots, family activities, subjects in school, and daily habits.

These comb bound books, plus the All About Me book, and the colonial lapbooks we did earlier this year are the sum total of what I am keeping as a record of this past year. It takes up this much space:

I have a labeler which I will use to label all the comb bound spines so that I can tell what they are when they are sitting on the shelf (in our basement). All of the workbooks go in the paper recycling bag, and all the hands on projects, once they are properly photographed and oohed and aahed over, go in the trash!

Salt Dough Maps and Battles of the Revolutionary War

We ended our history studies in Tapestry of Grace year 2 with the ratification of the Constitution and the Presidency of John Adams. Prior to that we learned about the revolutionary war, the events that led to up to it, some of the people who played key roles during that time (on both sides), and the course of the war itself ~ where the battles took place, how they fought in those days, and how George Washington (who is now even more of a hero in my mind than he ever was when I learned about him as a schoolgirl myself!) managed to keep a starving, half naked, discouraged, ill equipped and outnumbered, underpaid ragtag army together during 8 long years. Truly amazing!

It was fascinating to learn about different battles of the war, those the Patriots won and those they lost. Some, like the Battle of Bunker Hill, were technically wins for the British but were rallying points for the Patriots. Some, like the siege of Long Island and later the march of British General Burgoyne south along the Hudson River, "should" have been overwhelming victories for the British but turned out to be either times of secret retreat to safety (Long Island) or victory for the Patriots (Saratoga). We learned that the Battle of Saratoga is considered one of the 5 most important battles of all time, because the Patriot victory there caused the French to join the war on our side and the course of world history since then has been radically different than it would have been otherwise. I could go on. It's really fascinating stuff!

So to help cement this knowledge we were learning about the battles in our minds, as well as work some more on the geography of the eastern seaboard of the United States, we made salt dough maps of the east coast. Then each of the older 4 children chose 5 battles to mark on their maps and write a bit about. They wrote about these battles on little flap books which I will show later.

We started by looking at a map of the east coast and just freehand sketching it in pencil on a long piece of cardboard. Then we put chunks of salt dough on the cardboard and began shaping it to the edges of our pencil lines. We had to be sure and mark the battles before the salt dough dried! (which, in hind sight, was not a big worry as the dough took DAYS to dry).



After carving out state boundary lines, each child painted their map.



The last step was making a key to the map.

Here is son G's map and key up close.

And here is daughter G's map. She even painted waves with whitecaps on the Atlantic Ocean! She is also the only one who included the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.

Son C's map (shaped by me, painted by him).

Son L's map (shaped by him, painted by me). One of the battles he chose was Camden, which you can just see down in the lower left corner on a tiny part of the state of South Carolina (painted green). He chose this battle because it was a terrible defeat for the Patriots BUT they kept on going! Just like the energizer bunny!

This was a really fun project and a great hands on activity to end our year. It was also a great learning tool for me, personally. I finally know *exactly* where New Jersey and Delaware are!!!

Paul Revere Lanterns

I had hoped to have pictures of 5 cute little colonial era looking lanterns to share with you all today, but we ran into some difficulties in the making of said lanterns!

You will recall that famous phrase from Longfellow's poem: "one if by land, two if by sea...." Well, we set out to make Paul Revere type lanterns yesterday afternoon. First we cut appropriate lengths of thin metal sheeting off the big roll (called "flashing" and found in the roofing department of Lowe's).
Then each of the children drew a picture on paper and taped this to their metal flashing piece. We gave each of them hammers (Little Man was the only one who needed help!) and they began to pound little holes along the edges of their picture, for the light from the lantern to shine through. This took quite a while.

Once this was accomplished, we cut small slits along the bottom edge (similar to the cuts you make on the inside of fabric when sewing corners) and rounded the flashing so that the bottom would fit inside a jar lid. We hot glued the bottom of the flashing to the inside of the jar lid. What we didn't plan ahead of time was how to adhere the two edges together all the way up the side of the lantern. Hot glue didn't work. Currently they are all being held together with rubberbands while we figure out what to try next. We're thinking super glue.

In the meantime, all the jar lids came unglued from the lantern bodies, so we peeled off the dried glue and will try super glue along the bottom also.

Note to other homeschoolers: if you try this yourselves be sure to use WIDE MOUTH jar lids!! It gives you much more room to work.

~

So, the children are disappointed that the lanterns aren't finished in time to light them and act out that whole scene from history, but hopefully they will be finished soon. After we do the gluing, we will also attach wire handles along the top.

~

Yesterday was the anniversary of Paul Revere's famous ride, and today was the anniversary of Lexington and Concord, the "shot heard 'round the world". If you are an American, be thankful for the freedoms you enjoy, and for the system of government that allows for representation and for a peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next. For all that is wrong with our government, there are lots of things that our founding fathers got right!

When Play Imitates History

Here are all the children, lined up like the British Regulars for a "volley". They played revolutionary war the entire time they were outside today, lining up for volleys (with sticks as muskets) or tiptoing around our vehicles in the driveway in order to shoot from behind trees and rocks (as the militia did at Concord). It was quite funny to watch them. As a mom I used to wrestle with the notion of letting my kids pretend to fight. Now I see it as a healthy thing. Most of the time no-one gets hurt, and virtually all of the time their play fighting is a re-enactment of an historical battle. People pay money to see re-enactments!!

Just as an fyi, tomorrow (April 18) is the 233rd anniversary of Paul Revere's famous ride. Perfect timing for us since we have just finished learning about that! We are planning a special activity tomorrow afternoon after co-op to commemorate his ride. Hopefully I will have pictures to share!

Park Day

After lots of rain recently and even some snow flurries over the weekend, we had a cool but sunny spring day today! So off to our neighborhood park we went after lunch.

The older kids played "Marco Polo", where the person who's it has to close their eyes but can say "Marco" and the others have to respond with "Polo". Then the it person can follow the sound of their voice. None of them were actually able to tag anyone, but they had fun taking turns being Marco! Then the boys thought it would be fun to close their eyes all the way home. They used walking sticks to feel when they were off the sidewalk. I made them open their eyes when we crossed the street. :-)

Little Man was too busy pushing around his shopping cart to play Marco Polo!

We had a GREAT school day today, for which I am supremely thankful!

Our daughter (fifth grade) and I had a wonderful writing time together, learning a new skill.....how to summarize a narrative story. I love, love, love our writing curriculum! It's so well laid out and tells me exactly how to teach things to my kids so I'm not guessing or missing something important. Together we summarized and outlined the fable "The Fox and the Crow" today. It was hard and took lots of time, but was very worthwhile. Tomorrow we will re-write this story using our outline. On Wed we will start summarizing another fable, but she will do a little more of it on her own. I have planned on doing 3 like this, together, and hopefully by next week she will be able to summarize/outline and then re-write a short story all by herself.

~

I get to learn so many cool things along with my kids. I love that about homeschooling! Speaking of learning new things, did you know that only about a third of the American colonists supported the idea of independence from Britain? And there were really only a handful of Patriot leaders. They all just happened to be in the right places at the right times, and respond to events in just the right way.....and certain events (like the Boston Tea Party) served to unite the formerly very independent 13 colonies. The set up to the declaration of independence was truly remarkable. The reading we are doing for history just amazes me. Every day I am learning something new.

~

Today I read Longfellow's poem "Paul Revere's Ride" to the children and they were absolutely riveted. Riveted!! Did you know there were TWO riders that night? Anyone know the name of the second rider? It was thought that in case one of them was captured, there should be two riders to go warn Lexington and Concord that the British were coming. As it turned out, both riders ended up being captured (after Revere successfully warned Lexington) and a third man, who just "happened" to be going home late that night after courting a young lady, on the same road that Revere was riding on, ended up being the one to warn Concord (you can rest easy though, both Revere and the second rider escaped shortly after being captured).

~

I am currently reading John Adams by David McCullough, and I tell you what. Those patriot leaders could ORATE! And WRITE! Man oh man, they were so good at it. It stirs liberty in my own breast just reading what they wrote and said. That's a lost art today, isn't it? There's just no comparison to the political campaign speeches we hear snippets of these days. And the love story between John Adams and Abigail Adams.....wow. They were apart for many years of their marriage due to John's government service, and what a blessing for us that nearly 1000 letters they wrote to each other survive to this day.

~

I think this is one of the reasons I homeschool, so I can keep learning too! But I'll stop sharing now lest you get bored. :-)

Iroquois Longhouse

For her Little House on the Prairie class at co-op, our daughter had to choose an Indian tribe or person to do a project on. She chose the Iroquois, and rather than write a report she opted to make a longhouse. This consumed hours and hours of her time last week and she loved every minute of it! Here is the whole longhouse, with part of the stockade fence behind it. Did you know that the Iroquois built their villages inside stockades? You can see smoke curling out of the hole in the top, and a bear skin stretched out to dry in front.



Here the flap is opened to see the inside. An Iroquois longhouse would hold a whole clan of relatives, each family unit would have the space between two side "ribs" of the longhouse. They had benches built along the walls for sleeping and sitting, including an upper bunk for children. In this picture you can also see a red pipe cleaner in the center, twisted to look like fire.

This view is looking through one of the rib sections of the longhouse. There is a net hanging on the far wall, and a string of fish hanging in the foreground above a brown construction paper basket.

Close up of bear skin stretched out to dry, with a basket on the side.

A better view of the sleeping bunks, with a fur lying on the bottom bunk.

She will be sharing this with her class on Friday, and talking about the Iroquois. She is nervous but excited!

Colonial Times Unit Celebration!!

Last Friday evening we had our unit celebration to mark the end of our studies of the colonial time period. Grandma and Grandpa came over, as well as two families that are good friends of ours. We had a low-key but very fun time.

We had a display table showing some of the things we made during this unit, as well as some of the books we enjoyed reading. There were also several little items we had purchased in Jamestown/Williamsburg last September when we were there during homeschooling week. Then each of the older 4 children shared about some aspect of colonial times and then we ate some colonial desserts (two kinds of cookies made without white sugar - which was very precious in those days and used only for company - and popcorn, which the colonists learned how to make from the indians).

Here are some shots of our display table.



The harpsichord pictured here was something our daughter fell in love with while we were in Williamsburg on vacation last fall. It was the "poor man's piano" during colonial times. We secretly bought her one and saved it for a Christmas gift. While our guests were getting their dessert, our daughter serenaded everyone with lovely harpsichord music!

Our 5 year old son C talked about some of the games colonial children would play. Here he is demonstrating how to play nine pins, the forerunner of our game of bowling.

Our 7 year old son L explained the difference between the flintlock gun and the matchlock gun. He had a picture of each, and was talking about them in this picture.

Our 8 year old son G talked about houses in colonial times. He explained how the early colonists made mud daub houses (we had 4 of them on our display table, made out of shoe boxes with popsicle sticks glued along the sides, painted brown, and grass glued on top for the roofs), and then how they began using bricks. He had several pictures from our trip to Jamestown which he shared.

Our 10 year old daughter G gave a speech on "the starving time" in the Jamestown colony, the winter of 1609-1610. This represented a lot of hard work on her part, as this speech was her writing assignment for several weeks. We started with choosing a topic, then learned how to do research, then wrote out the speech, edited it, rewrote it, and practiced it. Since this was her first speech and I knew she'd be writing/giving others in the future, I gave her the option of not using notecards and instead basically memorizing the speech so that she could give good eye contact to her audience. She gladly chose this option, as the notecards seemed intimidating to her. I was really proud of her, as she was able to look up most of the time, and she even spoke with feeling! (hard for a reserved person to do in front of lots of people)

This last picture shows "pieces of eight" which we purchased in Williamsburg last fall. The colonists were not allowed (by British law) to mint their own money, so they used coins from other countries which they would cut in pieces to represent smaller denominations of money. Eventually the coins were cut into 8 pieces, which is where we get our phrase "two bits" (which equals 25 cents). Isn't that cool to know it dates back to colonial times?!

We had a great time, and have already begun our next unit which deals with the revolutionary war. We love Tapestry of Grace!

Colonial Lapbooks are finished!!

The colonial lapbooks are finished! The older 3 children did a great job on them. For those of you who may not know, lapbooks are "books" made out of file folders with small fold-it booklets glued inside. Each smaller fold-it will have some specific information in it on what the children have learned on a certain topic. This has been a wonderful way for our kids to "show what they know" and for me to use as an evaluation tool as well (how much they are retaining). We typically make one or two fold-its per week and then put them all together in the file folder at the very end of each unit.

The fold-its for these lapbooks were primarily taken from the colonial lapbook CD that Knowledge Box Central sells. But we didn't use all the ones included on the CD and we made up a few of our own. We went through a few super busy weeks where we made no fold-its, so our finished products are just one full file folder in size, with half a file folder cut and taped along one side to make a large fold out page. In other words, a total of 3 pages.

It would be over-kill to show pictures of every child's lapbook, so I've included detailed photos of just our oldest child's lapbook. She is very particular in how she likes things, so she put all the fold-its in where she wanted them, even if they weren't in chronological order. :-) She is 10 years old and in the fifth grade. I required her to fill every page of every fold-it with as much information as she could fit on it. Our 8 year old had to write at least two sentences on each fold-it, and our 7 year old had to write just one. If there was more than one sentence worth of pertinent information, I did the rest of the writing for him.

Here is her cover, finished except for the coloring.

When you open it up, you see the flap of the extra page on the right side.

Here it is with the extra flap opened up, so you can see all 3 pages of fold-its.

On the first page she has a colonial quilt, a map labeling the 13 colonies, a picture of a ship with the names of the 3 ships who brought the original colonists to Jamestown written on its sail, and a "who were the Puritans?" fold-it.

This is the quilt fold-it, opened up.

And the map fold-it, opened up. It shows the northern colonies, middle colonies, and southern colonies in different colors.

This is the 3rd page, the extra fold out page. It has a colonial jobs matching game, and 2 of our home-made flap books, one describing each of the middle colonies and the other describing each of the southern colonies.

This is the matching game up close, with the cards showing.

And this shows two pages of her middle colonies flap book, one on New York (on the top) and the other on New Jersey (on the bottom).

Here is the middle, or second page of the lapbook. It has a fold-it on William Penn, a small fold-it telling where the first Pilgrims landed, a Pocahontas flap book, and our third home-made flapbook on the northern colonies.

Here is the Pocahontas flap book opened up. She wrote out Pocahontas's life story in the form of a cartoon strip, so there are small numbers written above the text in certain places that correspond to one of the boxed pictures on the bottom of the flap. There are 3 pages to this flap-book and each one is chock full! This was a project totally self-directed and which she loved.

And last but not least, here is a page from our 7 year old's flap-book on the southern colonies. It illustrates our rule of thumb for one sentence of his writing, and the rest written by me.

I am so glad these are DONE! They are fun to look at and are great tools for remembering all we have studied since September. They will be proudly on display at our unit celebration tomorrow!