Great Lapbooking Sale Going On

Great Savings Now thru August 15, 2009

Save Now on a 1 Year Super Membership!

1 Year Subscriptions regularly $65

Now only $55!!

That's a $10 Savings!!

And you WILL WANT that Super Membership so that YOU can participate in our...

Back to School

Super Member Savings Event!

Super Members ONLY!

Get ready for school with 40% saving on

ALL HOAC brand products

(Excluding Super Memberships and Custom Units)

Thru August 15, 2009!!!

NO COUPON CODE NEEDED!!!

Oh and we know you're going to ask YES Super Members still receive their 15% discount on Ebook purchases so that means you can

SAVE more than you SPEND!!!

*Please Note: If you are a purchasing a new Super Membership please do it as a seperate order so you are upgraded to Super Membership status and then proceed with your Back to School Savings Purchase.

I love sales, don't you? Now to see what I don't have so I can order something.

Frogs, Frogs and more Frogs

If you all don't know let me tell you that here in my part of Texas we are in a drought. Big time drought. We need rain to have frogs. There is this project that I wanted to do with the boys but didn't have the frogs to see so we went to the zoo. Of course, there is nothing better than a field trip to brighten up our day. This went along great with a new book that is at our library. It's called...what else but Face to Face with Frogs.

That was an awesome book. The pictures were great and the info was wonderful. We saw pictures of different colored frogs from different parts of the world.

One interesting fact we learned was that some of these frogs get their poison from eating ants. Interesting!! We got in my bed to read the book. Of course we didn't read it all at once. I had to make it last at least two times. We all love reading while laying in my bed together. More bonding time. I just love it.

Our lessons are not always just reading great books and field trips but adding a fun project to go with it. I ordered the Hearts and Trees Spring Kit and it went perfect with what we had done already.

The boys got to draw a picture of a frogs life cycle and we attached it to the lapbook. There was coloring going on and putting it all together. There is still more to do with the spring kit but that is for another time.

The boys enjoyed all the time we spent doing this and as soon as our drought ends we will be looking for frogs in our backyard.

We are slowly inching our way towards more of a CM family and enjoying it.

What I've Been Doing?

If you went to Fort Worth to the homeschool convention then you saw me there. It was a couple of fun days showing off lapbooking and showing off some of my boys samples.

Now I am slowly recuperating from the two days of fun. A friend and I went and had a blast there. Then I met another friend who came to surprise me at the booth. All in all it was fun.

Now back to our regular programming......

Zoo Fun

This week has been a little fun. We had a small field trip. Small because we went to the zoo and we have a very small zoo in town. We do plan on going to the zoo in Houston next week. It should be nicer and hopefully not too hot yet. We are of course doing this also into a lapbook experience. HOAC has a lapbook called A Trip to the Zoo. You can lapbook any zoo with it. So for now we just took pictures and had fun at the zoo and went over the first part and took a little trip to our local zoo.

There was a tortoise taking care of the lawn work. We laughed and decided that we needed one of these to take care of our lawn so we don't have to get that mower out. We actually would need a dozen or so but we would settle for one.

Then the peacocks were so beautiful. The male was trying to attract the attention of the female by puffing up and strutting his stuff. She didn't seem to be interested in him at all.

The colors are just gorgeous. Not only did we see the few animals there but also observed these beautiful flowers. They are purple and had an awesome smell. These big fat black bumblebees were attracted to them so the kids didn't stay around there too long.

Can you imagine the smell of those flowers. It's called a Wisteria.

So although we are not finished with out lapbook we did get a good start and are excited about working more on it next week after a trip to the zoo. This lapbook is for grades 3-6 but my 6yr old is doing them. That is the great thing of lapbooks, you can adjust for it to fit your children no matter what grade they are in. Stay tuned next week for our progress on our lapbook.

Columbus Who?

We are done! We were working on a lapbook on Christopher Columbus. We have had fun doing different lapbooks over this past year.

Sometimes we print out copies with colored paper and sometimes we just print it out on white paper. The reason for white paper is so they can color what they want. Sometimes they color a lot and sometimes they don't. This time around they colored some. I love having the choice of making each one different.

We used several of the trace over wording for them to have some practice writing. We also added some extra reading with this. We read the book ...If you sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 by Ann McGovern and also Christopher Columbus by Susan Bivin Aller.

This is the back side of the lapbook and this was the first time I actually added things to the back. The front side had pictures of a young Christopher Columbus.

Another thing I did to make life easier is that I cut out everything and they just did the work. They don't like to cut out and I find it relaxing so I took over that responsibility.

One final picture showing their completed work. They are always happy when we complete one more lapbook and they can look thru it and see their work. I just love doing HOAC lapbooks.

We are off to complete a few more and finish off our history, art, and science lessons for the year.

Lapbooking Fun

I've embarked on a new adventure. What might that be? Well, I am now a Rep. for In the Hands of a Child. I've always liked their lapbooks. I have also been a Super Member with them for a few years now. So, now I have enough lapbooks that I can choose from when I need them.

Have you ever tried a lapbook? I love doing them especially when everything is done for you and ready to go. An old friend turned me on to scrapbooking some years ago after seeing her beautiful scrapbooks of her family and now lapbooking is as close as I can get to scrapbooking without my camera and still call it school.

This year we did a lapbook on Marco Polo. You can see about it here and here. It was so fun as you can tell in their faces on the pictures I posted. We also made one of the Vikings which I posted about here. Right now we are working on several more and will be done by May.

So now that I have talked a little about what we have done let me tell you also that this year HOAC received an award which doesn't surprise me. They got the The Old Schoolhouse Award beating out other well known unit study companies. It was 1st place for their unit studies.


If anyone is from Texas look for me at the the Home School Book Fair in Arlington this year and stay tuned for more on our lapbooking.

What is Lapbooking?

I got an email from someone wanting to know about lapbooking. So here are my thoughts on lapbooking. If you go to this squidoo page you will see pictures and links to different lapbooks. I love to go back to this site often to give me more ideas.

Basically lapbooking is a crafty way to do school work. Instead of the monotonous worksheets they can make little books and other paper crafts to show what you have learned. You use a file folder to put all your little creations on one place. Then your child has this folder as a study method or an easy way to review things learned. The picture shows a lapbook the boys did on Marco Polo.

Then there are these other links that you can go to learn more about lapbooking.

http://lapbooklessons.ning.com/
http://www.homeschoolhelperonline.com/lapbooks.htm

There is not only lapbook but also notebooking. I like notebooking just as much as I do lapbooking but notebooking is faster to do than lapbooking. Notebooking is more like a one or two page worksheet without the work. hehehe I have made several notebooking pages that we have used from topics like Benjamin Franklin to nature pages. Here is a link about a 50 states notebook.

These two forms of learning are great for younger kids, those with learning disabilities and for the creative kids. This is because they don't do too much writing but enough to not get them tired and frustrated like with a worksheet. Then they have something nice with pictures or drawings that can be kept and looked over and enjoyed for many years.

We are working on a lapbook about Christopher Columbus right now that was a freebie from Hands of a Child. Hands of a Child is an online store that you can buy these lapbooks ready made and download them directly to your computer. You then print them out and do them. The work is all done for you. You don't have to make the projects all you do is print them out and have the kids work on them. They also have a quarterly freebie and right now it is one about Thomas Alva Edison. Dec. 16th will be the last day you can download it free. There is also Currclick that will have a freebie every week and sometimes they are lapbooks.

I hope this answers some lapbooking questions.

A Little of This and That

We got lots done today. Well, I guess it would be yesterday since I am up late into the next day. For those that don't know, I am a night owl. Here are the boys doing their math. My baby is doing triple digits. He loves to see how he is doing big boy things.

Here is middle son hard at work doing his math.

We have also started a HOAC lapbook on Christopher Columbus.

Both boys are hard at work and so far we have finished up to 4 activites for the lapbook. These two are the only ones that like lapbooking. Our next lapbook after this is on Benjamin Franklin. I will print that out on colored paper. I've always printed them out on white paper so they can color but the lapbook on Benjamin Franklin is going to be done fairly quickly so colored paper it is.

Between our other work and the lapbook on Columbus we are starting on guess who? The pages give it away. Today I made up another notebooking page. The boys really enjoy when I read to them and they have a page to do.

When we get the other notebooking pages done I will be sure to post them on here for you to see. For now this will have to do. Today was a little of this and that day. Hope you enjoyed reading what we have been up to.

On The Watch Wednesday

Well, I did it! I put together my first lapbook. I still have a lot to learn about lapbooking or at least about making them. hehehe

Anyway, if you would like what I've made I'll be glad to share. The article I used to do this from was called True Freedom for The Maya from the Dec 1st issue. We learned about the Mayan ruins in Chichen Itza and what the Mayan people believed in. Then the spanish conquistadors came on over and decided to fix the problem. Well, at least in their eyes.
I the pictures for this lapbook from the internet and we put this together in a day.

It counted at writing, art, geography and history. You can't beat that.

We had fun listening to the article on my ipod then doing this activity.

Currclick Freebie

This week's freebie from Currclick is The Girl in the Rag Coat. This is about quilting but also about coal mining and Appalachia. Don't forget to check it out.

Lapbooking...what is that?

Click on pictures to enlarge.

Most of you will know what this is. Lapbooking is a fun way to do school. If you have ever scrapbooked then it's close to what lapbooking is. We have been working on our Viking lapbook for history and our Bird one for science. Yes, we started two at the same time. It has been fun getting these done and then we have something to keep after we are done with those lessons.

These few pictures give you an idea of all we have done these past weeks. They are still not done yet but I would say it's about 99% done. They did a great job!

Vikings Lapbook

I've been wanting to post about our Viking Lapbook for a while but never have had the time to get to it. Today is the day or rather the night to do it.

The boys cut out and colored their viking ships. Yes there are three ships. The back one is mine. I had to join in on the fun and the coloring. They really liked doing this project.
We also started on a lapbook on Vikings by Hands of a Child. We have gotten so many free lapbooks that I decided to try to add some of them in our lessons. I've gotta use some of those freebies.
They had no problem coloring. I'm glad at least 2 out of my 3 boys don't complain about coloring. They also are doing extra writing because of these. I'll keep posting as we get some more done.

As the boys colored I would read out of a book I got at the library. I can't believe I don't have it in my library. *blushing* I got this neat book called First Facts about the Vikings by Jacqueline Morley. This is a neat book for the younger ones. My 10yr old as well as my 5yr old liked it. Lots of pictures to go along with the words. We also saw an IMAX movie called Vikings: Journey to the New Worlds. We got that off of netflix and I thought it was great. There were also a few more movies we saw that we got from the library. There was a short dvd from the series of Explorers of the World called The Vikings. It was only 23 mins long but it had a great teachers guide. I'll never forget to go to the library and look for those dvd's.

That is about it for now. Hope to get done with this by next week. I sure hope so. We've got a lot more things to go over this year.

Lapbooking...

We are done with our Marco Polo lapbook. We covered the whole thing with construction paper and glued pictures on the front and the boys were so excited to be done. You can read more about our lapbook here.

History Fun

We've been having fun with our new tradition of having tea time and reading. Since we are reading up on Marco Polo I thought it was the right time to read more of our book. I don't ever remember learning so much about Marco Polo when I was in school. This has been fun.
We also decided to do something different and take some time to do a lapbook on him. Since HOAC had a Marco Polo freebie I knew we had to do that one. As you can see we are not done yet but I thought I would show the project in progress. This is the first folder.
We have a little more done on the second folder. They still need to color and finish up a few more to add and fill up the folders.
All the boys are doing this but this is my 5yr olds lapbook. I thought I would show you his handwriting. He loves to write and I am glad about that.
We love reading the series of books Who Was....They have lots of drawings in them and are non-fiction. We have read a few already on different people and I do suggest these books. We also got this Marco Polo movie from Netflix. It's not rated but it's a Hallmark Channel movie and so far I am enjoying it. Although be warned, it is an almost 3hr movie so we are watching it in parts.

Now since I am talking about movies have any of you seen Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure? We also got it from Netflix and even though it is a movie about some high school kids it has some history in it. This movie is rated PG and is 1 hr and 30mins. Talk about the right humor for my kids. They were rolling on the floor on some parts.

We had a full day of learning including watching movies. I love homeschool.