My Unit Studies {Free Printables & Hands-on Ideas}

Trail of Tears Unit Study and Lapbook

August 9, 2014 | 13 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Before I tell you about the trail of tears unit study and lapbook that I have planned for fall, I want to say congratulations to Crystal Cook, our grand prize winner of the Explorers Basket.

All I could “hear” were squeals on the other side of my email. Too, I restrained myself from commenting on each reply, which you know is hard for me to do, but wanted you to know that I read each comment.

I value your input because though I may not get to do each suggestion, I sure do try to eventually.

Also, I may be wildly insane for even attempting to prepare the Trail of Tears unit study and lapbook about 14 days before we have to be out of our house and hotel hopping, but I would rather plan and have it than to not plan.

I am just giving you heads up now that this unit study, though I don’t want it to be, may stand half-baked for a while because our huge move overseas is here.

I can’t even begin to tell you all the details that are consuming when you don’t have a forwarding address yet, or will be totally mobile.

Too, I am still transferring files over to my laptop and by the way if you know of a good mini (and I do mean mini) printer that is easy to get cartridges for, let me know.

Back to my unit study, I pushed myself one more time to go ahead and at least get the printables started on this unit study because it really is a time period that I wanted Tiny to study at an older age.

Though we will focus of course on the culture and life of a few different Native American people, I wanted to expose the injustices and ugly side of American history.

Those are teachable moments too of examples that we do not want to be like.

The ugly side of history is something we do not shy away from, but I do wait to talk about it when each of the boys are more middle to high school age.

It’s crazy though how even very young children know when something is not fair and can have empathy for a fellow being.

It’s just when they are older they can value the model lessons.

Also, in preparing my lapbooks, as I talk about in the new The Big Book Of Homeschool Ideas where I am a co-author, one way to keep doing lapbooks for the middle to high school ages is to be sure clip art is not babyish. That is a huge turnoff to the older kids.

That is one aversion I have to many printables and that is the clip art outgrows your crew in about one year. It’s okay for sure if the focus is on the younger crew and sometimes it is.

But I mostly aim for middle to high school because there is so much content for younger kids and not much for hands-on and to keep learning fun through to the upper grades.

I think sometimes finding appropriate clip art is more time consuming than actually doing the unit study, but I find it so worth the time for our kids.

Today, I have two minibooks.

Well, actually one minibook and then a tear shaped printable to use either on the front of your lapbook or inside lapbook as a way to introduce The Trail of Tears.

Trail of Tears silhouette credit: Edees Crafty Corner

How to Get the Free Trail of Tears Lapbook

Now, how to grab the free lapbook. This is a subscriber freebie.

That means when you sign up to follow me, you get access to my subscribers library and this freebie.

However, not all my freebies are in the library (wink).

I like to keep up to date with what is valuable to you so I can give you more, some freebies you must sign up again on the form below even if you are already a follower.

And it’s the only way I have of freely delivering them to you. Just follow the steps below.

► 1) Sign up on my list.
► 2) Go to your inbox and confirm your email from the automatic reply I sent you. If you’re already a confirmed subscriber, you will not have to do this. You’ll receive the freebie instantly.
►3) Last step. look for my reply AFTER you’ve confirmed your email.

Ocean Lapbook Printables

August 4, 2014 | 5 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

This is it! I am on 3 week countdown to moving out of my house.

After that we will be on the road for a month traveling in the states, saying goodbye to family here in Texas and trying to vacation a bit before flying to South America at the end of September.

Our adventure begins soon.

I will show you some pictures in an upcoming post about how my house has now turned to a organizing disaster zone.

The only way to pack is to pull it all out and sort through it.

Since we will just be taking suit cases to South America, I will have to be picky about what we pack. Most of our curriculum will go to storage, but I have to take a few things.

Because we will be on the road soon, I wanted to get as close as I could to finishing our Ocean Lapbook. So today, I have more ocean lapbook printables. The first one is an easy Ocean Resources Scavenger Hunt (book 7 on the lapbook layout above) to keep Tiny out of my hair schooling so I can focus on more packing.

Besides, I couldn’t hear the moan of anymore writing. I think he knows we have been hit and miss lately with school because of our huge move. Like me, he feels the excitement so he needs easy school from here on until we leave. An easy hands-on project is an Ocean Resources Scavenger hunt around the house.

I think any age can do this eazy peazy scavenger hunt. The point of the lesson is to build appreciation for the vast resources and products we depend on from the ocean like carrageenans and alginates that we use in our food. Take a look at this website Ocean Facts that I used as a springboard for the ideas.

I list it at the end of the scavenger hunt so your child can have it for reference and study too.

Also, the Ocean Resources Scavenger Hunt worksheets can be included in the lapbook as minibooks. Look at this graphic I created a while back to show how we include worksheets in our lapbooks.

The Ocean Resources Scavenger Hunt pages can be glued in the same way in the lapbook. Staple them together first, then fold them.

The next minibook (minibook 5 on the lapbook layout above) I have ready is 3 Types of Marine Life, which is a 3 lift tab book. Again, this type of information is easily found on the internet so Tiny can research independently.

If Tiny is not so inspired or your child either by writing about the marine life in general, then they can choose one to write about, or write about the one I used as a graphic.

For example, under tab one they can write about plankton, tab two can be about a Blue Whale, a list of animals that swim freely or one animal they choose to focus on.

Follow this same idea for lift tab 3, which is Creatures that Live On Or Near the Ocean Floor. Because there are choices, hopefully, this avoids writer’s block for our kids and also gives them choice as to what they want to study about in marine life.

Then the last minibook I have is Did You Know, (minibook 6 on the lapbook layout above) which has a few facts on the ocean. It is an accordion fold minibook.

Be sure to look at the lapbook layout at the top so you can see where we are gluing our minibooks.

HOW TO DOWNLOAD THE FREE OCEAN LAPBOOK

It’s a subscriber freebie.

That means when you sign up to follow me, you get access my subscribers library.

However, not all of my freebies are in the library (wink).

I like to keep up to date with what is valuable to you so I can give you more, some freebies you must sign up again on the form below even if you are already a follower.

It’s the only way I have of freely delivering them to you. Just follow the steps below.

Free Ocean Lapbook and Fun Homeschool Unit Study Ideas

► 1) Sign up on my list.
► 2) Go to your inbox and confirm your email from the automatic reply I sent you.
►3) Last, look for my reply AFTER you confirm your email.

I think I can, I think I can has been my motto these past few weeks and now I think the Ocean Lapbook will be at a good stopping point so we can take a break to move. Hope you like the new printables.

Hugs and love ya,

Oceans Lapbook Starter

July 11, 2014 | 3 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Sharing the oceans lapbook starter today for my Oceans Unit Study and Lapbook,

So we were able to get a bit of school done this week and I was also able to create minibook four today, which is How Low Can You Go.

Tiny was reading to me the other day about how deep the ocean is and we were trying to picture how far a diver could go. This next easy minibook gives a visual example of the depth of a diver and also of submarines.

With a little bit of supervised research on google, your child should be able to arrange the pictures or clip art in order from the top of the page or sea level to the bottom of the page or the deepest.

Then glue the pictures on the page.

Too, we have started to arrange minibooks 1 – 4 on the file folder. Above is the beginning layout or lapbook starter of where we have decided to place the minibooks so far.

Too, when we place them, we try to arrange them so that we have as much room as possible for the rest of the minibooks.

I have some notebooking pages coming up too because this a big unit and I think it needs a bit more research by Tiny.

Are you following along or are you breaking right now for summer? If you are, then you can save this unit for when you start back to school.

Other Ocean Unit Study Resources:

HOW TO DOWNLOAD THE FREE OCEAN LAPBOOK

It’s a subscriber freebie.

That means when you sign up to follow me, you get access my subscribers library.

However, not all of my freebies are in the library (wink).

I like to keep up to date with what is valuable to you so I can give you more, some freebies you must sign up again on the form below even if you are already a follower.

It’s the only way I have of freely delivering them to you. Just follow the steps below.

► 1) Sign up on my list.
► 2) Go to your inbox and confirm your email from the automatic reply I sent you.
►3) Last, look for my reply AFTER you confirm your email.

Ocean Unit Study Lapbook Covers

June 24, 2014 | 3 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Normally, I don’t share the lapbook covers and decorative clip art pieces for the lapbooks so early in our unit study. But today I am sharing the ocean unit study lapbook cover choices because excitement has set in around here.

FINALLY, after months and months (and did I say months, okay, about 8 months) of decluttering and selling just about all of my stuff like a wild woman on Craigs List (I might have to share my pro tips one day), our house was officially listed this morning. And tomorrow, we have our first showing! I am beside myself. I am trying to be laid back about all of it because I am over the top tickled if we sell it in a few months.

We were ready to list our house a few weeks ago, but we had to interview realtors. Then, because some of the last big pieces of furniture sold quickly, it left our house a bit bare. Along with the realtor, we decided we better bring in a company for “staging”.

Of course there is no way with my family size that I could ever have just that few pieces of things to sit on, but again this is just for “staging”.

So we had more strange people in our house and she brought in totes of accessories, because I sold just about all mine.

Oh well, I just wanted to show you a few of the final pictures which have made me so completely exhausted but exhilarated feeling over the last few months.

Because I am not sure how fast our house will sell, I want to share my printables with you sooner even if we aren’t ready for them yet in our unit study.

I went ahead and took a picture to show you what I mean when I call the downloads, decorative pieces. Though you can use them anywhere, even in notebooking, I normally create them size wise to fit on the outside file folder of the lapbook cover. I have some new followers here that are new to the method to my madness, so a picture helps.

Too, like I do for most of my lapbooks, I try to give your child a few choices in covers. The cover above is for the kid that is not interested in coloring right now.

I have a few of them too sometimes. Though this time Tiny decided he wanted to color something.

So with the donations I get for the lapbooks, I buy clip art for the unit study and share the coloring pages with you.

I purchased this picture of carp for some general coloring when studying about geography and rivers.

When Tiny saw it, that was what he wanted to color and he did. It sparked a huge debate around here because Tiny had his mind set on coloring it for this unit study.

After I questioned him about whether carp are found in the ocean or not, it ignited a huge flurry of research, which I loved of course.

That is the part of learning that I enjoy about unit studies. Sometimes the best parts of learning a unit study is the part you stumble upon.

You can download the pages below and yes, including the carp. It is a valuable piece of information he learned about what carp need to survive.

Download Ocean Lapbook Color Cover Here.

Download Ocean Lapbook COLOR IT Cover Here.

Download carp fish coloring here.

Hopefully things don’t move too fast over here in selling my house, but then again I’m ready!

Hugs and love ya,

Ocean Currents Minibook

June 10, 2014 | 2 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

It has been tempting to jump ship (hee hee, corny pun) in our ocean unit study and study about all the cool marine life. But I felt like we needed to stay focused just a bit more on the actual geography and science behind how the water moves.

So today I have the ocean currents minibook ready. I wanted Tiny to take time in today’s lesson to think and pause about the wonders below.

It is important to me that Tiny understands that ocean currents are like giant “rivers” of water and they probably could make any mighty river we can physically see as miniature by comparison. You know this is the part of the unit study where I want to build his awe for creation.

I think this part of studying oceanography has to be one of the fascinating parts to understanding the vastness of the ocean.

Bottom line: We are soaking up our study of the ocean and loving it! On the next post on our Ocean Lapbook, I will show you the layout of the minibooks. I normally like to get three or so minibooks made before I show you the layout and oh yes, I have the cover page coming too.

Download the next minibook Ocean Currents Here.

Hugs and love ya,

Did you grab my other posts in our Ocean Unit Study?

What is the Ocean Minibook	Ocean Unit Study Ocean Layers
Message In a Bottle Language Arts	Ocean Unit Study: Vocabulary Words & Wave Pocket
Hands-On Edible Geography Sea Levels