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

French Revolution Minibooks

March 12, 2014 | Leave a Comment
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

I wanted to give you my next minibooks on our French Revolution Unit Study. Also, look at my page French Revolution 1789 – 1799 Unit Study & Lapbook.

We have been milking this unit study out a bit because of the reading involved and I have been doing some more packing for our move too.

So today, I have minibooks 6 and 7 ready which are minibooks on Queen Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI.

Because there is an abundance of information about these famous historical characters, I didn’t add any information about them.

This is a pretty easy research project for even your middleschooler.

So now, at this point, we have 7 mini books and I think I can squeeze into a few more. We need something about Napoleon Bonaparte too. So download the minibooks below.

And now, on to the party!

Finishing Strong – Homeschool Link Up Party

What a great launch week!

A big thank you to all of the bloggers who linked up their fabulous posts, full of ideas and inspiration for homeschooling the older years.

And thank you to all of you who stopped by one of our co-hosts’ blogs to read all of the posts that were shared, as well as for liking, commenting, and sharing.

Your favorite post from last week:

Everyone loved Homeschooling Big Kids from Mary at Homegrown Learners. It is a round up of her four most popular posts focusing on teaching your middle grades student.

Our favorites from last week:

Weren’t last week’s posts great? Make sure you take the time to read them.

Eva from Eva Varga liked Coaching Writing with a Writers Workshop by fellow co-host Heather at Blog She Wrote.

She said, “Heather’s post really resonated with me because as a science teacher, I struggle with teaching writing. I have been looking for something fun and creative to put a spark into our writing curriculum and I know this is it!”

Blog, She Wrote: Coaching Writing with a Writer's Workshop

Another favorite of Eva’s was Biology Comedy Hour by Susan at Susan’s Homeschooling Blog.

Susan’s comedy hour was a very creative way to culminate a project. Eva said, “I love the homemade green screen and have added this to my ‘honey-do’ list. I can see so many applications of this in all subject areas.”

Megan from Education Possible was immediately drawn to Cherry Blossoms in Porcelain Vase Art Project by Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations.

Megan loved how Jolanthe found inspiration on Pinterest, but took it a step further by taking parts of multiple pins to create her own Asian-themed watercolor project. “I can’t wait to use this project to teach my girls some water color techniques,” Megan said.

Cherry Blossom in Porcelain Vase art project from Homeschool Creations

She also liked Homeschool ‘Mommy Marks’ and Universities by Annie Kate at Tea Time with Annie Kate.

Megan appreciated the advice Annie Kate’s gave to homeschooling families looking to have their “mommy marks” supported by a college or university. She said, “I’m going to have to keep very good records!”

French Revolution Lapbook Minibooks

Next, look at the minibooks which come in this free download.

Beethoven and the Revolution
The Guillotine – The French Terror
Timeline of Events Leading up the French Revolution
3 Estates – French Society
Causes of the French Revolution layered book
Queen Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI
What is the Directory, What is the Reign of Terror and What is the Sans Culottes

How to Get the COMPLETE Free French Revolution Lapbook

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Learn About the Geography of France by Creating A Solar Oven

February 24, 2014 | 11 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Today, we are learning about the geography of France by creating a solar oven. And look at my page Free Quick France Unit Study and Make Easy French Bread for more ideas.

We want to add in a bit of geography by exploring about France. And we had read in our atlas how France will be providing the United Kingdom with enough electricity to power one light bulb in every home.

This lead to our discussion of the world’s problem of energy consumption. Too, we learned how the sun is an unfailing source of energy.

Learn About the Geography of France by Creating A Solar Oven

The only way to test out the power of the sun is to bake chocolate chip cookies of course.

Creating a Solar Oven

What you need:

2 pizza boxes, one small, one large	craft knife
newspaper or polystyrene foam	non-toxic black paint, but we used black paper
non-toxic glue	aluminum foil and clear plastic sheeting to cover the larger pizza box
string, sun glasses, tape, a marker and either a single hole puncher or way to make a small hole. We used our ice pick.	chocolate chip cookie dough or make your own

Place the small pizza box on top of the larger pizza box with one side touching.

Using the marker, draw an outline on top of the larger pizza box. You will be cutting on that line.

Cut on the line with your sharp craft knife. Don’t cut all the way through. Basically you will be creating a lid on the bigger box when you cut on the line.

Then next we lined the inside of the bigger box with aluminum foil. And we stuffed newspaper or if you have polystyrene to fill the space on the outside edges.

We did our best in wadding the paper up small. This way it fits snugly all the way around the inside edges.

Next, we worked on the small pizza box.

Instead of using non-toxic black paint to paint the bottom of the small box because we only had acrylic paint. And I don’t think it’s so non-toxic (you certainly could make your own natural paint too), we used black construction paper to put on the bottom inside box.

Then, we placed the small pizza box with black construction paper and put it inside the larger box.

You see from the picture above, we have two lids as well.

Be sure the lids from each box are next to each other and not both on the same side. You will be using the lids to grab the sun and form a “corner”.

After that, we got more newspaper and wadded it up real good and stuffed more down in the crevice between the larger and smaller box just to be sure we had it insulated real well.

Learn About the Geography of France

By the way, we used plain old Elmer’s glue (non-toxic) to hold the black construction paper in place on the small box.

Also glue black paper or use your non-toxic black paint to paint the outside edges of the bigger box too. This helps to hold the heat in.

As you can see in the picture above we have added our black construction paper to the outside bigger box. T

he next thing we did was to line the inside smaller box and lid and the lid of the bigger box with aluminum foil.

I wish we would have known earlier too, but try to keep the aluminum foil as wrinkle free as possible so it reflects light into the box and it is not bouncing.

Almost done!

The next thing now to do is to make a small hole at the top of both lids, wide enough for your string to go through.

You want the lids to stand up and form that “corner” I mentioned earlier.

Just tape the string on the back of the box after you pull it tight to keep the lids up.

The final touch is to add some chocolatey goodness to your solar oven and you’re ready to bake!

One more thing, be sure to cover the cookies with some plastic wrap. Seal it tight because you want to hold the heat in.

Using his sunglasses so the sun and reflection from the foil doesn’t hurt his eyes, Tiny adjusted the oven for best exposure, and we waited, waited and waited.

Doing this in the winter, we didn’t have real strong sunlight the whole day and the mornings were cool. But even with those factors, we were pretty happy with the results after a few hours.

More French Revolution Activities and Learning About France

It could take anywhere from 30 minutes to hours before you see progress depending on weather factors.

And then presto! Tiny was pleased.

Our cookies took several hours to cook, (tip: don’t let your kids know, but try to keep them small so they will bake faster) but then again it probably didn’t help that Tiny had to check on them about 300 times and with a magnifying glass to speed up the process.

It was a great way to spend the day waiting and anticipating chocolate chip cookies!

And oh yes, talking about the culture of France too!

French Revolution Lapbook–Minibooks

February 22, 2014 | 2 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Start out a unit study or lapbook with something hands-on instead of something that could be boring. Necessary background information on your topic or even studying dates can come after you introduce something engaging.

I want my kids to learn those necessary facts of a topic like the French Revolution, but starting them out on things like the causes of the French Revolution or talking about the 3 Estates of French society may put them to sleep. It may put me to sleep too.

Hands-on Learning First

Make learning palatable by deciding the order you want to present printables and for most kids its normally after you have presented something that hooks them on the topic. It doesn’t have to be a hands-on project. When we started our FBI unit study we popped popcorn and watched a documentary on netflix to kick off our unit study.

That is why I delay some of the printables for the lapbook. So now my kids have had time to play a game about the French Revolution and make something sweet tasting like chocolate sandwiches. It just makes the formal part of learning a little more pleasant.

Today, I have minibooks 4 and 5 for you. The above picture shows you where we are starting to place our minibooks. Of course you can place them the same way or use part of our minibooks and others you find. But my books are pretty easy and I like it that way since we do lapbooks for enrichment.

French Revolution Lapbook

Also, sometimes we add recipes that we did to our lapbook, but Tiny hasn’t decided yet if he wants to add them. Even if you do add it later, you simply rearrange the minibooks.

Book 4 is an open face book to label the 3 Estates. Class distinctions was one of the problems of the French Revolution. The largest class was the common folks and most of them didn’t have the necessities of life, like bread. So we looked up some scriptures about partiality in the Bible and discussed some about equality for all man.

Download Label the Three Estates minibook here.

Book 5 is a small layered book about the causes of the French Revolution. You could add several more causes for the French Revolution than the 3 easy ones I included in this minibook. The French Revolution is certainly a high school topic but chisel it down to make it an elementary or middle school topic like I have done here. It certainly is easier to tweak it down for an age, than it is at times to flesh it out for a highschooler.

Causes of the French Revolution Minibook

Download layered book Causes of the French Revolution here.

We have at least one more hands-on project we did while on this topic and then the next minibooks to complete this topic will come.

Hugs and love ya,

If you missed it:

Grab Book 1 Beethoven & The French Revolution? Minibook

Grab Book 2 French Revolution Unit Study + Beheaded. The Guillotine Mini Book

Grab Book 3 Free Printable Minibook–Timeline of Events Leading Up to the French Revolution

French Revolution Unit Study – Pain Au Chocolat Easy Recipe

February 15, 2014 | Leave a Comment
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Studying about the French Revolution Unit Study Pain Au Chocolat will make for a fun topic today. And look at my page Free Quick France Unit Study and Make Easy French Bread for more ideas.

I wanted to add in another easy hands-on project for our study about the French Revolution. We alread haves the Storming the Bastille board game I created.

French Revolution Unit Study – Pain Au Chocolat Easy Recipe

Because the French Revolution is a pretty deep topic, I wanted to focus some on the culture and aspects of the country.

When I think of France and it’s culture, I think of, besides wonderful aged wine, (which Tiny was up for a taste test on) the best bread and chocolate.

French Revolution Game - French Revolution Unit Study @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

So I came up with an easy hands-on idea for studying about France and that is to make chocolate sandwiches or pain au chocolat. Tiny is for sure getting his home economics in on this semester.

I probably wouldn’t make a great ambassador for France because I didn’t bake my bread all from scratch with wholesome ingredients. I used store bought wheat rolls because I had them in the house already for meatball subs that night.

After reading some about what kids in France snacked on, the idea of a chocolate sandwich for breakfast sounded too good to be true for Tiny that morning (or so he thought anyway). He was pretty eager to get started with “school”.

After gathering up the bread and mostly the chocolate and a bit of butter and milk, Tiny was ready.

Tiny cut the bread on a diagonal so we would have 4 halves to share.

He buttered the bread so we could toast it in the oven after we put the chocolate spread on it.

Then he added a tad of butter to the mixture.

And actually we used half and half in our mixture because it was a bit creamier. But you can use milk too.

Pain Au Chocolat Easy Recipe

Microwave the mixture until heated through and melted.

No, I didn’t pull out the bowl on top of the boiling water pot for this. Microwave is fine for us.

Then spread the chocolate and we baked the sandwiches in the oven on 350 degrees until toasted.

Tiny wasn’t sold when he tasted it. I think he worked himself up to thinking about the word sandwich and couldn’t think of anything else when he bit into it.

Unlike his mom, he is not a big bread eater either, but I was hoping this would make him like it a bit better.

Me? It was actually pretty good for a sweet roll for breakfast.

If we had used some other bread too besides wheat, it would have been even better.

I was pleasantly surprised that with the butter and toasting it, we almost felt a bit like we were eating at the outside cafes in France.

Flaky, crunchy and sweet, it was pretty good. Some home made bread or wafers could make this even better.

At least with wheat rolls, I felt like it was a bit healthy. {it sounds good anyway}

I found a couple recipes too that you can fuss over a bit more and that could be used when studying about France, it’s food and culture.

Here is a grilled chocolate sandwich with a bit of confectioners’ sugar dust which is no long on Martha White site.

{Source: Martha Stewart}

And then this one is from Dying For Chocolate blog.

I love the crusty vanilla pound cake and the whip cream. Ewww la, la.

{Source: Dying for Chocolate}

However you serve it up, this definitely will send you and your kids’ blood sugar sky high in the morning, but a little bit doesn’t hurt.

French Revolution Lapbook Minibooks

Next, look at the minibooks which come in this free download.

Beethoven and the Revolution
The Guillotine – The French Terror
Timeline of Events Leading up the French Revolution
3 Estates – French Society
Causes of the French Revolution layered book
Queen Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI
What is the Directory, What is the Reign of Terror and What is the Sans Culottes

How to Get the Free French Revolution Lapbook

This is a subscriber freebie.

That means when you sign up to follow me, you get my emails in your inbox and you get this freebie.

1) Sign up on my list.

2) Grab the freebie instantly.

3) Last, look for all my emails in your inbox. Glad to have you following me!

French Revolution Unit Study + Beheaded. The Guillotine Mini Book

February 9, 2014 | 4 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Tiny was all ears or is that all heads up (ha ha corny, I know I am a geek) when we studied the next sub-topic in our unit study. When it comes to gore, why are our kids so heads up about topics like this?

Well it’s no doubt this topic was fascinating, but at the same time it would make quite the essay for a high school topic on capital punishment. We touched on some of that in our school day, but mainly we focused on some of the science and history behind the guillotine because of Tiny’s age.

A lot of our facts and reading came from the Learning Through History magazine which is not printed anymore, but you can still buy the cds. We have the issue on the French Revolution and it had some note worthy facts about the guillotine.

Here are a few:

The machine weighed around 1300 pounds or about the weight of a small car.
The guillotine metal blade weighed 88 pounds.
The height of the guillotine was around 14 feet tall or about the top of a basketball goal.
The falling blade had a rate of speed of about 21 feet/second, faster than a fastball thrown in a baseball game.
The beheading took 2/100 of a second, quicker than you blink.
The time for the guillotine blade to fall down to the victim took 1/70 of a second, quicker than you can say guillotine.

Because the guillotine remained the official French form of execution until 1981, when the death penalty was abolished, there is some footage about guillotines on YouTube. At least one of them is real.

I really did not see the learning value of allowing Tiny to watch them, so I am not listing any here.

I focused more on the facts stated above. There is a book that is for ages 12+ that was recommended in the magazine if you want to look at it. We had enough information with the magazine, but it certainly is worth a look at the history of it and if you want something more age appropriate.

The guillotine is a noteworthy invention by the France to a terrible problem of how people were executed. Prior to the guillotine, people were burned at the stake, drawn and quartered or pulled apart by horse or oxen.

I think that is enough to introduce at Tiny’s age and since I wanted him to focus on some of the science or facts behind it, it allowed us to study this topic and it not be all about the French terror.

Download the The French Guillotine minibook here.

Soon, I will be showing you the placement of the minibooks on the file folder.

Are you caught up with us yet?

Hugs and love ya,

See more of our posts about the French Revolution!

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

French Revolution Minibooks

Finishing Strong – Homeschool Link Up Party

What a great launch week!

Your favorite post from last week:

Our favorites from last week:

French Revolution Lapbook Minibooks

How to Get the COMPLETE Free French Revolution Lapbook

Learn About the Geography of France by Creating A Solar Oven

Creating a Solar Oven

Learn About the Geography of France

More French Revolution Activities and Learning About France

French Revolution Lapbook–Minibooks

Hands-on Learning First

French Revolution Lapbook

French Revolution Unit Study – Pain Au Chocolat Easy Recipe

Pain Au Chocolat Easy Recipe

French Revolution Lapbook Minibooks

How to Get the Free French Revolution Lapbook

French Revolution Unit Study + Beheaded. The Guillotine Mini Book

Categories

Archives

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

Finishing Strong – Homeschool Link Up Party

What a great launch week!

Your favorite post from last week:

Our favorites from last week:

French Revolution Lapbook Minibooks

How to Get the COMPLETE Free French Revolution Lapbook

Creating a Solar Oven

Learn About the Geography of France

More French Revolution Activities and Learning About France

Hands-on Learning First

French Revolution Lapbook

Pain Au Chocolat Easy Recipe

French Revolution Lapbook Minibooks

How to Get the Free French Revolution Lapbook

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