Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Activity, Change, Progress

ocean

Ocean Unit Study Lapbook Covers

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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.

staged house

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.

Ocean Lapbook Cover Collage

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.

Carp Fish

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.

Ocean Lapbook Cover 1 Ocean Lapbook Cover 2

Download Ocean Lapbook Color Cover Here.

Download Ocean Lapbook COLOR IT Cover Here.

Ocean Lapbook Cover Coloring 3

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,

2012Tinasignature

 

Ocean Currents Minibook

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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.

Ocean Currents Minibook

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,

2012Tinasignature Ocean Unit Study Ocean Layers

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

 

 

Ocean Unit Study: Vocabulary Words –Wave Pocket

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Yikes, we did it! Our house is finally listed for sale.   I thought I would share a few pictures of it because I have been talking about it for months as we have been getting it ready to sell.

You know I like things not so cluttered, but I still had to move out a good amount of stuff for pictures.  Plus you know I have been sharing pictures with you as my furniture sells.  So I have to constantly rearrange furniture so we can have a place to sit and do school,etc.

I love our saltwater pool with waterfalls.  It is a tranquil place outside.

This is part of my front living room area.

I cleared off my kitchen stuff  for the picture, but my kitchen is basically open to the rest of the house.  Though I don’t know this picture might make it look small, but it is a bit bigger.

I love my office and this is my “sanctuary” and place where I blog to you from.  I had to close one shutter because the light was too blinding for the picture, but I LOVE light and I normally have both shutters wide open.

Those are just a few pictures.  As soon as I take some more, I will share them with you.

In between getting ready for that and 1001 things you need to do to get ready for a big move, we have been trying to scoot along on our Ocean Unit Study.

I have been determined to school as long as we can because I know we will have one longggggggg interruption and I think I have come to peace with that notion.

Why are we our own worst enemies when it comes to meting out grace for ourselves?

Ocean Vocabulary Words Collage

Today, I have vocabulary words ready for our Ocean Unit Study along with a wave pocket.

Remember I try to aim a lot of my lapbooks for about middle school age if I can.  It’s so easy to find printables and projects on this subject for the younger grades, but tough to find hands-on things as our kids hit the middle grades to high school.  I am determined to keep it both fun and hands-on all the way to high school.

Ocean Unit Study: Vocabulary Words

So I do use cursive font and try to steer away from babyish looking clip art where possible to keep lapbooking likable for the older kids too.

Tiny also decided to do some coloring on this lapbook for a cover page.  I will share that in an upcoming post too.

Download Vocabulary Words and Pocket here.

Hugs and love ya,

If you missed them, grab these other posts in my Ocean Unit Study – Ocean Lapbook

Ocean Unit Study Language Arts: Message in a Bottle

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

I am pulling out all the stops today or is that corks? Ha ha corny I know.  But I have set aside a few things for Tiny in doing our ocean unit study for language arts and one of them is preparing a message in a bottle.

Ocean Unit Study Message In a Bottle Language Arts
Ocean Unit Study Message in a Bottle 1

Too, I want to be sure I use up some of the “treasures” I keep in what I call my “Mary Poppins Bag”.  They are usually games, fun hands-on items, books or some other manipulative that I buy or collect, keep in my “reserve” or stash and don’t let the boys know about.  Then I bring them out to add a twist to our day, ramp up a lesson plan or to use with a unit study.

In this case, I wanted to give Tiny a writing assignment outside of the box and well inside the bottle and I can’t think of anything more fun than writing a message in a bottle.  So we used this message in a bottle kit I had purchased.

Ocean Unit Study Message in a Bottle 2

I probably could have found a bottle around here, made some cool map and writing page, but I had this nifty little purchase already in my house.  Keeping hands-on activities easy for me him, why not use up what I have already.

Since my house is emptying out nicely, craft items are getting harder to find too.  But I knew that and I planned ahead a bit by stocking up my “Mary Poppins Bag”.

Ocean Unit Study Message in a bottle 3

Actually this kit had a cool ocean current map so he can predict where his bottle may go.  He made some predictions from where we will be dropping it off.  It also came with a box or container so he can store his bottle in the container until we get ready to fly out of here.

Since we will be flying out of Florida when we move, we can drop it in the ocean there. That’s the plan anyway.

I can tell you this morning he is not having any trouble composing his first draft.  Ideas are overflowing.  Give kids a purpose to write, include a few hands-on items and they’ll be inspired to communicate.

Hugs and love ya,

Also See: Oceans Unit Study

What is the Ocean Minibook

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

I keep on pushing through with our home school schedule and created the minibook: What is the Ocean next.  What is the Ocean Hoping to squeeze in the Ocean Unit Study that we prepared together in our 10 Days of Diving Into Unit Studies by Creating a Unit Study Together before I have to completely stop homeschooling and prepare for the move might be too big of a goal, but nothing ever came from not planning.

I have learned through many years of homeschooling that with big changes you need to mete out some grace to yourself too.

Talking about moving, which you may get so tired of me talking about, but look what sold and was gone today.

piano - Copypiano gone

This sale pulled at my heart strings a wee bit because all of my boys learned how to play on this piano.   Focusing on the fun and wonderful opportunity we will have of living overseas though, I think I might be able to get over this quickly.

My plan for now is to not slow down with any school since I know we will have a long stop when we move.

We will go ahead and start our Ocean Unit Study.  I have already started creating printables.  As usual I have tried to create some of this minibook with cursive writing so it is not babyish and because if your kids are like mine they can always use the practice reading all kinds of cursive fonts.

Also, this minibook is easy enough to find the answers to because it is just a matter of locating Oceans and Seas in their Atlas on online, whichever you prefer them to do.  I will eventually be creating a page with links too, but I have already collected several links when we prepared this unit study together and will be sharing them again together as I round them up.

So the title of this minibook comes right off one of the chapters from the book I told you we would use as a simple spine when we did our 10 day unit study series together, which is Discover the Oceans: The World’s Largest Ecosystem.

Download here What is the Ocean free minibook

Hugs and love ya,

2014Tinasignature

Fun Ocean Unit Study Resources