Our Thanksgiving ABCs book

We've been working on a Thanksgiving ABCs lapbook this past week and I have to tell you about it because it has actually worked out even better than I hoped! I LOVE that! I found it here. You do need to join her Yahoo group in order to download the file.

The cover

At first, I thought that just Little Man and I would work on it. He's been having a grand time cutting out the little booklets, tracing the letters and pasting in pictures from google images* and stickers from my scrapbook stash.

Then Z-Man showed some interest and I realized that this is a great narration tool! The booklets are quite small and he hasn't exactly mastered the art of teeny tiny writing yet so he narrates and I write. I'm always amazed at what he remembers (and I'm sometimes amazed at what he doesn't, but we're staying positive here.) For instance, for one of the booklets on the Mayflower, he told me, "A guy named John Howland fell overboard and was miraculously saved when he grabbed a rope that just happened to be hanging out of the ship." Seriously? After all the people we've read about (a LOT of whom seem to be named John) you remember the name of the guy who fell overboard? Love that!

The first page.

The first page opened up.

Happy Thanksgiving, All!

*I don't look them up with my kids though! I'm always astounded at the nasty images that even the most innocent google images search can turn up.

Rainforest Lapbook

Z-Man's Amazon Rainforest Lapbook:

He is so proud of his work. This is his third lapbook but I think we really need to do more because he is so pleased with the result and every time he shows someone, it's great review for him.

This is what it looks like opened up. The flap that folds up has a labelled map of South America on the other side.

Here are the little booklets opened up - the mammals book on the left has four individual booklets on the jaguar, tamarin, tapir and giant anteater. Each opens for a place to write information about the animal. The layers of the rainforest booklet opens at each layer to write a description. The tree opens at the top to describe the canopy, then the trunk opens in three places for lianas (vines), epiphytes and buttress roots. The booklet on the right shows where the world's rainforests are. The top flap has three frogs with places to write their names and a bromeliad, which actually opens on both sides. He also did a round anaconda book which we forgot to put in! Hmm... maybe it will fit above the layers book.

ALL of these lovely and colorful print-outs are from Homeschool Share. What a tremendous resource!

We've had such a wonderful time in the rainforest that we hate to leave. But we're not going too far - just north to Mexico - see you there!

Beautiful FREE Autumn unit study!

I just finished downloading this unit study from The Old Schoolhouse website and I haven't even finished looking at it yet - I just had to come here and tell people about it!! What a wonderful little unit study! There are links for lapbooking elements, links to online videos, a HUGE book list (you can read whatever you can find at your library) and all kinds of activities, work sheets, etc. It also looks like it will be very easy to include multiple ages - and you know that's big with me. WOW!!!!

Without further ado:

Click here to download your free Autumn unit study!