Canadian Immigration Lapbook

This Canadian Immigration Lapbook uses Susan Hughes' book Coming to Canada, Building a Life in a New Land. It was a great study!! Canadian Immigration Lapbook. Go to this post for resource information.

Canadian Government Lapbook

 Here is the Canadian Government Lapbook that I created several years ago.
Canadian Government Lapbook

Blessings,
Natalie

Ecosystems

We have just finished up our unit on Ecosystems. We began by doing the Adaptive Curriculum Unit on Ecosystems. You can look at my post here. 

Our daughter completed the Ecosystems Lapbook from Hands of a Child. This was really valuable for the vocabulary and for the systems of an ecosystem. It included lots of information on the environment of an ecosystem and the balance of it. 

Our daughter has completed several lapbooks from Hands of a Child and I have always been pleased with them. 

One thing I had our “little one” do is watch a Jeff Corwin video on an ecosystem of her choice. You can find a list of Jeff Corwin videos on Discovery Education here. She chose Australia and the Grand Island Ecosystem. I then had her make note of where she saw any of the systems within an ecosystem portrayed on the video. This was a great activity to solidify terms that she was learning in her lapbook and from Adaptive Curriculum. 

We have wrapped things up now on this unit and starting next week we are on to Chemistry!! Blessings!

Ecosystems Lapbook

One Resource - Two Children - The Body Book

I used this resource with our now 22 year old daughter and ten years later with our 12 year old daughter. Both were in grade 5 when the studied the Human Body. They are very different as you will see in the way that they chose to use this resource. They both learned a lot about the human body, but chose to express themselves in very different ways!! Our children are not cookie-cutters of each other, this is my plea to give them their individuality.

One child chose a lap book and one a scrapbook. One chose to make an almost complete body, the other chose to divide up the human body into systems and parts. One was very matter of fact, and the other added her own special humor!

The Body Book is an excellent resource. There are so many different ways it could be used. I have seen children use this resource and make a "life-sized" model of themselves with all the systems. The Body Book has experiments, explanations and then the models. It is a great resource for studying the Human Body.  Blessings!!

Microscopes and Microscopic Organisms

One of the very first things we purchased when we started homeschooling almost 15 years ago was a good microscope. At that time we had our three older children to homeschool and my oldest daughter really loved Biology and Chemistry. We have never regretted that purchase. We have lent it out to many homeschoolers over the years, we have used it at co-op’s, classes and for so many different science units that it has been so worth the $300.00 we spent back then. 

Last year we used it once again for our unit on Microscopes and Microscopic Organisms. The first thing that we did for this unit was I had “Little One” do another Classification Chart as a review more than anything. 

Next, we did the Single Celled Organism Lapbook by Hand’s of a Child and it was excellent.
Our daughter enjoyed this and did the experiments included in the pack.

She had fun blowing up the balloon with the yeast in a bottle among other activities.

We also went out to a large pond nearby and collected pond water. “Little One” then put the pond water under the microscope to see what was in there. There was lots to see. 

Did you know if you put your digital camera lens right up against the microscope you can take pictures like these? Our support teacher told us that and I was amazed at how well it worked!!

We have collected lots of pre-made slides over the years, and after we have been working on a project I just leave them out with the microscope. 

Pretty soon we are tugging out hair, finding fuzz, exploring leaves and even getting a drop or two of blood to take a look at. Everything is just more interesting to explore under a microscope!

Happy Exploring, Blessings!!