Hispanic Culture with Picture Books

I LOVE children's picture books. When my boys were younger it was the way I taught them using books based unit studies from Five in a Row and Homeschool Share. My boys are now teens, and picture books have fallen by the wayside for us. However, I teach Spanish to homeschoolers and public school kids in the afternoon and use a plethora of picture books to teach them. Homeschool Share has a blog, and they are featuring my post on teaching Hispanic culture with picture books. Not only do I share a list of picture books {all in English}, but there are also unit studies {free from Homeschool Share} to go with the books. 

To read the complete post, click here.

Looking Back: Our Favorite Homeschool Curricula

We are by no means done with our homeschooling journey, but with my oldest we are getting to the end as he will be a junior in the fall.  Here is a look at some of the curricula that we have enjoyed and learned the most from...

Our homeschooling journey started with Five in a Row when the boys were in early elementary.  Of all the products that we have used this has been my favorite.  My fondest memories come from FIAR.  There were so many neat activities and precious learning experiences that we had. Basically, Five in a Row is a literature-based curriculum.  For one week you read the same picture book, like The Duchess Bakes a Cake
or How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World and pull a lesson from five different subjects based on the book.  Each week there are lessons in language arts, social studies, science, art, and applied math.  My boys gained so much knowledge about the world through these lessons.  The lessons are gentle, yet deep and are memories in the making!  Starting at 3rd or 4th grade we moved from FIAR to other programs for history (Biblioplan) and science (Apologia).  See below for information...

Another similar resource (that is FREE!) are the lessons and lapbooks at Homeschool Share. There are unit studies at Homeschool Share that are similar to Five in a Row.  There are also numerous lapbooks.  We used several units and lapbooks from here and loved all of them!

For math we used Math-U-See and Teaching Textbooks. We used Math-U-See in the younger years.  I loved the hands-on approach and the way of teaching place value.  This year my oldest will use their Stewardship program which deals with personal finance.  Honestly, though, for the high school years I prefer Teaching Textbooks.  This program can mainly be done on the computer. The beauty of it is that every single problem, yes, every single one is done step by step for the student.  So as your child is working through his or her lesson and misses a problem he/she can go back a review the problem. Teaching Textbooks also grades their work.  Since I am very weak in math I felt like this was the way to go when we got to higher levels.

Apologia has awesome programs for both elementary and high school levels. The elementary levels are engaging and fun.  There is also a notebook that you can buy to help review the concepts they have learned. The notebooks include crosswords and notebooking pages with mini-books. My youngest son did every single one of the elementary books and loved them!  The high school levels are rigorous and challenging.  I love that creationism is explored along with why evolution doesn't work based on what we know of the world.

Biblioplan is what we used at the elementary level for history. Biblioplan is a four year program which you can cycle through a couple of times if you homeschool all the way through. It incorporates "spines" (history texts) like Story of the World, Usborne history books, etc. and literature to read as you go through the centuries.  We didn't use the other aspects of the program except for doing maps. I love that we could use literature to cover history!

We used Notgrass for high school history (world and American).  I liked that there were review questions and quizzes and tests to keep my son focused on the material. Literature is also incorporated into the program (although we did literature separately). There is also a book with original documents and speeches that your student can read. Notgrass comes from a Christian perspective which I appreciated.

For writing we used Institute for Excellence in Writing. I loved this program because it teaches good outlining skills and how to dress up your writing.  This is basically the only writing program that we used.  The only problem?  After using it for several years with both boys we got kind of bored with the system.  However, even with that, this is the BEST program out there that I have seen for writing simply because it teaches how to make your writing interesting.

We used Progeny Press and Teaching the Classics from Center for Lit. for teaching literature.  Teaching the Classics is a manual for the parent that teaches how to discuss literature with your student.  Invaluable!!!  I love the list of questions that can be used for any book at the end of the manual.  We used Progeny Press for some of the books that we read.  These are literature guides that come from a Christian perspective. I loved using these when we came to books that have hard topics in them like To Kill a Mockingbird.

So what have you used in your homeschool?

Lapbooking the 17th Century

Noah and I are going through Biblioplan 3 this year.  We recently finished the 17th century. Since most of what we do is read or listen to The Story of the World, I thought we would lapbook some of what we learned. I received for free from Journey through Learning a 17th century overview lapbook several years back. These lapbooks (17th-20th centuries) cover American history.  With Biblioplan we do both world and American history, so we won't be reviewing any world history as we go through this process. I am eager to review with my son! Will post pictures soon...

Zoology Lapbook Update-Ungulates and Primates

We have been working on ungulates (hoofed mammals) and primates.  Here are just a few of the lapbook pieces we have done. We are getting most of lapbook pieces from Homeschool Share.  We are putting the pieces in Bare Books (big spiral notebooks).  I just had to order some more books this week because we are running out of room!

Here are some of the books for ungulates.

Here are some of the books for primates...sorry, some of them are blurry!

A map of where the old world and new world monkeys are located.

Dog Breeds Lapbook

Ok, so these are not the best of pictures, but Zach just finished doing a lapbook on dog breeds that we got from Hands of a Child.  Ever since we got Titan, he has been interested in dog breeds and training so this lapbook was right up his alley!  I set up the work to get it done so that it could easily go in his workbook.  Basically, this is the first lapbook that Zach has done totally on his own!  No help from me except I did pre-cut the pieces.  To see how I set up this project for his workbox, go here.

Dog Breeds Lapbook Setup

Zach is going to be doing a lapbook on dog breeds over the next couple of weeks.  The lapbook comes from Hands of a Child. He has really developed an interest in dog breeds and dog training since getting our mini Schnauzer, Titan, this past summer. So I decided that I would set up his assignments for the lapbook ahead of time so that he can be as self-sufficient as possible as he works through the lapbook pieces. He is in 7th grade and by this time he should be able to do most of this on his own.  I wanted to set it up so that I could easily put the materials in his workbox.  Here is what I did:

I made a schedule for what lapbook pieces he should do each day.  One piece of the lapbook is to study the top 20 dog breeds and do a fact file on each.  So that will be an ongoing project.

Next, I printed off the informational pages that are in each Hands of a Child Lapbook. This is the packet he will need to use to get his information to finish the pieces.  I also printed off the activity instructions so that he will know what to do for each piece.

I then decided that I would cut out his pieces for him.  He hates cutting, and that is a big roadblock for him in doing lapbooks.  I cut the pieces out and put them in baggies with the number of the activity that corresponds to the activity number in the instructions.  That way he can just look at what number the piece is and find the same number in the instructions.  We are not doing every single lapbook piece.  Really, it is ok!  It is ok to not do every single thing!  I would rather him focus on the parts that will interest him the most.

I stapled the ends of a file folder to make a large pocket.  I then adhered the schedule on the front.  I Finally, the information packet, the activity instructions, and the lapbook pieces were slipped inside.  This is ready for his workbox!

Stay tuned!  When he is finished with it I will post pictures.

Update on our Science Lapbooks

This year we are doing zoology and using Lyrical Life Science and lapbooks to work through and learn the different animal groups.  If you want a complete list of our plan, see my sidebar under "School Plans 2009-2010". We started out doing an overview of invertebrates.  There are a lot of phyla of invertebrates (i.e. mollusks, poriferans, worms, etc.). We then moved on to vertebrates.  So far we have done fish, amphibians, and reptiles which are all cold-blooded. We finished birds last week which are warm-blooded and started mammals this week.  The different orders of mammals will last us for the rest of the year! This week we studied monotremes (egg-laying mammals...the platypus and the echidna). Did you know that the platypus has venom and that the echidna has a pouch?  We are learning all kinds of things about God's amazing creation!  Next  week we will move onto marsupials.

Update on Our Zoology Lapbooks

This year we are doing Zoology for our science.  You can see our plans here. We are basically going though the different phyla of the animal kingdom.  So far we have done invertebrates and we just started on vertebrate by studying amphibians.  Our is to move onto the rest of the vertebrates spending the most time on mammals. Here you can see our lapbooks/notebooks of the booklets we have done so far. I am taking the lapbook pieces from different sources.  Here is a list of the ones we are using:

Hands of a Child

Homeschool Share (most of the pieces will be from this awesome site!)

A Journey Through Learning

Some lapbook pieces created by me using files from Homeschool Share since I am a member there.

The big notebooks that we are putting our pieces in are from Bare Books.  We love these spiral bound books!  They are high quality yet not pricey!

Spanish Lapbook will be available....

very soon!!!! Just got word last night that it will be up on Homeschool Share in the next few days! I will post when it is officially on their site. Remember that this isn't just a lapbook, but there are mini lessons to go with each topic. I have been using this with my sons as a review and they are really enjoying it! See a picture here of Tim working with Noah on the lapbook. I am hoping that it will bless a lot of other families!

Dad Helps with School

Tim stayed home yesterday to try to recuperate from his accident. So he helped with school. Here he is working with Noah on the Spanish lapbook.

Spanish Lapbook-More Pictures

Here are a few more pictures of what we did in our Spanish Lapbook today. The boys picked out two animals each and colored pictures of them. They then wrote sentences to describe the animals' colors. For example, Noah wrote "El perro es negro y blanco." (The dog is black and white. Zach wrote, "La rana es verde, amarilla, anaranjada, roja y azul." (The frog is green, yellow, orange, red and blue.)Here are our clothing pages. These paper dolls are real cute!!!! You'll notice that we also have a pocket for our clothing flashcards and a pocket for the word "the" that comes in four forms in Spanish.

The Hickory Chair

We have been working on rowing The Hickory Chair which is a Five in a Row Volume 4 unit. Noah just completed his lapbook for the book. Here are some pictures. Thanks to Ami from Homeschool Share for making the booklets. The booklet "Places the Grandchildren found notes" is a pop-up booklet. See next picture. Not the greatest of photos, but you get the idea.

We used a mini file folder (available at Tobin's Lab) for our information on Louis Braille. You can open up the file folder and see the Braille alphabet and information on its inventor.

A Spanish Teaching Resource Coming Soon!

I have been working with Kelly from the Homeschool Share boards to make teaching plans and lapbook pieces for elementary Spanish. We are almost finished! I am so excited about this! The plans and lapbook won't be available for a little while longer...we probably have about two more weeks of work and then we also need Ami to post it all. So there is a bit of work ahead before it is available to everyone. However, my boys and I have been using the lapbook pieces that are done to help them review their Spanish. We are putting everything in a large spiral book that I ordered from Bare Books. The boys are loving putting this together! Here is our first page....

Here's our animal page...the animals are in alphabetically order in Spanish which reinforces learning the alphabet in Spanish.
Here is a list of topics that this Spanish lapbook will cover:

alphabet

animals (one for each letter...there are a few letters that don't have an animal).

numbers

clothing

noun/adjective agreement

"the" and all its forms

seasons

weather

months

dates

days of the week

basic adjectives

basic verbs

body parts

emotions

rooms in the house

items in the house

position words (to the right of, underneath, etc.)

I will post when it is finally up on the Homeschool Share website.