Types of Rock Lapbook

Two weeks ago princess and I made this simple lapbook to review the types of rock we had studied as part of our earth science unit. Here's a closer look at it...

We started by taping together two pieces of carstock (each was about the size of half a sheet of paper). Princess wrote on the front Types of Rock, but since it was red the picture didn't come out very well.

Then we began working on the inside of the book. First we cut out the poem we worked on memorizing during the rock unit and pasted in the center. Next we cut out 4 books, one for each type of rock we studied, igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic and rocks from space. Princess insisted that we include rocks from space :). We colored and glued on pictures for each type. (Both the pictures and the poem are part of Earth Science and Astronomy for the Grammar Stage) Here's what it looked like...

We then wrote on the inside of each book the different types of rock that fell into that type that we had studied. For instance on the inside of the igneous booklet we wrote granite, microgranite and basalt. Here's what that looked like...

Although this lapbook was very simple, it was an effective review of what we were learning. Princess had fun making this lapbook and has used it as a reference since the. I love when we can have fun and still learn! I hope that this post will give you an idea of how you can use lapbooks for review.

Weekly Report-Week 33

Truckin’ right along. We finished another week here and it went very well. It seems that princess works quite a bit harder when the end is in sight! Here’s what we accomplished…

Language Arts-Princess began reading The Corn Grows Ripe, this will be her last assigned book this year, so she’s trying to finish it ahead of schedule. We completed another week of Spelling Workout and Writing with Ease. I’m amazed at how much better princess is doing dictation. I’m thinking that next year we may blend Writing with Ease and Classical Writing Aesop.

Math-We finally finished the multiplication section with our x9 facts. We ended the unit with a game of Multiplication War, which princess really enjoyed! I’ll have to remember to suggest playing this later on. We only have one more unit left in 3A, so it looks like we will finish it before the baby comes.

Science-We spent the week studying fossils. Here’s a look at her narration sheet…

History-We finished Story of the World 2 this week! It was a good year, not as good as last year, but I think that’s partly due to the fact that I didn’t get the activity guide. Next week we’ll spend some time catching up on our timeline and looking back at what we learned this year.

Extras-We didn’t get to any of the extras this week.

That’s a look at our week, hope yours was good too!

Weekly Report-Week 28

School went well this week for the most part. I’m a bit cranky as I’m getting to the “I’m always uncomfortable” stage of my pregnancy. Thankfully, princess have given me quite a bit of grace :). Here’s what we accomplished this week…

Language Arts: Princess read The Whipping Boy this week. On the second day of her reading she threw the book down and said “I’m not reading anymore because it’s not fair what’s happening”, then she promptly picked it up and read several more pages. I had to laugh, but I’m also so proud of her because she’s gotten to the point where she gets engrossed in the story instead of in the act of reading the book. Yeah, progress!! We also completed another week of Writing with Ease, First Language Lessons and Spelling Workout.

Math: We spent the week multiplying by 6. Princess has caught onto this quickly, but we still need to keep working on her facts. Thankfully we have a game on her DS to help with that!

Science: We spent the week studying rocks, specifically what rock is and how it can be formed. We did a fun, but simple experiment about lava involving a toothpaste tube! We squeezed the tube to have the pressure build up and then opened the cap a bit and wah lah!

Princess can’t stop talking about this one. Here a look at the experiment page we did for her notebook…
History: We talked about Martin Luther and Henry the VIII this week. Princess was enthralled with Henry the VIII, so much so that when we went to meet her dad for lunch the first thing out of her mouth was the poem about his wives (Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced beheaded survived). My hubby turned very quickly to me and said, what are you teaching her? I had a good laugh and then explained that we had read the poem in Story of the World that day. We all had a good laugh about it after that! I’m amazed at all the “informational pegs” that princess is picking up along the way.

Extras: We managed to get our artist composer study done this week. Princess also went to clay class this week and brought home this project…
I’m really amazed at what they are teaching her to do, it’s far beyond my ability!

Education of Me: I started Gulliver’s Travels this week and frankly, I’m bored. I’m going to keep plugging on and try to finish it, but I’ve taken it off our read-aloud list for next year. Maybe we’ll read it during the logic stage, but I’m guessing it’s going to get saved for high school.

Hope you had a wonderful week! Be sure to check out what others are doing over at the Weekly Wrap-up.

Weekly Report-Week 26

Is it Friday again already? It was a good week for us, but it went by very fast for me. Here's a look at what we did...

Language Arts: Princess began reading Shadrach this week. She has fallen in love with this book and I suspect that she might try to finish it this weekend. We also completed 5 lessons in FLL, a full week of WWE and another lesson in Spelling Workout. We began reading The Secret of the Andes this week. Both of us are super excited about this book since it's set in Peru near where we used to live. When I read it, I can hear the panpipes playing and feel the breezes blowing through the valley. It's brought up some great memories!

Math: We spent some time on review this week, which princess did very well at. So we moved onto long division. This has proven to be alittle tough for princess. I think mainly because she doesn't have her facts down cold yet. The strange this is though that when she has a word problem that requires long division to solve it, she can do it without a problem, but if you give her the exact same problem by itself, she has a hard time with it. I'm not sure what to think about this, she obviously understands the concept, maybe it's a confidence issue?? Either way, we are going to pause when we finish the 3A book and spend some time reviewing the concepts she learned using Miquon, plus work on her mult/div facts before we move on.

Science: We studied habitats this week and made habitat fact posters, here's a look at them...

History: We spent the week studying the civilizations of Central and South America, such as the Mayans, the Aztecs and the Incas. Princess really enjoyed history this week and for that I'm grateful!

Extras: We looked at different types of wind instruments this week. Also princess went to clay class again this week, beyond that, it didn't get done.

Education of Me: I'm still plugging away at MacBeth.

Hope you had a great week, read about others at the Weekly Report.

Weekly Report-Week 25

We had another good week here, here's a look at what we did...

Language Arts: Princess read a book about Columbus, which she enjoyed. We completed two more lessons in Spelling Workout and one in Writing with Ease. We also squeezed in alittle First Language Lessons.

Math: We contiued to work on multiplying tens and hundreds this week and things went very well. Princess is gaining confidence in the multiplication department, so we ended the week with a test. She passed with flying colors, so I guess that means that she does get it after all :).

Science: We talked about oceans this week. The neat thing was that when we looked at the pages about life under the sea, princess was able to point out fish she had actually seen when she went snorkling with her Dad. I love those moments when life collides with learning and your child sees that what they are studying is really true! We also did an experiment on ocean currents. Here's a look at what happened when we added cold colored water to hot clear water...

Pretty cool, huh?

History: We continued to read Pedro's journal this week. Princess couldn't believe that Columbus though America was India. I explained to her that in those days they didn't have the maps we have now; on their maps they didn't have the Americas. She responded with, "Well why didn't Leif Ericson just tell them, he knew about it". I had to snicker a bit but seriously I'm glad that she's remembering things we have studied and making connections. We'll just have to work on the whole timeline aspect of it :).

Other: We actually got to some of the extras this week. We looked at a painting by Michaelangelo and listened to a concerto by Telemann. Princess declared that Telemann was much better than Scarletti and I have to say that I agree!

Education of Me: I managed to read two Acts of MacBeth this week. So far, I'm loving this play. I'll write more about it later.

Well, that's our week, hope you had a good one too! Read more at the Weekly Wrap Up.

Weekly Report-Week 24

I'm tired this week! I think that my body is trying to get ready for the baby, so I'm not sleeping all that long at night, which means I need a nap, which just perpetuates the cycle. Thankfully I plan at the beginning of the year, so for the most part I've just had to open my plan book and go! Here's what we did this week...

Language Arts: We completed two lessons in Spelling Workout this week. We also completed another week of First Language Lessons and Writing with Ease. Princess read a book about volcanoes this week. She very much enjoyed this book and I'm surprised how much she likes to read non-fiction.

Math: We took things slow this week, but we did get through the beginning of two digit multiplication. Princess understands how to do it, she just gets nervous because she doesn't know all her facts cold. So today we took the day off from bookwork and just played a game suggested in the Home Instructor's Guide. Both of us were surprised by how quickly she did her calculations. It was just another good reminder that games are an effective teaching tool. They build speed and confidence in a very sneaky way :).

Science: We began the week by erupting our volcano. I wrote a whole post about this below, but here's a picture of what it looked like as it was erupting...

Then for the rest of the week, we studied about mountains and glaciers.

History: We spent the first part of the week studying the Moghul empire and then we began reading about the explorers, such as Columbus. We have paused in our reading of SOTW so that we can read Pedro's Journal. So far princess loves this book!

Other: The only extras we go to this week was princess's clay class. Oh, well.

Education of Me: I didn't get any reading done this week. Hey, I was just happy to be able to stay up long enough to teach school and make lunch before crashing :).

Hope you had a great week, thanks for reading about ours! Be sure to check out other weekly reporters over at Kris's blog.

Project: Exploding Volcano!!!

Well, sort of :). Princess was a bit disappointed that our volcano didn't go boom. I think that she's been watching to much of Mythbuster's lately. Anyways, here how we made a volcano from scratch and then exploded it in the shower (that's right, in the shower).


First, we started by making some salt dough. For this project I chose a salt/cornstarch dough because it tends to dry quicker, here's my favorite recipe for that...

• Mix 2 cups salt with 2/3 cup of water and heat over medium heat for several minutes. In another bowl mix 1 cup cornstarch and 1/2 cups of cold water. Remove the salt water from the heat and add in the cornstarch water. Return to the heat and stir continuously until thickened. Let cool a bit and then knead the dough until it's smooth and workable. This makes about 2 cups of dough.

So after making two batches of dough, we had enough to cover our glass bottle. Here's what it looked like (she's already started to paint it in this picture as I forgot to get the camera out on the first day, but you get the idea)...
Next we let our volcano dry for several days. This is where the size of you volcano makes a difference. The bigger the volcano = the more dough = very long time to dry. I had a friend who made a huge volcano (about 2 1/2 feet tall); very cool, but it took three weeks to dry! So after your volcano is dry, you can paint it. We opted for standard black paint, but you can use any color you like. Here's what it looked like after that...
After the paint dried(this took about 1/2 a day), we filled our bottle with 1/4 cup of baking soda, 2 Tbsp of liquid soap and some red food coloring. A funnel comes in real handy for this step, but if you don't have one or if your's has a wire mesh that won't allow baking soda through, like mine, you can always cut off the corner of a plastic bag.
At this point I would move your volcano to a place that can get messy, such as outside, the sink or the shower. Now for the fun part, add 1/2 cup of white vinegar. Do this very quickly, as the reaction begins immediately! Here's what our volcano looked like as it was exploding...
We had alot of fun with this project, from start to finish! I highly recommend doing this at least once during your homeschooling journey.

ETA: I received an email from a dear friend of mine that let me know of another option for exploding your volcano. Apparently diet soda (preferrably orange as it makes cool colored lava) and a Tbsp of sugar creates alot more fun. We're going to try this later on in the week and I'll try to post a picture of it when we do. (We tried this and it didn't work for us, but I think that it's because we had alittle baking soda at the bottom of our volcano.)

Weekly Report-Week 23

Keep on trucking seems to be the theme of our school this year. I keep expecting the burn out to hit or to hit a wall, but thankfully that hasn't happened yet. Here's what our week looked like...

Language Arts: Princess finished Mrs. Piggle Wiggle's Farm this week and I'm very proud of her because this book was a bit of a stretch for her. She did great though and only complained about the length of her assignments once. Our switch to First Language Lessons and Spelling Workout is going great and I'm pleased with the decision to make the change. We also completed another week of Writing with Ease.

Math: We continued to work on multiplication and introduced multiplication within the tens and hundreds. At this point she's just doing problems like 600 x 2, but I can see that she's frustrated because she doesn't know her facts down cold. For the time being we are going to keep moving forward, but we'll see how things go next week.

Science: This week we talked about tornadoes and volcanoes. Here's our tornado...

We also made our volcano out of salt dough, which is currently drying. Next week we'll explode it, which is the part princess is really looking forward to.

History: We talked about Spain and Portugal during the Middle Ages and we also looked at the African kingdoms of Ghana and Mali. We continued to work on our mapwork, coloring pages and narrations. Her notebook is really looking great!

Other: Here's the one part of school that doesn't get done as much as I would like, but I guess that's bound to happen. Princess is continuing to go to clay class. Here's a look at some of the projects she has made so far...

Education of Me: I started to read MacBeth this week. I haven't finished all that I wanted to because of all the other things that needed to be done this week, but so far I like it. But then again I love Shakespeare so I'm not surprised.

Thanks for reading about our week, if you want to read about others, go check out the weekly report over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Weekly Report-Week 19

Back to the grind again! We are keeping at school so that we can finish second grade by the time the baby comes. So here’s what our week looked like…

Language Arts: Princess read about Marco Polo, which she absolutely loved! I was surprised how much she got into reading a biography, good thing I’ve planned some more for this year and next. We completed another week of Writing with Ease. We also add First Language Lessons back in. So far it has been far more successful this time around. We also started a verb lapbook as princess has been asking to do more lapbooks. Math: We continued working on subtraction within 10,000. We also began work on two step word problems and how to draw a basic bar diagram to solve them. It went well, but we’ll see for sure when she has her test on Monday :).

Science: We completed our first week of Earth Science, most of which was review from our Astronomy unit. Here’s a look at her notebook page… We also attempted to make a paper mache globe, but I don’t think it’s going to turn out, as our balloon started to shrink before our paper was dry.

History: We talked about Marco Polo and his exploration of China. Princess found it all very fascinated, so now I’m really looking forward to studying Columbus with her!

Others: We started studying Leonardo DaVinci’s paintings this week and we started listening to Scarlatti as our composer. Princess also started a Clay art class which she is really enjoying. I’ll try to get a picture of what she’s doing for next week.

Education of Me: I began reading The Chaucer Storybook and so far I like it, but I haven’t got very far. Hopefully I’ll be able to read more next week!

Hope you had a great week, thanks for reading about ours.