Great Site for Home School Ideas

I just wanted to share a great site for home schooling and lapbooking.  The site is "Dynamic 2 Moms" and is located at http://dynamic2moms.webs.com/.  I found this site about a year ago and have really enjoyed following it.  They have several examples of lapbooks and ideas that they have done with their children.  They also include information for the teacher about the background of the subject.  Their most recent post was the Renaissance.  It would be a nice addition or a nice add-on to the Michelangelo unit that I just did.  (I only wish I would have had it this summer!)

You can find a little bit of everything on the everything from beginning lapbook ideas to home school support to recipes.  So, check it out!

Michelangelo Lapbook

We have finally finished our Michelangelo lapbook. We decided to use construction paper and make it into more of a book rather than using a file folder. Here it is...

In the beginning of the unit, I had the kids get online and find one thing about Michelangelo (below).  This was before we had done anything with the unit.  It was a great way to introduce them to our new topic.  Their job was to find one work of Michelangelo, draw it, and write a brief description about it.  

Various Information flap books that we completed throughout the unit

The page below is also showing the closed and open version of the lapbook pages.

Next is a vocabulary page using the book Michelangelo's Surprise.  The Duomo and the vocabulary are both flap books.

Michelangelo fact sheet

The bottom portion of the page is a "switch" book.  The inside of the book is made of several half sheets of typing paper.  The pages are stapled together and cut into 4 sections.  The object is to draw a portion of an animal, monster, etc. in each of the 4 sections (example...the head section one, upper body section two, middle body section three, and lower body section four).  You have to pre-cut the pages so that the correct section of the picture is in the correct section of the book.

The bottom portion of the picture is a continuous line drawing.  The student puts his/her pencil on the paper and begin drawing a person.  They can not take the pencil off the page until their picture is completely finished.

Shape Art 

We also used several art books throughout the summer. One book that the kids particularly enjoyed was Discover Great Paintings A Child's Book of Art by Lucy Micklethwait.  Throughout the book, the author takes various art pieces and uses an investigative method to study the work.  On one page (the left side), the author gives a short paragraph sparking interest in the upcoming piece, then she poses various questions about the work and uses "cut-and-paste" portions of the piece to direct the viewers thinking and turn on their imagination.  The opposite page (the right side) then shows the complete art piece and gives the viewer the answers to the previously posed questions as well as other facts about the picture.  On the bottom of this page, there is a small information section about the artist and the piece.  This book/picture exploration was one of my kids favorite activities. 

The final day of our unit was met with putting the finishing touches on our Michelangelo book and watching a movie about the Renaissance from the library entitled The Renaissance for Students: Renaissance Art, Music & Literature.  It is one of a 5 part series  about the Renaissance put out by Schlessinger Media and can be found at libraryvideo.com.  

Just an added note...the templates and lapbook instruction ideas can be found at homeschoolshare.org following this link: http://www.homeschoolshare.com/michelangelos_surprise.php.

Home School - Michelangelo Lapbook Activity

This summer we have been gradually working to complete a large unit on Michelangelo and the Renaissance era.  We are using the lapbook templates and information from homeschoolshare.org.  The link to the lapbook we are working on is http://www.homeschoolshare.com/michelangelos_surprise.php.  (We will be posting pictures of the lapbook when we have completed it, but I wanted to share an activity that we did today.)
Yesterday at work, I was speaking to a lady about cameras.  We began talking about her job as an art teacher, and I mentioned that we are studying art this summer.  She shared with me an idea that she used in her elementary art classroom that the children really enjoyed.
For those of you who do not know, one of the things that Michelangelo is remembered for is his painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling done in fresco paints.  In order to accomplish this, he spent many months/years on scaffolding painting above his head.  Today, we first took the time to read more about the paintings in the Sistine Chapel.  Then, we recreated our own "Sistine" experience.

First, I taped a piece of typing paper under the bottom of 2 chairs.  I gave the kids the markers and told them that they had to lay on their backs and make a picture.  While I realize that using actual paints of some sort would have been more "realistic," I did not think it would be the best for the carpet! I got them started and them let them just work at their own pace until they were tired and had completed their pictures.

Savannah chose to draw her favorite thing...horses.  She did hers "Sistine Chapel" style by drawing one horse on one side of the "ceiling" and a then flip-flopping a  horse on the other side to imitate the two sides of the room.

JJ drew his version of the sunken city Atlantis.  There is a castle and various water creatures like an octopus in his design.

They really had a lot of fun, but they also realized how difficult it was to paint in that position!

Home School Links - Lapbooks

The summer "break" is upon us.  We have finished our regular school year and are preparing to begin our summer fun school activities.  This summer we will be focusing on our Science, Music, and Art subjects.

I find that during the regular school year, we just do not have time in our day to work on these subjects and do them any justice.  A couple of years ago, I decided to do our science in the summer when we were able to actually examine plants and animals and be able to get outside to observe nature and do various experiments.  It worked really well for us, and we had a lot of fun doing it.

During the summer, I try to make school seem like more fun than learning.  It is amazing though how much the kids learn while having fun.  We do fun things during the winter months also, but sometimes it is just hard to find fun in working on a handwriting page in a workbook teaching you how to properly form a cursive "T" or a math page in a text book answering a long division problem...ick!

One of the methods we will use this summer is lapbooking.  Lapbooking is a focused way of studying a topic that is fun and varied in activities.  One of my favorite sites to use is Homeschool Share.  The link is http://www.homeschoolshare.com/.  You can type in just about any subject and find some sort of lapbook activity.  Many follow along with a certain book.

Here are some pictures that we did last year on a lapbook about China.  It revolved around the book The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack.  It is a great book that both of the kids enjoyed.






















I was able to use this lapbook for both JJ and Savannah.  They learned about the rivers of China, counting in Chinese,  as well as other interesting facts about the Chinese flag, ducks and their characteristics, etc. We did this in April of last year.