Saturday, April 05, 2008

Time Traveler's Lap Book

The first lapbook we did was Time Traveler's New World Explorer's which went along with a until study created and put out by Amy Pak. Here is the link to see this. We had a lot of fun doing this unit study. We started last August with half days of school and pretty much only did the projects listed in the Unit Study. When you purchase this program, you purchase a cd rom which has everything you need on it to print out; daily readings about the topic, an overview of each day, project descriptions, project masters, pictures, etc. Mrs. Pak thought of everything and these Time Travelers are very well done.

Of course with anything, I find that I like this and don't like that and "why did she do *that*?" all enter my mind at some point. So we didn't do everything just like she said, and our lapbooks reflect that. For the most part, though, ours have many of the same elements, simply a few additions here and there.

For starters the book itself:

Instead of using one file folder and folding the two edges into the center, I used two whole file folders. This meant that the sail is simply glued on the front, which is different than Mrs. Pak's suggestion. You can go to the above link or click here, scroll down and on the left are pictures of the lapbook per her instructions. This also gave us , once we added the two card stock flaps up and down, four whole, not partial, places to add projects.
Looking at the above picture the things that are from Mrs. Pak's are the following:
1. Routes the Explorers took. This is the yellow pocket with maps inside. Each map is a base of a particular part of the world. The kids colored this in, then we put on overlays which had arrows showing the routes the explorers took. This I felt was a very worthwhile project. It really shows the geography, and the kids are easily able to see which way these explorers went and how many times they went exploring.

2.The top and bottom flaps are full of little folded paper. On the front of these are the pictures of the various explorers we covered in this unit. Inside are lines for listing, who, what country explored for (also color-coded by card stock color), what found or discovered. This at first I thought was good, but in the end was a bit time-consuming. The little ones couldn't write in that small of space, so I did the work. Next time, it might be better to just let the kids write what they remember about each explorer, not using Mrs. Pak's template.

3. On the right flap, there is a "Navigational Equipment" spinning thing, and above them one pop-up showing "Sea Monsters" and the other the Line of Demarcation.

4. If you were to flip the bottom flap up, two other projects, one a treasure chest which inside shows how dublins, and pieces of eight (that we made) all divide out and also a picture of a typical ship with all the parts labeled. I forgot to take a picture of those. Ooops.

Now on to some of my additions:

First onto the left flap is taped The Explorer Weekly .

The newspaper is a suggestion of Mrs. Pak's but she says to put it into the notebook, not the lapbook. My girls loved doing this newspaper, which are various articles on the explorers, and they did such a good, creative job, that we wanted it to be seen with the lap book. Hence why I , on the suggestion of my friend Amy, made the lapbook using two file folders and not the one. Now we had the room to add the newspaper.

On the right you see a red piece of paper, it is a map of the new world listing the various tribes of Indians in their own locale. The kids then glued small circles of the explorers to the place they landed thereby showing which Natives each explorer encountered. This was also to be in the notebook, instead of the lapbook.

Now fold the top flap down and you see this:

Again some are the same, others are different. The bottom left is the same. It is the reasons explorers went exploring. Underneath each flap is the item, or a representation of the item; spices, gold, land, spreading of Christianity, and Adventure.

The bottom right is a brochure that the girls did advertising for people to come to the new world.

The top, skull and cross bones is our own addition. It has to do with Pirates. We did study them, but the projects were for the notebook. So we came up with this little flap to add to the lapbook. Inside you see this:

As you can tell, once you know how to do a lapbook, it is limitless as to what you can add.
So have fun trying one yourself! And don't be afraid to try one of Mrs. Pak's Time Traveler's Series. They are very well done, and fun too!

4 comments:

Kristi Heinz said...

This is WAY cool!!!!

So did you use only two file folders? What about the pieces that flip up to the top and down to the bottom? I love it!

Glenda said...

The pieces that flip up to the top and down to the bottom are cardstock pieces I taped onto the file folders.

Genuine Lustre said...

Really nice project Glenda. You're making it hard for the rest of us!

Cheryl said...

Wow. Wow. Wow. Between this and your cooking, you just put me to shame. Would it be too much to ask that you shine a little less brightly so the rest of us don't pale so by comparison?