Finishing Greece

Here is the post that I was going to post on Tuesday until technology got in the way of my plans. (That technology is now solved, late last night TM figured out how to make the phones work. He spent nearly 28 hours on this little project.) But, we are now back in business, so blogging can continue.

On Monday, I had planned that everyone would construct their lapbooks for Ancient Greece. Last week we had learned about Alexander the Great and the events that happened after his death, so we had pretty reached the end of Ancient Greek history. All along as we had been reading and learning things, I had had people create their own small books about each topic. Since we had been working on this since September, the stack was substantial. It turns out that this is the perfect project for the morning after the weekend of the change to daylight savings. Everyone was still a little tired and wasn't very up for doing anything too taxing, but they could cut and tape.

Here is the state of things in progress. It is not a tidy process.

Eventually all the bits and pieces were taped into books and we ended up with this stack.

This is probably the thickest collection of lapbooks that we have ever made.

Creating lapbooks with older children is significantly easier than doing so with younger ones. First, during the year, I gave some instructions for the creation of each small book, but they pretty much did it on their own. They also took responsibility to creating their own content, and we used them as a way for them to take notes and retell information from what we had learned that day. Then, the putting it all together was exceedingly easy from my end. I had made sure we had enough file folders, tape (lots and lots of tape), and markers and things. Then all I had to do was give some general guidance and let them loose. 

(If you have no idea what a lapbook is, I explain what they are and how we do it here: Homeschooling: How to Make a Lapbook)

We are now officially on spring break. I admit there was much rejoicing... mostly by me. After Easter we will come back and finish up the school year. We have three more weeks left of chemistry and are done with history, so most of spring is going to be taken up with architecture, starting out with the wonders of the world and then taking a look at modern architecture. We are looking forward to a change.