We're doing Adventures here and have been creating our own notebooking pages. The ones included with the student sheets are nice, but my girl likes to write smaller and include more pictures on her pages. I thought I'd share some of what we've been doing.
We use colored cardstock as a background, then she uses a combination of pictures on her pages. Some are printed off the internet and then colored and cut out, some are drawn by Gail, and some are cut from old history books. We have one old book in particular which I don't mind cutting up. I got it at the library bookstore for 25 cents, and it has a very skewed and secular view of American history. I don't like the content, yet the pictures are nice. What was meant for evil, we have used for good!
In the following picture, you can see how we found a famous painting of the pilgrims (the picture of them walking in the woods) in that book and used it, along with a different picture cut from another book and Gail's drawing of Squanto. Lots of the pages are a mix similar to this, pretty straightforward, but with nice pictures because we get them from that book. You will have to use the scroll bar to see it all.
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Gail arranges the pictures however she likes and then adds embellishments like stickers. But her favorite way to embellish and add a little life to the pages is to use "word bubble" stickers with quotes inside. You'll have to scroll down the page to see it all, I have trouble making photos fit.
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In this page which we did leading up to the Revolutionary War, she wanted to put some quotes by famous patriots which she enjoyed from our reading. Patrick Henry is saying "Give me liberty or give me death." (of course) Samuel Adams is saying "Where there is a spark of patriot fire, we will rekindle it." And she liked the idea of "minutemen" and so colored a minuteman soldier and wrote him saying "I can be ready at a minute's notice!" This made it a little more interesting for the reader and helped explain the idea of patriots.
We had a little fun with this recent page with word bubble quotes. Again, use the scroll bar.
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If you have trouble seeing it, that is President Jefferson offering to buy the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon. He is saying, "Will you take $15,000,000 for it?" to which Napoleon answers (with a slight inclination of his head), "Oui. You've got a deal." Heh heh. Not sure how accurate this face to face meeting is, but it was fun to portray. Below it there was a map of the purchase, but I cropped it out in the photo. I don't know where we got those word bubble stickers, but they have made notebooking fun!
We also enjoy adding three dimensional objects and items. For example, on one of Benjamin Franklin's pages (he got TWO pages), there is a pocket to hold the miniature Poor Richard's Almanac. There is a pocket by the Declaration of Independence page to hold a small copy of the Declaration that people could pull out and read. By the Eli Whitney page we have a wee pocket with real cotton bolls so you can take them out and feel the seeds, and cotton seeds to make a frame around a picture of people using the gin. In that one, I put photos of Gail struggling to get the seeds out and put a "thought bubble" sticker that said, "This is hard." That sort of thing. Not as elaborate as a lapbook, but still a little bit dynamic and varied.
We've really enjoyed making the history notebook. and Gail enjoys sharing it with family.
I'm Shawna...
... a forgiven child of God since 1994 (age 16)
... happily wed to William since 1996
... mother of our long-awaited Gail (3/15/2006)
... missing 6 little ones (4 miscarriages, 2 ectopics)
... starting Rome to the Reformation this fall!
