Thursday, November 18, 2010

Voyage of the Dawn Treader Coloring & ABC pages

I have just finished two files for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. I compiled some coloring pages (not from the book...just some images I found that went well with each chapter...something to keep my little ones occupied while I read to them). I also made some ABC/Penmanship pages to go with each chapter. All 26 letters are covered and there are 1-2 pages per chapter.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was my favorite book of the Narnia series, and we are really looking forward to the movie (as long as they don't mess with the story like they did with Prince Caspian...I digress...). I had fun making these pages, and hopefully your children will have fun with them too.

For now you can find the Coloring pages and the ABC/Penmanship pages at Homeschool Treasure Trove...or you can click on the treasure map in the right sidebar. (You will have to join to access them if you aren't already a member.)

UPDATE: You can also find both "ball & stick" ABC pages and "d'Nealian"style ABC pages ...and also I have uploaded my "Activities and Discussion" pages at both Homeschool Treasure Trove AND now all the files are at my Homeschool Launch page.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Mara, Daughter of the Nile Lapbook

My dd read this book just for fun, but loved it so much that I snookered her into doing a book report on it. This is what we ended up with...




Opening the lapbook, the first "spread" covers the actual story..the "book report." Opening up the interior flaps exposes the mini-books on ancient Egypt pertinent to the story. We did the usual books for a book report...Setting, plot, characters(major & minor), conflict, opinion. She also added books for ancient Egyptian beliefs, the Nile River, slaves, Egyptian boats, the Valley of the Kings, blue lotuses, Egyptian scribes, hieroglyphics, Hatshepsut/Thutmose III, a timeline, and pockets for Egyptian Gods, architecture & art in ancient Egypt. Being my artistic child, she sewed a mini shenti (mens' kilt-type skirt), and the dresses women wore, two lotus columns, a drawing of a woman "Egyptian-style"...and also her version of it with shading & highlighting to make it look more realistic. (She couldn't stand how unrealistic the "Egyptian" drawing looked and had to "fix" it. )

I may not be able to share ALL the booklets, and I can't share some of the decorations, but I can tell you where we found them and/or how we made them.

First, I chose to print the booklets on either parchment or white paper. It was a "clean" look for an Egypt book. They are known for white clothing and papyrus, so those were the "obvious" choices. We also went to our local craft store and bought some scrapbook paper for some of the decorations/embellishments. For the most part she only used the red & blue cardstocks, and she also used a stucco-looking paper and a "dried mud/plaster" paper for a couple pockets. She used a green "ginkgo-leaf" paper as a background for the setting... but you really can't see the gingko leaves, which was fine...but it matched her raffia, and it wasn't blue or red. ha ha I digress... My DD insisted on having a "gold" paper for trim (which was expensive for scrapbook paper, but we both like how it turned out).

We also bought colored raffia to tie her books (instead of stapling or gluing). She was really interested in the blue lotuses so she took off on that theme throughout the lapbook. She added blue lotus columns (an image we found online...but this one would work too...I traced then copied onto cardstock...b/c the online image was shaded & pixelating badly when we enlarged it), and blue lotus paper flowers we made using a scrapbooking punch tool, light & royal blue paper, and small flat-backed rhinestones for the center. She made extras so she could fill in "empty spaces." She also tore the edges of some books/labels because it gave it a more "aged" look.

We also found some digital scrapbooking kits that had printable paper and clipart. She chose a Hieroglyphics image and a horizontal pattern for the background of the interior and the top/bottom borders (respectively). Here are a few...

Heart of Wisdom
Digiscrap Depot
Scrapgirls (This one was our favorite and utilized in our lapbook)
Digital Scrapbook Pages

For the Art & Architecture pockets, we found art & architecture from the time period when the book took place, printed them on white cardstock & labeled the back...what, where, when, and who built them (architecture)/was in them (art).

We also found a really cool map of Ancient Egypt someone had hand-drawn here. I edited out the place names and touched up a few things to come up with my dd's map. (There are others here and here that will work too.)

This just goes to show you what can happen when you read a really good book. :-)