Flowers Unit and Lapbook

We just finished a unit on Seeds, Plants and Flowers. I think I had as much fun as the kids!
I stumbled upon a website www.lapbooklessons.com and fell in love! I had never heard of lapbooking, but I am hooked already. That site as well as www.homeschoolshare.com has tons of resources for numerous unit studies. I didn't have to spend much time at all finding activities for us to do, and no money spent! (I already had file folders, paper and art supplies)
I am so excited about the upcoming school year, the possibilities are endless.

Here is a link to see the PICTURES of our FINISHED LAPBOOK. Our very first one.
Hope you enjoy:
Http://lapbooklessons.ning.com/photo/photo/slideshow?feed_url=http%3A%2F%2Flapbooklessons.ning.com%2Fphoto%2Fphoto%2FslideshowFeedForContributor%3FscreenName%3D35mgotbxzhg11&back_url=http%3A%2F%2Flapbooklessons.ning.com%2Fprofiles%2Fprofile%2Fshow%3Fid%3DKathryn%26

Anyway, here is a look at our week...

We went shopping and they got to pick out their own seeds. MacKenzie liked forget me nots and sunflowers. James picked out Corn, beans, carrots, and pumpkins.

We started out our morning by sorting out different seeds into the proper place.

They learned each seed is completely different, and yields a different thing.


As you can see...James isn't much of a morning person *like his mommy* he is in both shots, but the first one he is hiding from the camera!






Then we went on a nature walk at Mill Creek Park.










We took our bug catcher nets and case to keep the plants in. (It was housing a giant toad too, which James had found late the night before...he let it go free into the woods) We also took one of James and MacKenzie's favorites...the magnifying glass that talks you through what you may be looking at by asking questions. We found red berries, and blackberries, and all sorts of flowers and plants.











Along the way, we discovered a geocache treasure "deep in the woods". (Geocaching is a treasure hunting game where you use a GPS to hide and seek containers with other participants in the activity. www.geocaching.com )





James had found this the previous week with our homeschool group OACHE and we took MacKenzie to find it "sans" GPS. They had a blast! Found great treasures, MacKenzie even found a travel bug. We are going to have to find another geocache to let the bug travel on to the next spot.













Here are a few pictures from our field trip to the GSU Botanical Gardens.














It was a beautiful day and the smell of flowers was glorious!










The kids (and I) saw many beautiful flowers and plants.














There was a magnolia flower that had fallen off a tree onto the ground.
This gave us the perfect opportunity to "dissect" the different parts of the flower.



They had the sprinklers on while we were there, and the kids got soaked. It was nice though, because it was very sunny and hot. (hence, the hats...they were our Easter gifts from CeCe)

We came home and started to work on our Lapbook Activities.

Here are the pictures of the kids working on our very first lapbook. Seeds, Plants, and Flowers!


One of our favorite new arts and crafts projects is our Dots Pages. We went to Walmart and bought some Bingo Daubers in four different colors. Then the kids just fill in the Dots with the Daubers. Its great fun!

Print some out for yourself here:
http://www.dltk-kids.com/type/bingo_daubers.htm




Here we are discussing the parts of a flower, and coloring the parts as we talk about them.











James practicing writing his name. He is concentrating very hard.










This is a flower sorting game.
We sorted by size, and then another time we sorted by colors.