History notebook for an artistic child (13)

[Ame E.]

I have not decided which book/books I am using next year for my 2 kids. My younger one is a very good artist and very good reader. I would love to have her draw her own, maps, timelines, and maybe copy portraits or paintings.. We will be studying American history next year. I just know that something she could basically do on her home and draw with would make her happy... Has anyone done a history notebook thing with art for American history.. How did you organize it.. what did you use.. There used to be a company that sold history notebooks.. was it homeschool in the woods? to go with the time period..

 

thanks for any suggestions..

[Kathleen in VA]

I think the lapbooks that Homeschool in the Woods designs are perhaps too young for your children. The only thing that comes to mind right off is an educational scrapbooking site:

 

http://scrapbooktolearn.ning.com/

 

Scrapbooking to learn is another form of lapbooking. There are samples at the website to give you an idea. You can scrapbook digitally, too, which makes it easy to share with relatives.

 

HTH

[Peela]

My artistic dd13 has always used an A3 sketch book for history, one a year. She prints out and sticks in all her assignments, and sometimes does art and fancy headings, borders, and maps.

I don't "make" her do arty stuff in it because it kind of destroys her creativity when its enforced, but sometimes I have skipped the writing assignment and assigned an arty assignment instead.

We are doing Ancient History, and for 10 weeks both kids are writing a Greek Myth each week, in their own words. Dd has done some beautiful artwork to go with her myths, which she has really enjoyed doing.

The sketch book works well- plenty of pages, but nobody else's structure, so it doesn't matter how much or how little she is feeling creative that week, she just puts her normal writing in, or more.

This way both kids do history together, according to the structure I choose..but dd's work goes in her sketch book (and I save her assignments in a older on my computer too), and ds's just get put in plastic sheets in a notebook- he couldn't care less to ever look at them again!

[ClassicMom]

History portfolio series. We are going to use it again for the High-school rotation.

 

Here's the link:

http://www.homeschooljourney.com/

 

She doesn't have the maps done for the US history. But if your daughter is artsy and you wanted her to do her own maps, then it wouldn't matter. There are maps in the books anyway. She just does some nice maps in color and then they are marked for you which I think makes it too easy for the child anyway. Plus, coloring the maps is part of the fun, right? ;)

 

You can put as much or as little in these as you want. We even added some lapbook components to ours.

[Sandy in KY]

I use the history portfolios from Homeschool Journey in our co-op, and our "artsy" kids love it. The worksheet-oriented kids aren't so crazy about them :-). The portfolios are really nice when they're completed at the end of the year though. They seem more like a "real" book than the notebooks we've done on our own in the past. (My 13yo dd is artsy and really likes it.)

[Ame E.]

is what I was looking for.. We will be doing modern history this year (really American history - exploration through at least world war II) What source books did you use.. I think this would be a great fit for her.. I saw the sample on line.. I am wondering if it is too young for high school, but I know she would love it..

 

Thank you everyone.

 

ame

[Sandy in KY]

There's nothing about the portfolios that make them "too young" for a high schooler. They can go easily with whatever history books you already use, but the portfolios come with suggested resources (mostly "living books" rather than text books, although we have been using Story of the World). I plan our pages around the high points of each chapter we study. The only limiting thing is that the boxes are only big enough for so many words, but if you want to assign longer writing assignments too, you can easily put them on cardstock and add them to the binder. The portfolios come with a suggested table of contents (the names of written reports and suggested images, etc) but I generally do my own thing. There are also suggestions for reports for older students. I think it's helpful to have the teacher's guide, even though I don't follow it too much. Sometimes I had my students color the clip art from the guide (the clip art looks cheesy at first, but most of it really is nice if they color it well) and sometimes I got the real pictures off the internet instead (example: instead of coloring the clip art picture of an aqueduct, print off a photo of a real aqueduct). We added a lot of Bible verses, drawings, etc that weren't in the teacher guide. The map "answer" PDF does make it too easy for the students, imo, but I still like to use it because the maps are colored so beautifully.