Our unit and the accompanying lapbook will cover:
- History of Cars
- Cars Around the World
- Types of Cars
- How Cars Work
- Alternative Fuel Sources
Noah has a particular interest in fast cars and alternative fuel sources and keeps telling me he's going to build a "300-mile-an-hour car" that runs on water. Sounds like a great idea to me, so to get him started we're going to build model solar and fuel cell cars.
After getting completely overwhelmed on Amazon the other night, I decided to purchase two books to complement our study: Car by DK Eyewitness Books and How Cars Work. Of course, we'll also raid the library and clean them out on car books for a while!
Perhaps my most exciting find on Amazon was a great way to tie in some art projects. I found a great-looking book that teaches kids (and adults!) how to draw cars, and I know that Noah will love it . . . but probably not as much as he'll love the Sports Car Designer
software that allows you to design racing, sports or concept cars!Noah has been asking for a visit to the Ferrari dealership (he can see it from the highway whenever we head downtown) to ask them questions and "pick out his car", so we'll probably plan that trip during our first week of school. Jim is also going to find some car shows for them to attend together; we'll turn him loose with his camera to see what he finds interesting and I'll show him how to edit in Photoshop when he's done . . . I'm envisioning some type of Shutterfly book resulting from this, but I'll see what he has in mind.
Of course, I'll be sharing the lapbook template and any other resources I create once they are ready to go. Also, this is my first Amazon-linked post, so if you're reading, let me know how it looks. I post a lot of resources anyway, so I thought it was cool to be able to preview the images and provide the links!
Well, here I go . . . I have a feeling I'm about to learn more than I ever imagined about cars. Have you ever thought about how well-rounded a person you'll be after homeschooling your children???
Thank you so much for sharing this! My 10 yr old son is so "done" with "boring" homeschool but he LOVES cars. I am looking for ways to draw his interest back in and teach him some things that he already loves learning about when he gets internet time. This was very helpful...even though it's 8 years old and your son might even be graduated by now! I would love to see pics of your end product so I will try to see if some of your links still work. Thanks again!
ReplyDeleteDid you ever post the results of this unit study? My son is 8 years old and says he wants to study cars this year so I'm in planning overload mode right now. I'd love to see what you all did. You have some great ideas here!
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