Crazy About Cars Lapbook

Crazy About Cars was one of our favorite unit studies - probably because Noah really is crazy about cars. It's also one of my favorite lapbook templates, and you can download it here.

 A note about free curriculum downloads:

I am happy to share curriculum I've put together; just because I like to reinvent the wheel doesn't mean everyone else should! All I ask is that you sign up to follow my blog and/or Facebook page before downloading. As with all our free curriculum downloads, please notify me of any errors or problems with the download links.

For the lapbooks, check out the lapbook archive and corresponding unit study posts; I'll usually have pictures of our completed book to help you along the way. If you like the way it turns out, please consider sharing thoughts or pictures of your experience on our Facebook page.

Enjoy, and happy homeschooling!

Wild Idea Wednesday - Cars Alphabet Book

Noah finished his cars alphabet a few weeks ago, and I finally got it all Photoshopped together and uploaded to Shutterfly. While I have to wait a week or so to see the final book, you can take a sneak peek with this slide show.

Click here to view this photo book

He's really enjoyed studying cars all year long, and I don't think that will go away just because our unit is officially over!

Wild Idea Wednesday - Cars alphabet book

Need some new ideas for keeping learning fun? I’ll be sharing our favorites each week on Wednesday. To be honest, the thought of committing myself to having one great idea every week is stress-inducing, so I’m going to put it out there in advance that I will probably borrow heavily from all my wise mama friends.

We've been working on incorporating more authentic language arts experience into our curriculum this year, including our personal dictionary, which is filling up nicely. But I think our favorite project is the cars alphabet book - probably because almost the whole family is involved.

Each week, Noah chooses a car part that starts with the letters we're on that week. Then, he writes a sentence about that car part. Next comes the best part, when he and Jim traipse into the garage to learn more about that part and photograph it. Little by little, we're compiling it into a book.

Our goal is to finish this month since we're wrapping up our cars unit and moving on to other things. I can't wait to see it all printed and sit down to read it together!

Wild Idea Wednesday - Asking for Help

Need some new ideas for keeping learning fun? I’ll be sharing our favorites each week on Wednesday. To be honest, the thought of committing myself to having one great idea every week is stress-inducing, so I’m going to put it out there in advance that I will probably borrow heavily from all my wise mama friends.

When my kids come up with questions I can't answer, I'm never shy about asking for help. And whether that means visiting the bank so Noah can ask his questions about money or traipsing up the steps to Capital Hill at midnight so Ava could ask the guard with the really huge gun how she could go inside to "see the bills", I'm always the first to tell them I don't know everything and help them find someone who can.

Our current unit on cars is no different. It's almost laughable actually that I'm even teaching a unit on cars, considering how little I know about them. But when it came time to work on our graph of car prices, going straight to the source seemed much more fun than finding the info online. And that's how today's field trip ended up being at Carmax. I figured that would be easier than driving around to different dealerships so Noah could compare prices on different makes and models.

Fortunately, the folks at Carmax were happy to oblige and turned us loose on the lot, offering to answer any questions as needed. During our visit, Noah learned how to look for the year, make and model and practiced rounding the prices up to the nearest thousand. Later this week, we'll chart them on the bar graph in the lapbook. He's also doing an alphabet photo book featuring different makes of cars, so he was able to get at least half the letters covered in just one stop.

I just pulled his photos off the camera to snag one for this post, but over the next week or so, I'm going to show him how to edit them in Photoshop. In glancing at them briefly, my favorite part is how you can see his reflection in every one!

Teaching Tool Tuesday - First Pictures of our Crazy About Cars Lapbook

Don't forget that the Crazy About Cars Lapbook is available for download from the "Curriculum to Share" sidebar. I'm so thrilled with how ours in turning out! Noah can't wait to finish it because once it's done, we get to move on to building his model fuel cell car. The "stop light" circles on the front aren't part of the template. They were Noah's idea, and we cut them out of the extra file folder parts left over from making the lapbook body.

Here are some pictures of our lapbook. If you decide to make this one, I hope you'll leave me a comment on how it turns out or share some pictures over at the Homeschooling in Heels Facebook page.

 

 

 

Book Review - If I Built a Car

Today was a bit like Christmas around here when our Amazon packages showed up with all the great books and other tools for our cars and oceans unit studies. We all spent a while looking through everything, but since it was bedtime, I brought the one story book, If I Built a Car, in as a bedtime story - and we all loved it!

This wonderfully-written and charmingly-illustrated book tells the story of a young boy describing what a car would look like if he built it (think rocket fuel and swimming pools!) It reminded me so much of Noah and all his ideas for the "water-powered, 300MPH car" that he's dreaming up. So glad that we added this one to our library; I can already tell that it will be enjoyed over and over.

Crazy About Cars Lapbook is Available for Download!

Well, I think it's done! My sample went together today with only a few tweaks. I've uploaded the edited file to File Factory, and you can download it here for free. As soon as Noah completes his, I'll post photos of the finished lapbook. Until then, there's a diagram on page two that shows my idea of where everything would go. I would love feedback on it from anyone who makes it!

Crazy About Cars Lapbook is Done!!!

Whew! My new Crazy About Cars lapbook is finally done . . . took many, many more hours than I expected, but I'm so thrilled with the results.
Covering everything from the invention of the car to where they're headed in the future, the content encompasses a broad range of subjects, including science, history, geography, language arts and math.

Can't wait to share it with my little car buff - and with all of you. In the next few days, I'll be proofing it and mocking up a sample to see what I've messed up. Once I've worked out the glitches, it will be available to download. Until then, here's another preview . . . and I'm going to sleep!!!

Planning Our Homeschool Year

No, we're not officially back to school yet. I'm protesting the end of summer and holding out for a few more weeks. But, I think I'm finally in the last stages of getting our year planned and supplies ordered.

Still trying to figure out how to incorporate the message of "relaxed homeschooling" that struck a chord with me at convention with my urge to plan each day. Overall, here's what our year will (might?) look like.

Unit Studies (most with a lapbook component)
Cars (fall) - Noah's pick
Oceans (fall) - Ava's pick
Money (year-long)
Great Inventors (spring) - Noah's pick
Animals around the World (spring)

Language Arts
Language Smarts
Kreative Komix
Write a joke book
Personal dictionary
Write to a penpal

Math
Singapore Math
IXL
Balance Benders and Math Analogies

Science
Cars, oceans and animals around the world units
Fuel cell and solar car models
Exploration Education Physical Science curriculum (Unit 1: Forces, Machines, Motion & Energy)

Geography
50 States (fall)
Where in the world are Jack & Annie? (Magic Tree House mapping activity) 

History
Magic Tree House timeline
Cars & great inventors units 

Critical Thinking
Organizing Thinking Skills (Noah)
Visual Perception Skill Building (Ava)

French
Rosetta Stone

Art
Draw Cars
Draw Ocean Animals
Sports Car Designer
Car photography project (photo book and/or blog)
OMA Art Adventure classes

Other activities
Weekly co-op (art, science, money, PE)
Swim team
Dance (Ava)
Odyssey of the Mind (Noah)
DuathLONG training club

Lapbook Preview - Crazy About Cars

It's nearing 2AM, and the cars lapbook did not get finished. It's great to have a goal . . . but not as great to make myself crazy trying to achieve it. So I'm calling it a night and will finish tomorrow - only one more mini-book to go, so I really am close!

It's turning out really cute, and I know that Noah will love it! I'm very pleased with the diversity of the content, which so far covers science, history, geography, math and a little art or language arts.

As soon as I mock up my sample, I'll make the PDF available to download - right now, all I have to share is the sneak preview "The 8 Fastest Cars in the World" mini-book. Do you know what they are???

Field Trip - Sarasota Classic Car Museum

Here I am, I've lost track of how many hours later, still doing my car homework. Amazingly, I feel smarter already! In addition to the material and graphics for my lapbook, I've found some great videos to share with the kids during our unit study . . . and I've also stumbled across some great field trip ideas.

In addition to the aforementioned Ferrari dealership, we're definitely going to check out the Sarasota Classic Car Museum. We're planning another trip to the Tampa area in September, so hopefully we can swing an overnight and see the car museum the next day. Jim also suggested at trip to the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing in Ocala, so we'll probably check that out when we head to the kids' triathlon on Gainesville next month.

I'd be neglectful not to mention that the Daytona 500 Experience makes a great field trip for this unit. Definitely worth a trip if you've never been, but I took Noah a few years ago - and he recently attended a race at Daytona with Jim - so we'll probably pass.

Other than that, I'll be keeping my eyes open for local car shows and events and see if I can talk some car-crazy dads into doing a class. I'm loving how this unit is coming together!!!

"Crazy About Cars" Unit Study & Lapbook

Today I'm finding myself with a few hours to dive into creating a new lapbook template - but since I have three lapbooks planned for fall, I wasn't quite sure where to start. I've finally decided to begin with "Crazy About Cars".

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 Designersoftware 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???