Genealogy, History, Homeschooling & Scrapbooking

Several years ago (when our oldest was in 5th grade) we were living in Alabama and we started to study a year in the Civil War (that's what our boys interest was at the time.....yes we do homeschool :) I wanted them to have a tangible way to develop memories, yet get involved in Genealogy, bring in the history and learn!  So we started a Civil War Scrapbook for the kids.

Now we started this in the 5th grade (our oldest son just graduated HS) but it was an ongoing project as we visited places.  You know as a homeschooling family, we couldn't resist planning out trips & vacations around historical sites :)  That's the beauty of it all!  Anyways we helped to build their scrapbook.  One section was their field trips that were centered on the Civil War. At first I had them hand write out their narration of their trip but then there were errors and it was hard with a pen.  So then we taught them to type on the computer and we printed off their narration.  That not only help with "neatness" but also if we had to raise the font number on the print we could or if we had to make it smaller, we could.

The next section is labeled "My family in the Civil War".  We went through our genealogy and found photos and info on their family members that fought throughout the Civil War and on both sides too.  That was fun especially when you find out one grandfather fought in the same battle as another but one was on the Union side and the other was on the Confederate side.

This is Elisha Riley Williams.  My husband's GGG Grandfather who fought in the Civil War on the Union Side. He fought at Vicksburg, MS.

Then there's James Ambers Washington Cook (top left) who fought on the Confederate side for the Confederates.  He was my GGG grandfather.  

This is George Herzog.  He was my GGG grandfather.  We have his photo here with his enlistment and discharge papers. (if you follow his link, you will also see him in his uniform from the Civil War with his medals.  We were unable to fit it into the Scrapbook as the photo came later).

The last section was their favorite men in the Civil War.  They gathered photos (their favorites).  We also had a homeschool group in AL where we did a living history day.  The kids would dress up in character and give a report on their favorite person.  You can see that year our son did Stonewall Jackson.  I shrunk the report down to fit onto the page.  Below is a photo of him dressed up :)

I hope this helps you guys understand how to use homeschooling, scrapbooking, history, Genealogy and FUN all rolled into one.  Let me know if you have any comments or questions!

ANCIENT GREECE LAPBOOK BY JOSEPH, AGE 10-11

ANCIENT ROME LAPBOOK

Civil War Lapbooks

Just want to warn you guys that we did the Civil war over a school year so the lapbooks are large. Don't be overwhelmed but I hope you will get some ideas from it.

Here is the first one. It was done by my middle child, who was 9-10 years old at the time. His favorite person in the Civil War was Ulysses S. Grant (only because he won! This is my comptetitive child!)

Here is the cover.


You see here when you open it, these are mini-books about each battle in the CW. It has questions like what, when, where, who were the commanders for the N/S, Casualties of the N/S, and who won (victory).



The boys did two of these folds. I printed off thumbnails of 4 Generals of their choice on Sticker paper. On the inside, they had to write about each one. They have one in blue for the union and gray for the confederacy.



Below are two are accordian folded books on Salvery Life and the Surrender.



Below you see three layer books. The one to the left in Blue is the Union Statistics. The one in the middle is the Civil War Vocabulary. The one to the right, in gray, is the Confederacy Statistics.



Below is a closeup of the Civil War Vocabulary, done in a layered book.



Below is the other one. It was done by our oldest who was 10-11 at the time. His favorite person is Stonewall Jackson.



Below is his battle minibooks.


Below is a wheel, with drawings of different Confederate Generals.



Below is to the left, Civil war vocab in a layered book, in the middle a circle template he made to look like whip and he wrote about slavery and to the right, his Civil War Battles Map.



Below is his Civil War Battles Map, opened.




Confederate Generals, thumbnails using sticker paper.



Opened Confederate generals with writing. I used a journaling template for the lines.



Close up of Civil War Vocab in a layered book.



These are two mini accordian books that he did on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Surrender. Again, I printed off photos for the Surrender (like a copy of the letter) on sticker paper as one of the pages!)



Below is a close up of his Union Generals. This is the same as the confederates.

Ancient Egypt Lapbook

Note, this is one of our first lapbooks. Knowing NOW that I wished I would have known then, is that we should have laminated the King Tut mask on the front of the cover. Now it is rolling up and we have to be careful. Also, gold paint looks great on a lapbook like this, but we did have a hard time getting our stuff to stick. Particularly when the inside is painted (Which now I wished we would have just left it alone).

Below is the cover. It is spraypainted gold with a King Tut mask on the front. I used my sizzix alphabet for the letters on the outside.




Below, left flap is name in hyrogliphics. Below is a pocket with pictures of the Gods and Goddesses where he made a game. The center is the different periods, and the right is the anicent book of mummification.




When you open it up, the top is how to build a pyramid, below is the ancient Egypt time period, to the right is a map of the nile river and then his name again in hyrogliphics. MISSING is an envelope with the parts of a mummy (like a puzzle).