XP's history notebooking pages

Just uploaded XP's latest  notebooking pages on her blog.

First assignment in 2012

XP's first assignment in 2012,

I found the way she uses grammar is strange,

don't know if it's ok to use past tense and present tense this way.....

 but she said it feels right.

Read all three pages in this PDF.

Spartacus the Gladiator

new pages in timeline book

Our timeline book is out of space,

I added in extra pages by sticking artblock papers below it. .

Only on those pages where more booklets are needed.

I am planning to add pages on top too,
for China, Japan and Korea history.

Asiapac Books

To help with XP's China history,

I bought these English books for her.

They are written by Singaporean Chinese

with both Chinese and English version.
Published by Asiapac Books.

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Each page is filled with illustrations.
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Even some are in comic form.

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Here are the 2 books I am using now.

History of China

I choose to teach China's history with Chinese books instead of English,

but to source the books is troublesome.

I have to go to various bookstores and read through the books,

make dicisions which books to use.

With all these effort I am still not satisfy with what I've found.

For now I just do the best with what I have.

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My knowledge of China history is mostly from story books,

and don't know much about the history before Ming Dynasty,

so I use this set of books to help me plan my schedule.

The books are not written for children,

I need to do a lot of amendment and explaination

while reading aloud to XP.

The whole set of books

starting from legendary to Qing Dynasty,

basically my spine books for now.

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I also use various history-related story books for children
to help XP understand more.
Here are some books I am using now.
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These are the books I plan to use in the future
but many of them are not as good as I though,
So I am still going from bookstore to bookstore to search.

some hands-on on history

Made a shaduf for our "Farming in Ancient Mesopotamia".

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A bow drill (Stone age "lighter").

Winter Promise Timeline

Our WP timeline is here!!!

(If you want to know where I bought my 3-rings file,

it was at Ikano Popular)

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XP put all her Sea & Sky notebooking pages in the timeline,

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and her independent history works....
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and her art studies....
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and something extra.

She was having fun browsing through the pages,

this timeline is great!!

Sweden Lapbook

We joined a small homeschool group which meet up fortnightly.

Every time we do different topic,

science, literature, country...

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This time the topic is Scandinavia,

we chose Sweden and made a lapbook.

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Here is the cover, with map of Scandinavia at the centre

4 pictures around it showing snow, midnight sun, lighthouse and harbour..

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Flag of Sweden,

city scenes and country scene.

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This lapbook is mainly on industry.

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From left to right is

TetraPak, Saab & Volvo..

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Map showing their origin places / main factories..

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Facts on TetraPak..

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Facts on Saab..

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Facts on Volvo.

Final work for Japan Unit

Finally we finished our Japan unit after so many distractions.

XP put everything onto a giant notebook.

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1st page consists of a mini book of Children's Festivals,

time zone, a Japanese doll and some facts about Japan.

On 2nd page we have the flag, map and general facts. Details of the mini book.
We read a book on Japanese Tea Ceremony,

XP drew some tea utensils and pasted them all over the pages.
Even taped a rice bowl on her table.

Japanese crafts

We did many papercrafts on our Japan unit.front row from left,

papercrane (origami), 2 samurai helmets (origami), fortune cat,

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back row from left,

new year card (with food), carp banners (for boys' day), dolls (for girls' day)

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I downloaded the papercrane and samurai hats from Canon,

the new year card and girls' day dolls from Paper Museum,

fortune cat and carp banners available in my shop.

The Indian Subcontinent altered book

Lately there were too many activities and festivals around us,

so I decided to do something simpler for our geography unit,

The Indian Subcontinent.

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Instead of a lapbook with all the minibooks in it,

I made an altered book with notebooking in it.

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It was once a picture book XP read when she was a toddler,

I chose it because of its hardcover

and was excellent to make into an altered book.

I wrapped it with coloured paper,

cut out and pasted some pages.

This is how it looks from the side.

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The cover of the altered book.

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Pages on flags.

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On the left is the map,

below it and on the right are some notes about the land.

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Map, the base.

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Map on rivers, seas and monsoon winds.
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Map on cities and islands.
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Map showing the different landscapes.
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Map, the countries.
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Every time when we came across a place,
for example Sundarbans (shown below)
XP is expected to write down the important point
and mark the place on the map.
. We did this throughout the whole unit,

it was very easy and time saving.
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On the left is the time-difference between Malaysia and India,
below it is the general facts of India.
On the right is the Caste System in India,
XP wrote down some famous people (who we read and knew)
according to their Caste.

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On the left are the general facts of The Indian Subcontinent countries.

On the right are either new vocabs XP learned or some Indian languages.

We also wrote down the vocabs along the way,

most of them were from the readers.

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Yes!! We read a lot of biographies, here are 3 of them.

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Biography of Gandhi.

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Biography of the Buddha.
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Biography of Mother Teresa.
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We didn't cook anything for this unit
since it's very easy to find Indian food here in Malaysia
(actually we eat Indian food for breakfast almost every morning).
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One main reason I made this an altered book
was because I wanted to put spices into it,
and to do this I need a strong and thick book.
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The spices are packed in 9 small plastic bags
and put on the last page of this book..
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They are stuck to the book with magnets.

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This is the front where you can see the spice clearly.

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And this is the back with the name of the spice.

The plastic bags are resealable,

so XP can open them anytime to smell them.
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There are coriandar, clover, cumin, cardamom, mustard,

black pepper & white pepper, cinnamon, aniseed and star anise.
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Here are 2 more pictures of them.