I am looking to teach 1st History with Lapbooks

[Ellen]

I have been trying to find a first grade History course that we like on our budget, but no joy. Using the Core Knowledge "What your first grader should know" is it possible to do it via lapbooks? Has anyone tried?

[Ami Brainerd]

Do you feel strongly about using a course for history?

We haven't had any kind of formal history curriculum, but we have studied lots of history topics through various literature based unit studies. We used Five in a Row (cheap) and Homeschool Share has lapbooks to go with many of the titles. We've also used the units and lapbooks (both free) at Homeschool Share. My son is in 2nd grade this year, and I'm not sure that we will ever add a history curriculum in elementary school. It's working well for us to just do the units and to go with his interests. It really is a rich (and fun!) way to learn! Just a thought. :-)

[Ellen]

Hi Ami

I guess I am over thinking things. We moved to a new state that has end of year testing requirements that have me all a flutter. I enjoyed homeschooling a lot more last year when we did FIAR and Homeschool Share. I think I will just keep doing that and add some Core Knowledge. Thanks

[Brenda B]

I love those Core Knowledge books. I have them all, and they seem to cover everything that has to be covered. This year I'm using a full curriculum but I've used those books in the past. The best way to find lapbooks to match each topic from the Core Knowledge books is to just do a Google search. If the topic is 'Plants' and you decide you want to do a plant lapbook, just do a Google search for 'plant lapbook'. I'm sure many of them would come up :-) And, as Ami mentioned below, homeschoolshare has tons of lapbooks on the same topics found in those books.

[Kim]

We love the Truthquest history guides by Michelle Miller and I could see this being turned into lapbooks rather easily. Right now we're using her Ancient Greece guide and are doing notebooking with it. The guides are lists of living books related to your current study with connecting commentary and explanations given by Mrs. Miller. Her comments are written to the age group doing the study and are very understandable. She looks at history as the flow of God's hand in mens' lives and affairs and it's all extremely well-studied and thought out. For first graders she has a simple U.S. history course. If you're on a smaller budget (aren't we all?!), you'd make heavy use of your library and interlibrary loan system. Using this site and homeschoolshare.com, you could have a lot of fun lapbooking.