Ben is fascinated with all of the coverage of the Republican primaries. It seemed the perfect time to begin our study of the elections process. And what better way to do that than to combine an elections unit study with notebooking!
Ben is fascinated with all things Election, and since I aim to please we have chosen Amanda Bennett’s updated Elections unit study combined with notebooking pages from Productive Homeschooling (formerly NotebookingPagesdotcom) to follow his strong interest. Over the next 4 weeks, Ben will be notebooking his way through this study so that in the end he will have a notebook to review in the future (and possibly to add to when he’s older during the 2016 Elections process).
Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett updated the Elections Unit Study for the 2012 elections, so I scooped it up and Ben began using it last week. We had started it a few weeks back, but for various reasons, had to put it aside. I’m so glad we did! Wanna know why? Read on . . .
For most of our homeschool years, we have used lapbooks quite a bit to keep a record of our units. But Amanda’s 4-week unit studies do not come with a lapbook. And I’ve been wanting to move Ben more toward notebooking anyway. So I began to search around for some pre-made notebooking pages, so that I wouldn’t have to create my own. There are some notebooking pages that come with the Elections Unit Study, but they weren’t exactly what I was looking for.
Note: You can now get Elections 2018!
A friend on the TOS Crew mentioned Productive Homeschooling in passing one day, so I took a peak, downloaded a few freebies, thought about it for a week or two, and then finally bit the bullet and purchased the Treasury Membership.
I am so happy I did.
I don’t know how many notebooking pages Debra Reed has created, but there are a lot. And for every subject. A quick look around and I easily found several pages would work nicely for our journal to go along with the Elections unit study, including ones for all the Presidents and First Ladies.
Once I found everything I needed to make Ben’s Elections journal, I fired up the printer and got started! After I had everything printed, I 3-hole punched all of the pages and placed them in a 1-inch binder, with dividers for each week. Then I quickly designed and printed a simple cover sheet for the front of the notebook.
I want to show you all how I arranged the journal and what pages I used. But first of all, let me explain a bit about how the Elections study is organized . It’s a four week long study, four days a week, with a weekly round-up day five of each week. There are printables within the unit for the day five round-up, so I only needed to find pages for the other 4 days each week.
Each day begins with a quote or scripture that can be used for memory work and/or copywork. I found a nice notebooking page that works well for copying all 4 quotes for the week on one sheet. It’s found in the “Language Arts” section at Productive Homeschooling under “copywork”. There are several themes for these copywork pages, including a patriotic theme. Perfect.
Next, we have “Words of Wisdom”, which are a list of words that can be used for vocabulary, spelling, and dictionary work. I found another patriotic-themed copywork page that works well here, too. I printed one page for each day. This one is for Week 4, Day 3 (W4, D3).
Now, we’re ready to learn about our person or place of the day. In the Elections unit, this is always a president. Of course, Productive Homeschooling has an entire collection of notebooking pages for all of the presidents. In fact, there’s a choice of about 6 pages per president to choose from, some with primary lines and others with regular lines, some in color, others in black/white. I printed a page for each of the 16 presidents Ben is learning about. In the box, he will fill in things like birth and death dates, place of birth, years he was president, and family information. On the writing lines, he will write a paragraph about the most significant things he learned about the president.
Finally, we come to the Read and Discover activities. There are several questions/research prompts for each day. So I just needed a lined page for Ben to record his findings. There was a patriotic-themed choice for this as well. I printed one for each day.
Lastly, we have the Weekly Wind-up pages found within the Elections 2012 Unit Study.
You have no idea how excited I am to have found this website. These notebooking pages are a near perfect compliment to this unit study! I think they would compliment pretty much any curriculum that you wish to notebook. They have pages for history, geography, language arts, nature study, science, A-Z (animals, transportation, sports), basic lined pages, famous people (artists, composers, poets, presidents, church figures, explorers, etc.), templates with different borders. I better stop. This is starting to sound like a review, and it’s not. I’m just so impressed with this resource, I want everyone to know about it!
Anyway, Ben is happy, I am happy, and when we’re finished with our elections study, we’ll have a great journal to keep for review and recording.
You can’t beat that.
Book Basket
Oh, on last thing. Our unit studies are never complete without our book basket! Here are a few of the books Ben is reading this week.
The Elections Book: The People Pick a President by Carolyn Jackson
See How They Run: Campaign Dreams, Election Schemes, and the Race to the White House by Susan E. Goodman A More Perfect Union: The Story of Our Constitution by Betsy Maestro
Duck for President by Doreen Cronin
Woodrow, the White House Mouse by Peter W. Barnes
House Mouse, Senate Mouse by Peter Barnes
Marshall, the Court House Mouse by Peter Barnes
Presidential Elections and Other Cool Facts by Syl Sobel
Vote (DK Publishing)
So You Want to be President by Judith St. George
If You Were There When They Signed the Constitution by Elizabeth Levy
George Washington: Man of Prayer and Courage by Norma Cournow Camp
Abigail Adams: First Lady of Faith and Courage by Evelyn Witter
House Mouse, Senate Mouse by Peter Barnes
Marshall, the Court House Mouse by Peter Barnes
Presidential Elections and Other Cool Facts by Syl Sobel
Vote (DK Publishing)
So You Want to be President by Judith St. George
If You Were There When They Signed the Constitution by Elizabeth Levy
George Washington: Man of Prayer and Courage by Norma Cournow Camp
Abigail Adams: First Lady of Faith and Courage by Evelyn Witter
Learn more about Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett
Learn more about Productive Homeschooling
Has your family tried notebooking or unit studies? What about combining them?
Elections Homeschool Resources
Notebooking Across the USA: Unit Studies for Every State in the USA!