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As I’m making plans for teaching high school world history next year I will be putting together some lil’ helpers for my students.  And, of course, I’m planning on sharing them with my friends too!

Although this timeline can be used with any age/grade.  I have chosen to use the Annotated Mona Lisa as our art history spine which is appropriate for middle school through college.  The timeline is created specifically for this book, with the headings of each section so that the student can follow along in the book as he takes notes.

The main goal of this timeline is to have the student interacting with the book as he reads.  He is expected to write down the dates (they are not given on the timeline), take notes as he reads each section, and write the name of the artist under the example picture given plus any other artists he wants to remember from that time period.

Annotated Mona Lisa Timeline-Yr1

How I plan on awarding 1/2 credit of art history to my students:

1. I will expect them to read two sections a week and after wards fill out the above timeline.
2. They will color an appropriate picture from Art Masterpieces to Color: 60 Great Paintings from Botticelli to Picasso from the time period they are reading from.
3. With the remaining nine or so weeks left over they will be writing a report on a topic such as:  biography of an artist,  explanation of a specific art movement,  comparing and contrasting two artists or movements, the effects of art on society, how religion effected art
4. A final project will be expected to be worked on during the last semester consisting of one of the following:

• Powerpoint or other audio/visual presentation at least 3 1/2 minutes long
• Four minute expository speech with visuals
• Completed art piece in the style of the artist or genre that paper was written about
• Display board with pictures and new information besides what was in report
• Other approved project idea

In Florida I can award 1/2 credit  after approximately 60 hours have been dedicated to a subject.  This includes class time, lecture time, reading, preparing, writing, and delivering the project.   I have chosen these assignments while keeping this in mind.

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Last summer for our family vacation, we decided to tour the Eastern states and see all the historical sites on our way up to visit my parents in Vermont. We hadn’t been that far as a family before and it was a BIG deal to be able to do this, especially for a homeschooling family! There were tons of places that I wanted to stop, so I began researching.

Weeks later, we had an itinerary.  We were going to drive through the  majority of the first 13 colonies, so I started preliminary packing (in my head)….then IT struck me. What on earth were all 5 kids going to do for 4-9 hours every day in the car?

Were we crazy? I was ready to call it off.

As I began thinking about all the things to occupy time in the car it dawned on me. Wait, we are homeschoolers! Give us a notebook, blank notebooking pages, fun worksheets, stickers, maps, podcasts, cool markers and pens and we’ll make a Summer Vacation notebook. In the style of how we study everything else – notebooking!

I found many resources online and here are a few that pertained to our trip and could pertain to any family vacation driving up the Eastern coast:

• Enchanted Learning states pages
• Enchanted Learning state flags
• Vacation memory book (I enlarged and modified this)
• 13 colonies – label them
• Liberty bell info
• Label the airplane (for DC Air and Space museum) or Wright Bros. museum
• Looking at Airplains, National Air and Space Museum
• I downloaded numerous free podcasts from Colonial Williamsburg
• Colonial Williamsburg coloring and activity book
• History Scribe notebooking pages (I already had this)
• Jamestown replica, free print out
• Printed out games like Road Trip Bingo, Scavenger Hunt and Battle Ship from Moms Mini Van

I also made sure there were these things in each notebook:

• Blank pages for drawing and writing
• Page protectors to slide postcards, National Parks ranger worksheets, and brochures in
• A pencil case with markers, stickers, stamps and other goodies
• Printouts of maps of our destinations like Jamestown, Williamsburg, Monticello, National Air and Space museum etc. so we could plan our activities before we arrived
• List of podcasts and Cd’s we could listen to for each state

* Note:  This post was originally written for Heart of the Matter Online in 2008.  It was modified for my blog.  We have since created another vacation notebook for 2009 and I will be posting links to what we used in an upcoming post.

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Welcome to Homeschool History Buffs!  If you would like to participate in the blog hop, please get your code below from Linky Tools.  Add the code to your blog post so that you can hop easily from blog to blog that is participating.

Please help spread the word so that HHB can grow to become a great resource for history project ideas.  Each entry becomes eligible to be included on the Homeschool Gadget Toolbar under history projects chronologically.

We made a talking feather from our Hands and Hearts Early American History kit.  What I love about these kits is that you get all the materials needed for these incredible projects.

We are in the Colonial time period and the kit has been perfect so far in providing us with candle dipping, the bowl game, and other colonial and Native American Indian crafts.  I purchased two kits, one for each family involved in our co-op and the children have had fun doing these projects as a team.

If you are wondering what a talking feather is, here is a good explanation here.

To read the legend of the talking feather read here.

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Welcome to Homeschool History Buffs!  If you would like to participate in the blog hop, please get your code below from McLinky.  Add the code to your blog post so that you can hop easily from blog to blog that is participating.

Please help spread the word so that HHB can grow to become a great resource for history project ideas.  Each entry becomes eligible to be included on the Homeschool Gadget Toolbar under history projects chronologically.

The hornbook, a form of ABC book, was common by Shakespeare’s day (Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V. i.).  It consisted of a piece parchment or paper pasted onto (most commonly) a wooden board and protected by a leaf of horn. The text usually started with a cross in the top left-hand corner, followed by an alphabet, vowels, a syllabary, and the invocation to the Trinity, after which the Lord’s prayer was printed.

We made our hornbook with the materials provided in the Hands and Hearts Early American History kit.  We have really enjoyed using this kit to go along side our Tapestry of Grace/Digital Edition: Year 2 readings.  We have done other colonial time-period projects  using the history activity kits including:  beeswax candles, pomander balls, and a Native American Indian game.

If you are currently studying this time period, or plan to in the future, you should consider picking up one or a few of these kits.  They are perfect for a busy homeschool mom that wants to incorporate crafts alongside her history study.

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Welcome to Homeschool History Buffs!  If you would like to participate in the blog hop, please get your code below from McLinky.  Add the code to your blog post so that you can hop easily from blog to blog that is participating.

Please help spread the word so that HHB can grow to become a great resource for history project ideas.  Each entry becomes eligible to be included on the Homeschool Gadget Toolbar under history projects chronologically.

We made a native American Indian game called the “bowl game”.  The materials to make this game were included in our Early American History Discovery Kit from Hands and Hearts, along with other history projects that we are doing from this time period.

We learned that not only did American Indians shoot bows and arrows and play outdoor games, they had indoor games as well.

What we did:

We painted one side of each disk with a pattern of some sort.  Some ideas were:  dots, lines, stars, solid etc…  We also painted ours on paper plates to keep the table from getting messy.

How to play the bowl game:

1. Place all the disks in the basket and the sticks in a central pile.
2. With a flip of the wrist, each player takes turns gently tossing the disks into the air and catching them into the basket.
3. Which ever disks land painted side up get counted.
4. How ever many disks that you count is how many sticks you take on your turn.
5. Play continues until all of the sticks are gone.
6. When all the sticks are gone, the player with the most sticks wins.

Variations on the game:

• If someone lands all blank or all painted disks, they collect 8 sticks and have another turn.
• If someone lands 4 painted disks, their turn is skipped.
• If someone lands 1 disk, the play continues in the other direction.

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