Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Projects for Creation Studies

This was our first unit for Year One in Tapestry of Grace.  My children are both considered "Upper Gramar Level" according to their grade-levels (3rd and 5th), so your children may have different reading lists.  However, all ages study the same topics at the same time.  The literature selections for this unit were really beautiful.  "The True Story of Noah's Ark" by Tom Dooley was a wonderfully-crafted selection, read by the author on the included audio CD, complete with sound effects and music.  It really started our year off right.  You can view the book here.  After we read this, we went outside and, in the middle of the street, started seeing for ourselves how large Noah's Ark really was, based on the measurements in the Bible.  Of course, we had to do some clever conversions from cubits to feet. This link will help you with the math.  Since most tape measures only go so far, the kids had to do even more math to get the right measurements!  If your kids have always pictured Noah's Ark being a cute little boat with smiling cartoon animals hanging off the sides, wait until you see this book and do this project!  Wow!

Backtracking a bit....when you study about the days of Creation, a fun ways for the kids to memorize what happened on each day is to make a flip book.  We used 11x17 paper.  In fact, buy a whole pack of this paper at the beginning of the year, as it comes in handy for making foldable projects of all kinds, especially vocabulary.  Anyway, take 4 of these sheets and stagger them about 1 inch from the one behind it like so:

Then flip it over and fold it so the other tabs line up making an eight-tabbed book. 



The large "cover-tab" will be for the title and student name.  The others can be labeled Day 1, Day 2 and so forth.  Don't forget to leave a tiny bit of room to punch a few holes.  You can weave yarn, ribbon or twine through the holes to bind the book together.  The kids got creative and illustrated the insides with cotton ball clouds, rhinestone stars and octopus stickers. 

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