Thursday, July 29, 2010

Download N Go


This year some of the children will be doing Download N Go unit studies. We ended last year with the Expedition Mexico unit and we all had a lot of fun.

We learned so many things about Mexico, did several projects and made nice lapbooks. The Download N Go units are designed for 1 week of study but we stretched it out over a 3 week period (which was probably too long but was OK for the first one).

One of our projects was making paper mache maracas. Katie (12 at the time) and I did most of the paper mache but all of the kids had fun painting them. It took quite a while to make them because we did several layers so that the maracas would harden. If I had it to do over again I would do the final layer in white paper so the newsprint wouldn't show through on the final product. We made them with small water balloons.



We also made Mexican sombreros out of newspaper. I'm not sure I'd try that again. They didn't come out that great and didn't last at all. I'd probably do it again with kids that were old enough to do it themselves.





The other big project we made was a paper mache volcano. That was a lot of fun. Sometime we are going to make one with Mentos and diet soda. For this one we used baking soda, food coloring and vinegar.





We also made homemade tortillas.  The kids loved eating them as much as making them.


And a few pictures of the finished lapbooks






I really wanted everything all together in the lapbook so we cut up the worksheets.


I added this butterfly life cycle booklet.




This accordian book was something I did using worksheets that I shrunk down to 1/4 of the original size.  

See my review of Roller Coasters and enter to win it free!

6 comments:

Jen said...

Stopping in from the DNG review crew! I see you've already used some. I am SO excited now. They look like so much fun. Better get ink for the printer! Have a great day.

Karen said...

Thanks for stopping by Jen!

Amanda said...

Thanks for sharing your family's experience! Looks like they had FUN with this adventure - I'm having a great time looking at all of the pictures! What a way to learn, and I imagine they will remember this for a long time - hurray!

Blessings,
Amanda B.
www.DownloadNGo.com

Karen said...

Yes, Amanda we did have a great time and I am sure the kids will remember (plus they have their lapbooks too for review!) We made flour tortillas too but I can't seem to find the pictures of that. :( I'm looking forward to many more Download N Go adventures this year.

homeschool bits said...

Just browsing here and wanted to say this is REALLY nice! That volcano is great! I hadn't thought to do the Mexico DNG this year, but it seems it would cover quite a bit for our science, geography, etc. Thanks for sharing. :)

Unknown said...

love how you shrunk the time and temperature pages and made an accordion for them! thanks for sharing your experiences with Mexico, it looks like you guys had a great time!

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