Character Studies Lapbooks

I Love Lapbooks! They are just such a wonderful learning tool, particularly for those who are tactile & visual learners. My girls are all 'hands on'. They love expressing their creativity through this medium and I love facilitating it. I have put together lapbooks to compliment most of their subjects.

One of my favorites at the moment is Character Studies. On a Tuesday's we get together with 2 other homeschooling families to do our Artistic Pursuit. Following this we then continue on with Character Studies. We came across this on a blog Shiver Academy . (When on this blog,scroll down and on the left hand side of the blog is a link to their Book of Virtues Project.) It has been amazingly well put together and it's free. As always with lapbooks you can mix n match with what ever suits you and your needs. We're actually spreading this out over the year, starting with Self Discipline.

It's based on The Book of Virtues by William J. Bennett. This is the most amazing book for all ages. These are my 2 favorite online book stores where it is available The Book Depository and Amazon, but I'm sure your local library would have a copy. I have included a few photos of Maddies work so far.

Also an added bonus at the moment is you can watch the Adventures From the Book of Virtues cartoon series on byutv.org Each weekend they screen a virtue based on the book. My kids just love watching it, as it explores one of the virtues each week, faith, honesty, compassion and so on.

This is worth checking out as we're totally enjoying it. This is not based on any faith in particular and as our homeschooling friends are not of the same faith, virtues are something that transcends a particular belief and are something each of us needs to learn and understand. Bishop H. David Burton said "Virtuous traits form the foundation of a Christian life and are the outward manifestation of the inner man". Ensign Nov 09.

The way we actually do it is: we read aloud the stories for the day as recommended in the outline provided on the Shiver Academy, then the kids each recount to us what the story was about (ours are not great writers yet and we didn't want them getting bogged down with too much writing.) They then do the lapbook activity & drawing on the day. During the week we get them to do the copy work that is related to the lesson. there are also little goals to work on so as to put that 'virtue' into practice.

This has been such a blessing in our life. I have seen so many changes already with Maddie already trying to keep her room tidier, working hard at being obedient and well.... more self disciplined.

We are all looking forward to the next virtue!!!