Creekwood Chronicles

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Sep. 1, 2009

Our Learning Tree

Posted in Creekwood Academy

I am so excited! I just finished creating my first bulletin board. I wanted to make something attractive and also inspiring to decorate the one really "school-y" thing in our learning area (aka: the living room & kitchen). I looked at several bulletin board ideas posted online and saw several that were intriguing. I knew I wanted something autumnal, creative but not too complicated (didn't want to spend hours working on it), and I wanted something that would suit several months (or the whole year, perhaps?).

Finally I decided on a tree, but not just any tree. Ours would have fruit or leaves (or something) on it labeled with some of the different things the children would be learning. And I wanted some kind of title to go with it. Some of the ideas I toyed with and later set aside were:

Fall-ing for Learning - cute, but I didn't like the implied randomness; I'm pretty deliberate about our learning (semantics, I know, but it irritated me)

Harvest of Learning - nice, but we're sowing the seeds here; not quite ready to reap the harvest

Nuts about Learning (with acorns) - liked the idea of using something other than fruit, but I have enough people thinking we're a little crazy because of our homeschooling and lifestyle choices without plastering a synonym on our bulletin board (yes, semantics again...)

The Fruit of Learning - not bad; I almost went with this one except when I thought about it, the academic subjects are tools for learning, not the fruit of it.

Soooooo....

I decided on "Our Learning Tree".

I made red and yellow circles out of construction paper for apples and labled them with some of the academic subjects and character traits the children will be learning this year. The tree trunk and a couple side branches are just rectangles of brown construction paper. I drew random lines and knotholes to make it look a little more like tree bark. For the leaves I cut puffy cloud-like shapes out of two shades of green construction paper and fiddled around with their placement until I liked how it looked. To finish it, I drew a few random leaf shapes on the greenery, stuck a few individual leaves on the apples, and for the piece-de-resistance, added some little sparkly fall leaves from our Autumn decor stash. The last detail was the title of our bulletin board. I sketched the letters roughly on blue construction paper, cut them out, and pinned them up (I stapled all these elements to the bulletin board - a trick I learned from a school teacher years ago). The result is what you see above. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I hope you like it too.

Sep. 3, 2009 - Untitled Comment

Posted by coffeeandconversation

Oh how beautiful! It makes me wish I had room for a board too.

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Sep. 27, 2009 - Untitled Comment

Posted by Anonymous

I loved your board..its beautiful. I also loved your lapbook. Like me, you loke using many varied mini books. I didnt know if you knew, but here are some mini books in case you ever want more
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/lapbooking_resources.php#Templates_Listed_by_Divisions_
they also have free lapbooks there. I love yours though. Leena

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