ANZAC Picture Books

ANZAC day is fast approaching so I thought I would share a small selection of picture books with you.

ANZAC Biscuits, by Phil Cummings & Owen Swan

This is the touching story of a little girl named Rachel. Whom along with her mother, bakes biscuits to send to her father whilst he is away at war.

Page by page the stark contrast is bitterly obvious between what the solider is experiencing in comparison to the warm quiet evening Rachel spends indoors.

The reader absolutely experiences the hardship and sacrifice made by the men, women and their families. However the harsher, more gruesome realities of war are left out here. Making this a perfect picture book for younger children.

The ANZAC Puppy, by Peter Millett & Trish Bowles

When a young soldier name Sam finds a puppy being given away he decides to take her to war with him.

This is the fictional story of Sam and Freda's time spent at war, the good, the bad and the ugly. Sam believed that Freda was his good luck charm and that she was most definitely protecting him, ensuring that he made it home safely.

Whilst a slightly longer book it is still most definitely suitable for a younger audience.

Jack's Bugle, by Krista Bell & Belinda Elliott

The story of 19 year old Aidan Jackson, an excellent bugle player, that went to war. It begins with Jack saying farewell to his loved ones, then shows a basic overview of their time spent training in Egypt.

From there the story solemnly moves to ANZAC Cove, Gallipoli.

Aidan, never returns home from the war but his bugle does and it ends up in the hands of a very unlikely character.

I would recommend this story for a slightly older age group than the earlier two books. It is somewhat longer and talks of the death and despair of Gallipoli.

The Beach They Called Gallipoli, by Jackie French & Bruce Whatley

This is the story of Gallipoli, as seen from the cove, the story of the beach.

French and Whatley worked superbly together to create the gruseome images of the months of bloodshed at Gallipoli.

Written in a journal format, with real photgraphs interspersed between haunting illustrations, this is definitely one for the slightly older child.

I reviewed, Why Are They Marching Daddy, couple of years back. You can see my thoughts and a few of the inside pages by clicking here.

Lest We Forget,
Kylie

My Other Posts About The ANZAC's

Free Printable Unit For Younger Learners

Knight Lapbook & Go Along Books

Towards the end of last year, when we came to the realisation that the very popular program we had been using was no longer meeting our needs, we went looking for something else.

That elusive something else! We were already deep within the Medieval time period and had covered Vikings earlier in the year and I didn't really want to go it alone.

I did however know that I wanted to move forward with all things Medieval. Things like Knights, Chivalry, Jousting and all the fun that that contains.

So I was quite elated when I stumbled onto the Knight Lap-Pak over at Homeschool In The Woods. Yes the targeted age is K - 2 but all three of my kids did this at varying levels.

The images are a little cutesy and young looking, but they were all ok with that. There really is very little writing so I just ramped it up for mine by adding in some written reporting requirements.

This Lap-Pak is available on CD or via a download. Given that HITW is an American company I chose the download option.

We decided to put our mini books together on sheets of A4 coloured card, that way they can be hole punched and placed directly into a ring binder, or protected with plastic sleeves first. We enjoy lapbooks but I always struggle with storing them.

The Knight Lap-Pak includes an MP3 Audio story to listen to as you work through the many mini books and activities that it includes. It covers pretty much all there is to know about Knights for younger kids, weaponry, chivalry, ceremonies etc Here after reading about their shields and what the symbols on them represent they each had to design their own shield.

There are several colouring pages throughout the pack and the entire MP3 Audio story can also be printed to use as a read aloud and/or to include in your lap pak if you wish.

My kids especially liked the interactive mini books, here on The Tournament one, where my son spent a massive amount of time getting the colours just right, you can move the jousting knight along the page and the castle draw bridge on the book below it really does go up and down.

After completing the Knight Lap Pak and reading our pile of books about Knights my eldest wrote a brief report covering all of the main points on Knights.

There are so many great medieval knight books out there, but I thought I would share just a few. To see inside and more details on these please see my post, Books About Knights. (coming soon)

Do you have any other great books or activities you have done when learning about knights?  I'd love to hear about them if you do.

Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie

P.S I was NOT compensated in any way for this post. Simply sharing a product I purchased that we enjoyed using.

Learning Spaces - NBTS Blog 2015

Here we are at week four, the last week of the Not Back To School Blog Hop. I hope you've enjoyed all of the sharing between all of the blogs that participated.

Don't forget to leave a comment on the blog posts you do read to say thanks to the homeschoolers that gave you a glimpse inside their lives.

This week it's Learning Spaces, this is a tricky one for me and I'm guessing for most homeschoolers as I can easily show you a room but in reality we truly do use our entire house, and the houses of our co-op families, it just depends on what it is we are doing.

The space where a large portion of our resources and where are desks and computers are situated is shown in the images below. Our dining table also gets a good work out for a large portion of our sit down type activities.

However this past week some of it was here, as we were away on our homeschool camp

And here, due to a huge weather system we experienced in Queensland

It really is a very rare week where we spend our entire time in the rooms in the collage above. That's  the beauty of homeschooling, we are never stuck behind a desk!

Thank you for joining myself and Chareen, at Every Bed Of Roses for this year's Not Back To School Blog Hop.

Happy Homeschooling
Kylie x