Friday 23 August 2013

Natural Wonders - TOS Review



In the Hands of a Child is a popular lapbook resource that I've have heard loads about so I was quiet excited when it came up on the review list.


We chose Natural Wonders for Lilly and Sunflower to work on - it's designed for grades 4th - 8th but it worked well for my 10yo and 8yo. We were send a pdf download that came with 'type it in', however I chose to print the work out because we need more handwriting practice : )
(NB if you do print it out you need to remove the words 'type your answer here' or it prints that in the activity)

The study is designed to be a short one and can be completed in 6 days, although with the suggested reading list you could easily stretch it out - we stretched it over a couple of weeks. I was able to assign the natural wonder, provide them with the research books and activities and leave them to it. They even decided the layout themselves and redesigned it around a world map with lines to each of the wonders.


The unit starts with a intro into lapbooking including pictures of the finished product as well as directions for how to fold each part, a short write-up about each of the natural wonders (includes all the information needed to fill in the minibooks), a related reading list, printables for the twenty activities that make up the lapbook, and three extension projects.  During this work the girls were introduced to some of the most famous natural wonders of the world including Angel Falls, the Aurora Borealis, Ayers Rock, Grand Canyon, Great Barrier Reef, Harbor of Rio de Janeiro, Mount Everest, Paricutin, and Victoria Falls.

I did pick and choose what activities to do as some were less relevant to us (a poll of your classmates to create a bar graph of the most popular natural wonders). They focused instead more the geography of the natural wonders in the lesson, learnt the vocabulary words, did additional research/reading and completed the activities for what we'd learned. The girls especially liked the the 'create your own liquid Aurora Borealis' activity.


I liked that it was a complete unit and contained all the information needed. I found the Vocabulary study to be helpful and it lead to some great discussions.

I felt this pack would have benefited from colour options - I know Hands of a Child only supply in Black and White due to customer request but I really felt the pictures of the Aurora Borealis especially would have been better in colour. Luckily I got some great books from the library with colour photos of the natural wonders.

Overall, this was a fun study to do and the girls seemed to enjoy it.

Natural Wonders is available normally for $12.00 but is currently on offer for $5.00

You can see what my crew mates thought of this and other 'In the Hands of a Child' products over at the TOS Blog

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