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A few years ago, Minnesota hosted the “Winter That Never Ends”. By the beginning of March, we began dreaming of a sunny vacation. Greg pointed out that with us homeschooling and him working from home, we had the freedom to be anywhere. We talked about how nice a condo in Florida would be, if only we could afford it. And then I remembered.
“Honey, your mom lives in Texas. Texas is warm.”
And so we went.
We made our home in Waco for two and a half weeks, one of which I designated as Spring Break. I wanted to take full advantage of our new environment for our schoolwork the rest of the time. And I wanted to do something creative. We had done lapbooks several times, including one before a trip to Disneyworld, but I felt the boys may have outgrown them.
Have you heard of Smashbooks?
They are essentially a type of scrapbook, but less structured and made on the go. Unlike a scrapbook that you make after an event, a smashbook you put together while you’re doing it.
Smashbooks can be in a regular notebook, plain scrapbook, or binder.
And having the word “smash” in the name made it more appealing to my two boys. 🙂
Homeschooling Travel
One of the things I love best about homeschooling is being able to incorporate our circumstances and surroundings into our learning.
Did you know that when you purchase a membership to a local museum, you may also have access to hundreds of museums around the country? And did you also know that as a homeschooler, you can usually receive the Educator Membership, which costs significantly less than a regular membership?
I found a few printables here and here that I printed and packed with the binders/scrapbooks I had picked up for the boys. I also bought some inexpensive scrapbooking do-dahs (stickers and such) for fun.
And I printed out some timelines and other images that coordinated with what we’d be studying.
The Studying
We spent a couple of days at Grandma’s house doing some studying about the places we’d be visiting. I had the boys label the tabs in their binders with categories.
First, we learned about Texas history, plants and animals.
We studied periods of art, and a variety of artists, since we planned to visit the art museum.
We read about JFK and his assassination in Dallas, and the Alamo, and did a bit of review from our study of Astronomy the previous year. Then we hit the museums!
The Museums
Our first museum stop was the Dallas Museum of Art. We happened to get there before opening and had some time to kill. We found the neatest little café nearby called, The Mad Hatter, to have breakfast at. It was a fun, unplanned memory. Aren’t those the best?!
I had a plan for the Art Museum, knowing that my boys weren’t terribly excited to be there. We had a sort of scavenger hunt, looking for artists we had studied. It wasn’t my goal to see everything. I knew we’d lose patience before that. What I wanted to be sure to do, though, was to take the time to talk about what we did see.
The day after our museum visit, we went on the museum’s website and found some images that we’d spent more time with to print out for our Smashbooks. I also had the boys pick a favorite piece.
You know you’re a mother of boys when their favorite piece is a woman who “looks rather sickly and ghostly.”
Other museums that we visited in Dallas/Ft. Worth were a Science Museum and Planetarium, The Dallas Holocaust Museum, and the JFK Museum at Dealey Plaza. Not all in one day, of course!
Our favorite, by far, was the JFK Museum. Outstanding and well worth the time if you’re ever able to go.
Closer to Waco, we found and visited the Mammoth Dig Site Museum, and several parks. We made sure, at the parks, to look for native Texas plants we had studied. Grandma was kind enough to let us print out some pictures we took to put in the smashbooks.
The Alamo was a bit of a drive, but we took a day and made a whole family trip of it. It’s much smaller than I imagined, but interesting and worth it nonetheless. I let the boys each pick out a couple of post cards from the gift shops to put in their books.
Finishing our Smashbooks
Before we left Texas, I had the boys complete some “favorites” pages for their smashbooks. We also took some time to have them go through their books with dad and grandma.
You should give these a try! They are fun to do, a great way to organize learning, and make memories you can come back to for years.
AH-MAZING and VERY thorough. These are great and look like they were a lot of fun to create. TFS!
Thanks, April! They were fun to make, but even more fun to look back through and remember our trip. It’s amazing what you forget!
LOVE THIS IDEA!!! Like a diary of fun facts and knowledge!
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That made my day to see! I love stuff like this too, it makes learning so much more fun and memorable!
I LOVE this! It can be used for anything and such a great way for the kids to look back and see what they accomplished and all the fun they had learning. Thank you so much for sharing this idea!
Ruth, I’m so happy that you found something you can use! It really makes me kind of giddy. 🙂 Thanks for taking the time to let me know. You made my day!
Never heard this term for them, but we did notebooking and desktop projects like these when my son was younger; we always found out too much interesting ‘stuff’ when we researched a project so they rarely fit in a file folder 🙂
We did lapbooking, too, and had the same issue—not enough room! I’m pretty sure that ‘Smashbook’ was a term someone coined to make money off of scrapbookers. (That’s just my cynical self weighing in.) Having said that, I know it was easier to get my boys to do them with a name like that. 🙂
I actually thought I had heard the term from when I was younger, maybe middle or high school. But it referred to a book about other kids in your grade & negative things written about them. (I swear there was a clique that had a few confinscated, or was it a messed up movie?!?) This, clearly puts a much more positive spin on it! It’s perfect for us homeschoolers too, bc all of those brochures I habitually collect that never seem to make it into a scrapbook would already have a home before the end of our vacation! Hopefully our next mini weekend adventure/trip we can try our hand at this version! I know it’ll be a huge success since we are project enthusiastic around here. Bonus it will help us feel like we’re having a break while stay school focused too, without pushing all the crazy curriculum I’ve over indulged in. Can’t wait!
LOL! I think you’re thinking of the movie Mean Girls…they had the ‘Burn Book’. (I had to go look it up, since I saw it forever ago.) And YES! Brochures are great for this project! Have fun!!
I like this idea. So did you print images, etc., before you went? Did the kids take their own photos? How did you keep the book from being squished while travelling?
Great questions all! I printed out a variety of the blank templates before we left because I wasn’t sure what the printing situation would be where we were. Once we got there, I found that there was a printer available, so we took advantage of that. After we visited the art museum, I went online and was able to print out a handful of images from their website. We were also able to print out some photos that we’d taken on our cell phones to use. I think I took most of the photos, but the kids might have snapped a few. The coolest thing about these is that you can really customize for any situation. There’s no right or wrong way to do it! The books had hard covers, so they actually traveled really nicely.
Great idea! We often road trip, and this would be a great way to incorporate learning on the go.
Yes! I hope your family loves doing this as much as we did!
These are great! Where did you get the notebooks? I love the papers that you used too. Are those a scrapbooking thing? They make the books so professional looking.
Thank you! I got the books and papers at Michaels, because that’s what was nearby. They were in the scrapbooking section. Anyplace that sells craft/scrapbooking supplies should have similar stuff (JoAnn’s, Hobby Lobby).
Love this idea!! Thanks for sharing!
(Also from MN, but now live in TX. Best of both worlds. 😀)
I would move to Texas simply because of the grocery stores. My husband and I see HEB as a must-visit destination when we’re there. 🙂