Homeschool: Newspaper Unit

My hugest apologies for the long time with no posts! We moved in December and hubby decided to move his office out of the house. What that means for me is no computer or internet at home… I have access to the computer approximately once every other week (it’s not that strict, that’s just about what it ends up being on average).

Anyway… here’s a peek at what I’ve been up to. Enjoy :).

We recently studied newspapers with my boys. It was a pretty fun unit to have worked on, and I’m pleased to share our experience here with you!

First thing each morning, we read a chapter of Henry and the Paper Route by Beverly Cleary. They kids had attempted a Beverly Cleary book on their own before, and while the writing was fine for them, they were put off by the length of the chapters. So having me read aloud to them helped them notice that even though the chapters are “24 pages!” (emphasis theirs) each, it’s really not so bad. Having done this now, they’re trying again to read their copy of Henry Huggins with much more success :).

We also did a lap book about newspapers. I don’t have ready access to a computer, so everything in the lap book was handmade by me. Except for the covers. I just had them cut a page from one of the local papers to about the right size and glue it to the cover.

Here are each of their covers:

     

Inside, I included things not just about newspapers, but about paper in general. We learned about how a tree is made into paper:

The life cycle of a newspaper from tree to recycle bin, different parts of a newspaper, the people in the newspaper office, and the importance of ads:

On the final side of our lap book, we drew a comic. Because my husband draws comics, I had to specifically ban the kids from just copying his characters and ideas. Hubby thought that was absolutely hilarious! We also talked about the similarities and differences between newspapers and books.

In addition, we made our paper – but from other paper, not from trees ;). I used this tutorial for that.

This week, the kids are making their own newspapers. Because of that whole “no computer at home” dilemma, those will likely end up looking very similar to the lap books – handmade and rustic!

To top the whole thing off, we went in and got a private tour of the newspaper office in our town today. The publisher was incredibly generous with his time and showed us everything from a detailed going-over of the current issue to meeting the staff and showing us the computer program they use to lay out the paper.

Overall, a huge success!!