Title: Lewis And Clark: Hands On Art/English Activities
Author: Visual Manna – Sharon Jeffus
Price:
Overall Rating (1-10): 9
Value (1-10): 9
Flexibility (1-10): 8
Ages/Grades: 9+
Review:
If you have not heard of Visual Manna, it is a series of art instruction books that incorporate learning about a wide spectrum of academic areas accompanied closely with art technique and projects.
Visual Manna’s ‘Lewis and Clark’ combines the teaching of history, science, geography, English and art all in one and provides for a very child-friendly curriculum. Your kids will forget they are “doing history” and will start begging to pull out the Visual Manna. The Lewis and Clark expedition occurred 200 years ago over the course of two years. If you have not yet introduced this epic journey to your children, using this book will provide for a very thorough and exciting experience.
Through a series of early 19th century journal entries and art activities, the Lewis and Clark expedition will come to life in your own homes. There is nothing like recreating history to make it seem real and interesting. Your child will also be instructed to keep a journal similar to the type kept by Lewis and Clark themselves. Your children will learn about the discoveries made by Lewis and Clark along the way including new animals and plants and they will create some new species of animals themselves. They will learn about the tools and items brought along with these explorers as they recreate their own real-life versions. Famous paintings from the era are explored and written about. Geography and map work are covered in detail. Drawing from grids and with perspective, creating berry-ink, drawing portraits, animals and trees, writing descriptive paragraphs and poetry, exploring landscapes found along the way, learning about famous people from the Lewis and Clark era, Native American customs and traditions, dinosaur discovery are just some of the highlights that will be covered throughout this book.
As you can see, this book is a VERY thorough exposure to many academic subjects presented through a single historical event. If your child is a kinesthetic or artistic learner, this is a perfect way to experience many subjects in a very hands-on way. The book’s writing requirements and drawing instructions are definitely geared for upper elementary aged students however with some creativity and flexibility you can pretty easily include younger siblings. I just pared down the writing requirements. My younger children are pretty artistically determined so even though they might not entirely grasp a concept presented, they seemed to get a fair amount out of it anyway.
The book isn’t overwhelming in size which appeals to me. Its lessons are simple and straight forward which works well for my family but might leave something lacking for families who need more in depth instruction on a technique or concept. There is great vocabulary presented throughout the book, in bold, with definitions in the rear of the book. There are also supplementary websites listed throughout the text for more information and reference. This isn’t a complete curriculum, per se, but I think it stands on its own merits and many children would learn the equivalent or higher of a public school English, science, geography, history and art curriculum by doing nothing more than this book over a semester or half a year. It is assumed that the child already knows how to write in various forms and how to proofread and correct his own spelling. So if this is a weak area for your child, you will have to intervene on his behalf to add support in those areas.
Bottom Line: If your child loves art and being creative and you struggle to find a way to incorporate history, geography, English, vocabulary, and science in interesting ways, you will absolutely love Visual Manna’s Lewis and Clark. It reads almost like a unit study but with a heavy emphasis on art and a curiously sneaky way of fitting in all the other “stuff” so that, in the end, your child has learned a whole lot in a wide variety of academic areas while having a darned good time!
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