Christmas Carol class and notebook

Every December is filled with one thing after another. Sometimes it can get busy and lessons sometimes fall to the wayside. Last year, I had the thought to teach a class for homeschoolers from my home that last full week before Christmas. The class was based on Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol. It was nice, because it kept me "on track" but was within the spirit of the season. My kids got to spend some time with friends and their parents had the chance to do some things they needed to do without worrying about the lessons falling to the wayside.

A Christmas Carol was a good book to study. It is written in 5 staves (chapters) and we covered one stave a day. Each day at the end of reading, writing, creating notebook pages, etc, we would watch a different version of the movie. At the end of the week, the kids were to critique the movies and write about their favorite. The versions included a 1935 version starring Sir Cedric Hardwick I found at Target for $1, a Mickey Mouse version, the Muppets version, and the version with George C. Scott.

Each day, the kids would write a narration of the stave we were focusing on for the day. Then we would do different activities. One day, they had to sculpt a character from the story out of clay. That was great.

On the last day, each child had a notebook that he/she could take home and share with relatives over the holidays. In the back of the notebook, I added a couple of blank pages so that they could get signatures and comments of those with whom they shared their lapbooks.

The following pictures are from dd10's complete notebook. I am only posting the original pages I came up with. There are other pages in the book that I purchased online. The notebook has about 22 pages (counting fronts and backs its 44 pages).

This is the cover she designed herself.


Inside the front cover.

On index cards, we wrote significant events in Charles Dickens' life. We then put the cards in this pocket.


A watercolor painting of Jacob Marley's ghost painted on appropriate paper and cut out and placed in the notebook.

A trifold of dd10's Christmas 5 years ago, Christmas present, and Christmas in 10 years from now. Notice my little princess thinks she'll be driving a pink car in 10 years.

A written narration of "Want" and "Ignorance" along with an illustration of each tucked inside the "rounded triangle petal book" found at Homeschool Share .

Movie review page. They chose which was their favorite version and gave reasons why.

My sis-in-law actually took us to see a performance on stage. These are photographs and a ticket stub from the performance.

Reader's Signature Page

"Each time you share this notebook with others, have them sign and comment on your notebook on these pages."

Whenever a child shares his/her notebook, it reinforces what was learned and provides opportunity for oral narration. It can be fun for them to try to get those last couple of pages filled with signatures.