Unit Studies and Lapbooks

I just wrote a nice post that deleted itself somehow, so I'll just cut to the chase:

We're starting a new chapter in our home education, and it involves unit studies. I took the kids to the zoo last week:

The kids had to choose something there that they wanted to learn more about afterward. Today we started lapbooks about Gila monsters and chimpanzees.

What I'm really looking forward to is our unit on Christopher Columbus coming up. It started when I found this, which we'll be doing this week as a family:

http://www.thenina.com

We'll be picking up books tomorrow at the library, and this is what we'll be following: 

http://mylearningboys.blogspot.com/2012/03/christopher-columbus-unit-study.html

We'll read in the scriptures where Christopher Columbus is referenced, and we just happened to start Ether from the Book of Mormon today, so I got the idea to chart all of the ocean voyages from the scriptures on our big world map. 

I personally will be reading this: https://www.lds.org/ensign/1992/10/columbus-and-the-hand-of-god?lang=eng

And this: http://www.amazon.com/Columbus-Voyages-1492-1504-Laurence-Bergreen-ebook/dp/B0052RDJ5Y/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409026924&sr=1-1&keywords=columbus+the+four+voyages 

I'm so excited!!