Creative Homeschooling: Lapbooking/Notebooking

Posted by Amy Bayliss | 0 comments

Our family has become quite accustomed to building our own books. We do a loose combination of all of the popular forms of booking: lapbooking, scrapbooking, notebooking, altered booking, etc. We have actually simply started calling it “heartbooking^©” since our style fits none of these exclusively and because we base the foundation of our education on God’s word which teaches us that we must examine the condition of our hearts. Studying history, science, and the especially the bible can give us the opportunity to examine our hearts and motives in certain situations.

Recently while studying about the Vietnam war my son became appalled by the fact that some soldiers were spat at upon their return from overseas. This gave me the opportunity to dig deeper into their hearts and question them as to whether or not if they were in a situation with one of their neighborhood friends and they believed that friend had done something wrong, how would they react to them? That is what heartbooking^© is about; using our current studies to build Godly character through self examination.

One of our favorite heartbooking ^© techniques is done by altering old books. We find old hardback books at thrift stores or library sales and we take them home and refurbish them with new content from whatever we are studying. We build new content on the already existing pages by simply gluing cardstock down and then adding all of our elements. We have absolutely enjoyed adding elements of a personal nature when we can. For example, when we studied the Vietnam war we were able to use some of my grandfather’s photos, paraphernalia, and documents that he had kept from the two tours he did there. We made lots of secret hiding places within the book to hold special things that belonged to my grandfather during the war.

We started the refurbishing with the cover of the book. We used sandpaper to buff off the smooth surface so that the glue would adhere properly. After that we kids filled in each page after a weeks worth of studying we were also careful to chronicle our heart lessons into the documentation. This has served us well and given our boys an amazing piece of history that is very close to their heart!

You can find basic instructions for altering books here: Amy Bayliss’ post and here: Amy Stults’ post.

Here are some photos of our Vietnam War book:

What kinds of creative ideas does your family use when it comes to “booking” of all types? Be sure to leave links to your “booking” posts so we can check them out!

Married to her best friend and “main squeeze”, Amy Bayliss is a 4th year home/co-schooling mom to three boys. She enjoys writing about the eclectic teachings that bring a glimmer of curiosity to the eyes of her sons. In addition to being the co-owner of Heart of the Matter, she writes for Internet Cafe Devotions. Be sure to visit her blog, AmyBayliss.com and her family’s homeschool blog: Integrity Academy.