Many years ago I attended a homeschool conference where a woman was speaking about “lapbooks”. “How creative”, I thought, “I need to try this with the kids”.
Once we started school, however, I found myself too busy to add anything else to the schedule, and the lapbook idea was set aside–for a long time!
Recently, while we were learning about Australia, the kids seemed bored with me reading while they took notes, and I decided to pull out the lapbook idea again.
We browsed through this book and found a simple fold that created a lapbook with tabs and lots of space for the information the kids would be collecting.
The kids enjoyed the lapbooks and so did I.
They provide a perfect place to write notes, draw pictures, and collect images from the computer. Lapbooks help to organize information while encouraging creativity.
For the next time I have colored paper on hand, and we will attempt a more complex fold. In general, the only materials needed are paper, a stapler, and/or glue.
If you are looking for a fun addition to your homeschooling days, lapbooking might be for you!
Here are some lapbooking resources:
Let’s Try Lapbooking!
How to Begin Lapbooking
Our Lapbooks
Lapbooking on a Shoestring
Happy homeschooling!
I hear ya, I too have not found much time to “lapbook” but I never thought to check for books on the subject. Next year I will be bringing home my second son from a private christian school and he is very “artsy” and a kinstetic learner. So I know I will need to attempt a few of these for his sake! Thanks for the info!
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I hope it’s okay to ‘self-promote’ a little here. I have some lapbooking pages on my site, and I think this one would be helpful for those starting out.
http://www.homegrownhearts.com/lapbook.htm
We like lapbooking. I just gave a presentation on lapbooking and notebooking to our homeschool group and it was a lot of fun to share. We had a hard time getting the ladies from the first session to leave so we could start the second session – they wouldn’t stop looking at our examples!
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I found out about this from a hs neighbor and started incorporating it into our studies. My son really enjoys it. He’s almost 3 years old, so it’s more work for me now b/c I have to figure out what I want in it, but it allows more hands on involvement for him and it’s easier for him to show his work to his grandparents.
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My older son took a lapbooking class on state history at a homeschool coop. Since I helped in the class, we both learned about lapbooking and how to make one. We tried some lapbooking at home too. It’s a fun and creative way to display your work.
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Okay okay okay! I’ll do my best to get this off the back burner and just DO IT. I know my boys would really enjoy it and they could even show it off to any unsuspecting visitors…
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I TOO had put it off….I LOVE the idea and FINALLY we are doing an “election” lapbook that I downloaded….”We’re OFF AND AWAY!!”
How timely was THIS!!:)
encouragement along the way!!
I’m going to check out the sites too!!
thanks Randi!
Happy Easter!
lori
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We did Greek and Roman lapbooks for history one year. It was a lot of fun, and the kids did things that we didn’t normally do–write newspaper reports and advertisements, write an obituary, etc. etc.
They’re really nice to have to show what we’ve done in homeschool.
Now that the kids are a little older they’re not quite so interested, but I may persuade them again with our creative writing unit study on tracing our family history…
We’ve lived without cable for 10 years now. It is so wonderful.
I don’t mean to sound preachy, because I’m honestly not in real life. I have many many many vices.
But we quit cable because I was watching too much TV. And it’s so great to have kids who never ever watch TV or ask to. Not even when they’re at their friends’ houses.
I found that I was going to bed every Thursday night totally depressed, and my husband would try to draw me out and talk to me, and I would yell at hiim for being an insensitive clod.
And then I realized that the reason I was depressed had to do with television. I had been watching ER every Thursday, and that just wrecked my mood (and our sex life)!
Anyway, I’m way too addicted to the internet. But we do save money having no cable, and I really find I don’t miss it. You can watch so much online now, and you can rent movies from the library.
But it sounds like you have this all figured out! And your summer sounds like fun!
Visit To Love, Honor and Vacuum today!
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I have a free lapbooking templates for a multiplication, addition and astronomy lapbooks on my yahoo group for anyone who is interested. You can find it here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Notebooking2Learn/
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Funny! We just had a lapbooking roundtable for our support group this week, and I posted about it today!
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SmallWorld/502795/
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We, too, love lapbooks. We’ve been doing Five In A Row and lapbooking as a wrapup. It is really not alot of ‘extra’ work, just a place to put everything we’ve already been working on.
Another great thing about lapbooks…Dylan can show them off. He can easily show his grandparents or friends what he’s been working on.
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We LOVE lapbooks. My son has something to show to his family as well as to his friends. He gets very proud of his lapbooks. We have done a few real complicated ones and a few real simple. Doesn’t matter he loves them all the same!
I also think that if anyone should EVER come to my door, I have somthing to show them and prove that we are doing some sort of school at home (as well as my recotrds too).
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There’s lapbooks and lapbooking all over the net (what fun!) – Lapbooking 101 – http://www.lapbooking.wordpress.com – has a general overview of getting started with the process of lapbooking.
Cheers!
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