Step By Step, Piece by Piece

Posted by Patty | 0 comments

Don’t you just love all the pieces that we find put together for lapbooks? How about all those wonderful pages for notebooking? Oh and then there are mini-offices! There are so many different types of worksheets out there. But unless you have an unprecedented amount of time to search the web, you may decide that these items are not worth your time. So how about taking a few minutes to create them yourself?

First is to decide what exactly you want to do.

• Lapbooks require mini-books. They require a bit of creativity, and not just a little computer know-how. The perk with lapbooks is that you really don’t have to have the finished product in mind—just that immediate piece.

• Notebook pages require a decisive plan. You need to know what you are creating and how you want to lay it out.

• Mini-offices are not a fill in the blank type item, but they are a study tool just as the other two are. These don’t ask the questions though—they help your child answer them.

This three part series of articles will help walk you through creating these fun and helpful study aids.

So let’s start with Lapbooks. Creating these nifty little slips of paper is a very fun and a “MOST OF THE TIME” easy thing to do. You just need to know your basic ending shape. Do you want it square, round, rectangle, or triangle? (You can really have it any shape, it’s up to you!) Then you need to decide how many questions you want it.

So let’s start with a basic matchbook shape. First open up your word program. Click insert, and then click on shapes. Choose the rectangle shape. Then click and drag to your chosen size. Don’t worry; you can always edit it later if you make the wrong size.

Now click on the rectangle until you see small boxes around the outside edge. Now you want to be able to move it around so you need to right click it and choose “Format”. Click on the layout tab and then choose “In front of text” and then OK. Press your CTRL button and the letter C. This will copy the rectangle that you have just drawn and formatted. Now press CTRL and the letter V. This will now paste your image so you will have 2 to work with. Press CTRL and the letter V again! We now have 3 of the same size rectangles.

At this point, it doesn’t look like much, but we will play with it a bit more and then we may have just what you need!Now we are going to move things around. We have formatted this already so it’s ready to move. Just click and drag them into a straight line.

Well that looks a bit like an accordion fold now doesn’t it? But that’s not what we wanted. So we need to adjust them just a bit. A matchbook has two rectangles (or squares!) that are the same size, and then a smaller section that is just there to fold up to keep the mini-book closed. So this time click on the bottom rectangle. Then HOVER over the middle blue dot in the center of the rectangle. You should get a double headed arrow. Click on it and then move your rectangle up so that it shrinks down to the right size.

At this point, you can print it out and let your kids fill it in however they want. OR you can add graphics and text to make this fit your current unit. To add a graphic, click on Insert one more time. Then click on clip art. Enter a search topic (such as turkeys!) and see what clip art comes up. You can surf the web and look for the perfect picture to add to your mini-book.

Pick your graphics to go along with your theme or topic. You will want to right click on each graphic and change your text wrap (or click on format, and then the layout tab) to “in front of text.” At this point you will need to flip them upside down so that when you fold your matchbook, it is right-side up. To do this, you click on the graphic. if you look at the top of the graphic in the center, you will see a green dot just slightly above the graphic. Click and hold on it while you move your mouse. This should start to swing it around. Just turn it until it is “right.” You may need to readjust your positioning as turning it will sometimes throw it out of place.

Now you will want to add some text to your matchbook. This is going to be a question, phrase, or main topic so that your child will know what to write inside the matchbook. This time right click on the small rectangle on the bottom. You will then choose “add text”. This shape is now a text box. You can add any text you desire. Adjust your text, font, etc. so that it fits onto your rectangle. Remember you CAN adjust the size of this box as well.

This one is a simple match book. But you can do this just by playing around with the shapes and graphics. You can come up with numerous variations of the same matchbook, just by changing the direction of the shapes and graphics. Play with it and don’t worry if you mess it up, you can always delete it and start over!

Patty has been married to the love of her life for 14 years and has 4 kiddos she lovingly refers to as her monkeys. She is constantly threatening to run away to the Circus–unfortunately, she keeps being informed she’s already there! She loves throwing together this and that to create a unique learning experience that encourages a love of learning. Come feed their school mascot Shiver and check out her blog at Shiver Academy.