Over the years homeschooling, some of the most fun units we’ve done have been lapbooks. The kids are actively engaged in their learning, and they enjoy being creative. We have done a variety of lapbooks, from completely purchased sets with templates, instructions, and resources available, to ones where the kids have to find their own resources and decide their own way to display what they’ve learned. If you are just starting with lapbooks, I would recommend purchasing or using some of the free templates that are available, and I will include links to some of those at the end of this post. However, if you’d like to move past that, give your kids some guidance as to how to create different types of booklets, and let them take ownership. You’ll love the results!
This year in our co-op we decided that geography would be our main focus. Our big goal (we’ll see if we accomplish it yet :) ) is to visit all of the continents of the world, and get a generally knowledge of the countries and geography of each one. In addition to that, we want the kids to be spend some time learning about a few countries from around the world in a more in depth way.
Our first continent that we focused on was Asia. We decided it would be fun for the kids to each chose their own country to create a lapbook on, and gave the kids a set of guidelines for certain things that had to be in their lapbook. Beyond that, they were free to explore and find out things of interest to them. What was neat was seeing the creativity and the individual interests of the kids come out. My son who loves animals devoted a section of his lapbook to animals in the country, while my older daughter researched some of the fashions in the country she studied. The beauty of this approach is that it works so well with multiple ages. In our co-op, we have kids from grade one to grade eight, and they all studied their own country, at their own level, and created projects at their own level. We used resources from the internet, including some great templates from homeschoolshare, and the kids developed their own booklets as well.
In the end, it was so much fun to watch them sharing their lapbooks with family members. They were very excited to show what they had learned because they had done the work themselves and taken ownership of their learning. I think my kids will never forget this unit. And really, that’s my goal – not memorization, but real learning based on interests.
My grade one son’s China Lapbook.
Booklets from Homeschool Share. (His goal was to have as many flaps and little booklets as possible!)
With inside flaps open (he made three extra flaps).
My grade eight daughter’s Japan Lapbook.
Her mini booklets are mini reports :)
Here is her government flap, which she made into an accordian booklet.
Here are some resources that you might like to check out if you are interested in learning more about lapbooking:
Homeschool Share (excellent free lapbook resources!)
Hands of a Child (Lots of lapbooks available to purchase)
Homeschool in the Woods (We loved their Explorers lapbook project)
Squidoo minibook gallery (Great instructions and pictures for how to make all kinds of minibooks.)
currclick (lots of resources, not just for lapbooking)
The Ultimate Lap Book Handbook (This book is packed full of great ideas, and instructions for making the little booklets.)
What resources do you use for lapbooking? Feel free to add links to sites that you’ve used in the comments section!
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