Our first lapbook

I've heard the raves about lapbooks, but until this past year never really knew what one was. From what I've gathered, lapbooking is a hands-on way to learn about a topic and create a small visual with various facts and materials about that topic. I think of them as mini-tri-fold posters like we used to do in school, with the giant cardboard tri-fold displaying different facts about the topic.

For a lapbook, a file folder is usually used. Sometimes the two sides are folded in, so it opens like shutters. This time we just used the inside of the folder, and let Mary Clare and Ellie each fill one side. I just picked a book off our shelf last Monday, which happened to be:

"Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear" by Eric Carle. I figured this would be a good choice since Mary Clare is starting to show interest in reading easy repetitive books this semester, and since both the girls are very interested in animal facts. We read the book on Monday morning and Mary Clare said she'd like to learn more about peacocks and flamingos. I found one file folder in the house, but it had words in the inside of it, so we glued some red paper to cover it up and started our lapbook!

We looked up various facts about peacocks on the internet. Did you know the appropriate name is really "peafowl"? A peacock is a male peafowl, and a female is a peahen. A group is called a "party"! So we had fun learning these facts and then decided to create our own peacocks in the style of Eric Carle by gluing small pieces of colored tissue paper with a glue/water mixture and watercolor paints. I drew out the outline and they filled it in.

Mary Clare got bored with the gluing rather quickly and decided to use primarily crayons on her peacock. But Ellie did about half of hers all by herself before Mary Clare and I helped her finish it on Tuesday. The picture above is Ellie's when she wasn't quite finished.

We cut out the peacocks and went on to make some other visuals for the lapbook. First, I had both of the girls write the word "Peacock". Then Mary Clare created a little book with facts about them. For example, on one page she wrote "omnivore" and we discussed what an omnivore was. I printed out a little outlined map for her to color in the areas where there are native peacocks. She made a little plant and some bugs to represent what they eat, and then we made a little pocket for 2 strips of paper where she wrote down their average height and weight.

The next day Mary Clare woke up asking to finish her lapbook, which if you've read much about our homeschooling days, you will know that this is major progress! She usually doesn't want anything to do with schoolwork or lessons. She is headstrong and likes to be in control, so giving her this little project really helped her to feel like she was making something on her own, and it was something she was very interested in which helped tremendously! She even made some extra visuals for Ellie's side of the lapbook, even though I intended for Ellie to just make the peacock and write the word. Here's Mary Clare working hard!

So the lapbook didn't turn out to be anything phenomenol, but just the approach I took with it was very successful and helped us to cover a variety of subjects (reading, writing, science, geography, art) in 2 days. But most of all, they were doing it while enjoying themselves, which is what I really want to instill in my children...a love of learning!