Mar. 2, 2007 - Hands Of A Child Review: Sun Lapbook

In the Hands of A Child is a great company with great products and the Sun lapbook is no exception. No baloney. The company is comprised of three extremely helpful ladies. For instance, when I bought a super membership in November, I didn't realize I had already purchased the November member lapbook. The very helpful ladies sent me my choice of one of the last five member lapbooks to make up for it! They didn't have to, I should have been paying attention! But they did it anyway. Another example is their fast response to questions posted to the Hands of A Child yahoogroup. Like all of their other products I have completed, the Sun lapbook is very easy to use. In one evening, just a couple hours in fact, I was able to read the information section, complete all of the activities myself, and choose which activities would be appropriate for my young children. The lapbook is written for 3rd grade and up; my children are 2nd grade and down. I have found, however, that all of the upper elementary lapbooks have plenty of activities appropriate for younger children. To accomplish this, I choose enough simple activities to fill one file folder. Since the In the Hands of A Child lapbooks usually (always? I don't have them all yet lol,) fill 2-3 file folders, finding enough simple ones to fill one file folder hasn't ever been a problem. The next day, while my children did math and phonics, I cut, folded, and pasted my minibooks onto my lapbook. I actually used posterboard, cut to the size of a file folder because we were out of file folders. Once I show my children the completed project, they are always ready to go! In this case, we have been reading all about the sun in Jeannie Fulbright's book called Exploring Creation with Astronomy so my children were already prepared with lots of information, and we just looked up a few specifics. I did not just let them copy my answers, but by making a sample for them, they were able to easily see how to spell an answer once they could prove to me they knew it :). If you wanted to or needed to, you could simply read aloud the text from the information section included in every project pack. After a lapbook is completed comes my favorite part -- show and tell -- lapbooks are a perfect, fun way to share with Daddy what you did in school! So, whenever you are ready to give lapbooks a try, head on over to http://handsofachild.com and check them out.