Posted in Lapbooks

Posted by Anonymous (75.100.34.181)

I love all your postings about lapbooks, but I have a question for you. How does it really work out? I mean, do you do all the cutting out, most of the putting together, while the kids color a few things (as happened with my family's brief foray into lapbooking), or do they really do it themselves?? Maybe this is a duh question for those of you who do lots of this, but I have yet to figure out a way to do these, tho they look so fun, w/o doing most of the work myself and so much diminishing the "fun" factor! Thanks in advance for any help/direction you can give me. :)
angela  www.homesteadblogger.com/withinthelines

My 13 year old absolutely does the whole thing himself.  Most of the time he even decides what topic he would like to do a lapbook on.  I print out the booklets and give them to him in a folder.  There is also a large ziploc bag in his folder.  We decide how many days we would like for this lapbook to take.  Then he divides the number of booklets by the number of days and he goes to work.  I have helped him glue everything into the folder sometimes.  I am a little better at layout and he likes my help there. 

My 6 year old of course needs more help.  She does a lot of the cutting and as much of the writing as she can.  If there is a lot of writing I have her dictate to me what she wants the booklets to say and I write it in.  She does the folding and the coloring and for the most part she likes to even lay them out in the folder.  (She really wants to do it ALL!)

My 4 year old needs a lot of help.  The Transportation Lapbook for example I printed out the night before after he went to bed.  Then I cut them all out.  I put all the booklets in a big ziploc bag and any that had a bunch of pieces in little ziploc bags.  When we were ready to do the lapbook I sit right next to him and we pull out one booklet at a time.  He colors them, puts glue where I tell him to.  sticks the pieces together with my help.  He answers any questions.  For example when we did the ABC train in the Transportation lapbook he had to sing his ABC's and look at each little section and decide which on was next.  Then he would put glue on the tab and I would help him stick it in the right place.

I remember once when I had first started homeschooling I went to hear a lady speak at a homeschool conference about hands on learning.  She was talking about the fact that many of the projects she did with her children were heavily Mom involved.  She reminded us that even is she was doing parts of the assmebly she was still modeling to her children how to assemble things & discussing whatever concept she was teaching while they worked together.  I see this same thing relating to lapbooks.  Each one that I help my littles with is leading them to the day they can do them independently.  For my 4 year old a lot of the learning is the figuring out part.  What comes next (logic), How many are there (counting), coloring (eye hand coordination), etc.  I also see that my kids are just benefiting from the time we spend at the table together working on these.  A lot of good conversations come up and we all get to have a lot of fun discussions just because we are all at the table together.

So in answer to the question above, no my children are not some kind of gifted lapbooking geniuses!  LOL I am working along with them and helping them where they need it.  Sometimes when I am working on a lapbook with both of my littles it gets really hectic because they both want my help.  But, that teaches them patience and waiting skills.  I usually try to give them something to color, sort or count while I work with the other sibling. 

One last thing on this topic.  A while back a friend of mine told me that she had tried lapbooking with her son but he didn't like it.  I know this little guy and I was surprised he wouldn't like lapbooking.  I asked her what he didn't like about it and she said he liked making the booklets but got bored putting them all in the folder and completing the lapbook.  My response was "Then let him just make the booklets!"  He is 6 and if he gets bored with the complete process let him do the parts he likes.  Then Mom can  put them in a folder and he will still have a great finished product to show off and be proud of.  Keep in mind there is no right or wrong way to do these.  Do what works for your child or your family.  Let them learn what they can and don't burn them out.

There you have it.  My 2 cents!  LOL