Utilizing Lapbooks Within Curriculum

Lap books are small books that are hand-made to reinforce learning. The books are made out of cardstock (or any hard surface) paper, and other materials used while covering a new subject area. As their name implies, they can be held on your lap (as well as made on your lap) to review material and keep it all in one place.

Lapboooks are a great resource to children because it assists them in applying the information they've just learned. Studies have shown that children are able to retain information more easily when they have heard information regarding a topic, seen how the information applies, as well as having hands on exposure to the information and figuring out how they can apply the new information.

Lap books are very fun to make and are simple to add to any curriculum, particularly as a review tool. Many courses are designed within a unit study, covering a variety of subjects within a particular topic, for instance weather.

I use weather as an example because in our homeschooling program, we completed a weather lapbook as part of our own review. We followed a program for weather, reading books, completing projects, including building a thermometer, wind vane, barometer, rain gauge and tracked weather for two weeks. I felt my son had a pretty good understanding of weather and how it affects the lives of people all around the world.

He enjoyed putting together his lapbook to share with his friends and family. While there are many ways to create a lapbook, I'm going to describe the contents of our weather lapbook.

First, we took a manilla folder, opened this up into one large flat surface and folded the flaps into the original fold. This created a cover that opened outwards. As part of our weather projects, we had made a cloud wheel. This had a picture of the different kinds of clouds, with information underneath about what color the clouds would be, the combination of clouds it might be and the weather that would be most likely with these clouds. My son decided to put this on his cover. This was glued to the right hand side of the cover flap, which created a nice colorful, inviting introduction to the lapbook.

On the inside, we had made small layered book that included all of the different vocabulary words we'd learned during our weather study. I made the layered book by cutting four pieces of stationary paper in half. I then separated them so that they sat on top of each other and had about ½ an inch showing at the bottom. I then folded all of these sheets, careful to keep them separated, in half. This created eight segmented layers that could display the vocabulary word at the bottom. When the page is lifted up, the meaning of the word can be added, or pictures can be drawn to show the meaning of the word.

My son decided to use most of the inside of his lapbook to create several of these minibooks and draw pictures of hurricanes, tornadoes, rain, snow, etc. We also included the chart that we'd tracked the weather with. This included the temperature, the pressure from our homemade barometer, and the rainfall (if there was any).

While this is only one way to create a lapbook, it is the most commonly found lap book resource because it is simple to apply to any area of learning. There are several websites that offer pre-packaged lapbook materials, including Hands of a Child.

We've made other books as well to enhance the learning experience. My son's favorite was a book that contained a half year's worth of worksheets and drawings that went with the curriculum of Story of the World. This is a history program offered in a timeline fashion that helps students understand history. We reached a chapter that discussed Arbshubanipal and his ability to offer knowledge to others and his creation of the first library. My son actually had the idea of creating his own library and he took a manilla folder, left it folded in half, we three hole punched all of the pages we'd completed and inserted brads into the holes to make a book. On the cover he glued the picture of Arbshubanipal and wrote First Library on the cover.

My son continues to return to these homemade lap books as a resource. He enjoys skimming the material for fun (I of course call it review).

Lap books are an excellent resource because they can enhance any project or curriculum. There are books, classes, and other resources available to those that would like to learn more about the process of making the lapbooks. I personally own Dinah Zike's Big Book of Books and Activities.

While I've only listed two types of books that can be made into lap books, there are many more including, mini books that can be used to include the individual letters and pictures of items that reinforce the letter.

You can make the inside of a volcano, layered to show the types of rock formations. You can also do this with a model of the earth. You can make larger books that include mathematic equations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions. This is a great way to keep children focused on hands on activities, learning their math facts.

I've seen children use lapbooks to their advantage and have come out winners, retaining material studied and having a valuable book to show others as a memory and accomplishment of what they've learned. Lapbooks allow every child, no matter what learning style they lean towards to apply information learned and have an excellent time doing so.

As a homeschooler, lapbooks aren't costly (thanks to purchasing manilla folders in bulk) and you are only limited by your imagination to what can be included in them.